THE UGLY BUSINESS OF THE FOURTH ESTATE:

By
Noorilhuda
You have great power. You can guide or misguide people. You can make or mar the biggest
personality...... I expect you to be completely fearless. Look upon (this power) as a trust and
remember that you are guiding honestly and sincerely the progress and welfare of your nation..... I
want you to criticize (League and me) honestly as a friend.
Jinnah, speaking to Muslim journalists in Bombay, 13th March 1947.

The countrys premier spy agency and no. 1 cable channel have more in common than either is
likely to admit this summer. Both crave power, privilege, money, unwavering support from the
masses and government and have an overall low threshold for criticism. Both have a reputation for
not playing fair. Two years ago ISI and its former chiefs were the misunderstood ones as Geo and
Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman are at the moment. ISI was isolated in the Asghar Khan case (overthrowing
democratic government and influencing elections for national interest) and hundreds of enforced
disappearances to curb Baloch insurgency, Taliban and internal rogue elements, now its Geos turn
as rival media channels burnt-by-competition-and/or-its-monopoly, lame-duck PEMRA, rally-ready
PTI, MQM, JI, PML-Q and ISI-bosom-buddies Hafiz Saeed, Hamid Gul and Sunni Ittehad Council
go for its blood. Streets are littered with posters of Zaheer ul Islam and Raheel Sharif as beacons of
Pakistan while the branch offices of media house face an unprecedented security threat. The circus
should make one thing very clear: The motivation for taking sides has nothing to do with upholding
the ethics of journalism or the sanctity of state institutions. It is about coming on top of the rubble.
What a difference eight hours make.
In a way this is an event 67-years in the making since no genuine effort for sustainable
accountability has been made against any institution for long.
Press for the State, By the State, With the State:
There are two reasons why Pakistani media is the way it is, says a member of government on
condition of anonymity since he is not authorized to speak to the media. The first reason is
historical. The first newspaper in United India was published in English-language by James Hickey
whose sole task was to criticize the East India Company - now whether he did it to reform the
British or blackmail them, one does not know! But that model was taken up by every newspaper
that came after it in Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and other languages. Under British rule, media was
antagonistic and played the role of the opposition. This pattern continued after partition as well. So
instead of news-oriented coverage, explanatory comments, in Pakistan a very strong tradition of
critical media developed.
And this had to be harnessed in the right direction.

In U.S. and Britain, growth of political theory and capitalist economy were independent of state,
he continues. Media is ultimately a business, and state in these countries had nothing to do with the
economic function of sustaining the paper. Hence the media evolved in a truly liberal democratic
fashion. Here, media houses were created or sustained by the state. There was state patronage,
public money was used, advertisements of government departmental clients, like CDA, NHA, PIA,
OGDC, PID, etc. and print quota - a very powerful tool till pre-Musharraf time, when it was
abolished. All the current big media houses became big this way. One paper always sided with
dictatorial (read military) regimes. One was the custodian of Pakistaniat. There was no industry or
capital to sustain the paper without it. This became the pattern of business.
Even the Quaid was not immune from its use. Zamir A. Niazi in his book The Press in
Chains (1986) quotes reporter M. A. Shakoor who worked in the Dawn newsroom when its
inaugural issue of 15th August 1947 was being prepared, as saying The Quaid-e-Azam had come
to Karachi...and wanted a newspaper of his own. He asked Yusuf Haroon to use the press for Dawn,
instead of a new newspaper. Haroon explained that press was not his own, but belonged to a joint
stock company of which he was a director. Whereupon the Quaid suggested that the management
could remain with the company, the Pakistan Herald Publications, the editorial policy would be his,
through Liaquat Ali Khan.
Ofcourse, as history shows, Jinnah never mishandled his power over media as Liaquat Ali Khan
came to in the four years he was the PM, even muzzling portion of Fatima Jinnahs radio speech on
Quaids death anniversary! Nevertheless it drives home the point that information is power and
whoever holds the keys to information (as many-a-landlord would tell you) has true power.
Hence, a section of press, editors and senior journalists, called Khawaja Nazmuddin Quaid-eQillat (he proceeded the Millat one), sided with elements to overthrow Bogra when he granted
Bengali the status of second national language, supported the anti-Qadiani riots, wanted Ayub Khan
to declare himself life-president or monarch, never truly questioned the validity (and blatant
discrimination) of One Unit, headlined War Till Victory on 17th December 1972, supported Zia so
that their names were deleted from his White Paper on the Misuse of Media, called Musharraf a
messiah till it got tired of him, chickened into calling Chaudhary a God before calling him an
entirely new name, blurred the lines of Mujahid and Enemy of the State - there is a difference
between rebel and terrorist - and reserved choicest adjectives for Zardari and selective glory for
Khan before Election 2013 and complete information blackout on MQMs leader Altaf Hussains
legal and health troubles, rural areas and certain business sectors (telecom, poultry, industrial
waste). Most damaging however, has been the ostrich-in-the-sand following of official narrative on
matters of ideology, culture, faith and foreign policy. K. K. Aziz wrote Murder of History (1993)
with respect to text books taught from class 1 to 14. He should have written one on state-sanctioned
lies printed and aired for ages 9 to 90!
It was considered a novelty when Absar Alam and Hamid Mir petitioned the SC in 2012 to check
the black sheep of media. The Dunya TV Planted YT Gate was a scandal like no other,
overshadowing the revelations by Malik Riaz. It shocked the ordinary people more than it was news
to media itself. The real year for that was 1972, when during the trial of Ayubs Information
Secretary it was revealed that some journalists/ editors were in the pay of various official agencies
in Ayubs tenure as well as Bhuttos. Nothing concrete was done about it then (names of
beneficiaries were expunged from court proceedings), just like no further investigation has been

done to check the veracity of the on-the-payroll-of internet list or the Media Commission Report
2013. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Media Wars - When Wolves Cry Foul:

The single-most important function of print and broadcast media - that of custodian of fact - has
taken a backseat as they merge psychoanalysis with amateurish story telling techniques to heighten
the dramatic quality and palpitations! Deceive, inveigle subterfuge is not just the alma mater of ISI.
Long gone are the days media used to inform, engage and disseminate.
As GEO finds its self alone in the minefield of its making, it would be good to remember that
powerful organizations holding divergent interests have rarely gotten along in Pakistan anyways.
Dunya TV management asserted the YT footage was a conspiracy to curb its growing popularity
pointing fingers at GEO which led the heat against the channel headquartered in Lahore. However,
the disgraced ratings-magnate anchors found jobs, paychecks and clout in other channels in no time.
Mubashar Lucmans show became a launch pad for anti-Geo vitriolic which should never have been
allowed to air by PEMRA in the first place. Geo News became mostly about legal victories against
Lucman and ARY. Can anyone imagine Fox or CNN or left-right media in any civilized country in
the world going for the jugular as these two channels have? Instead of stopping the mudslinging, the
allegations of foreign-funded Aman Ki Asha that PEMRA chief had to backtrack and apologize
for last year, now find new supporters!
There are a lot of stories doing the rounds, says Mazhar Abbas, speaking on the phone from
Karachi. Basically the rivalry (between GEO and ARY) is the result of corporate media culture
where their commercial interests are more important than their professional interests.......and it has
to do with other businesses of the media channels, the moneyed worth of which is higher than the
channel itself. For e.g. you will see a lot of stories in ARY about Jehangir Siddiqui who is Shakil ur
Rehman (owner of Geo TV)s samdhi who has a business rivalry with Karim Dhedhi - he is
supported by ARY. Jang routinely publishes stories against Dhedhi.
People with businesses in education and property have invested crores for bringing their own
network, print or broadcast, says the government servant, on condition of anonymity citing
examples of Dunya TV, Nai Baat, Jinnah, even a ham-handed magazine like Multi-Vision. Their
main interest is to serve and protect the business, make money, gain direct contact with ordinary
people and develop influence. You want to be influential. When you have clout, then ofcourse you
can gain direct benefits from governmental policies, not just in known businesses, but in industry,
import, export, so while government may not be giving you advertisements directly, it is favoring
you indirectly. To a paper like Jang or channel like GEO, advertisements hold little charm - you will
get them no matter what.
The unity of journalists has always been a fallacy. In 50s, there were two rival organizations
representing the interests of journalistic integrity: Pakistan Newspapers Editors Conference
(PNEC) headed by Dawns editor Altaf Hussain (no relation to MQM) and Council of Pakistan
Editors (CPE) by Nawa-i-Waqts Hamid Nizami. Even then editors who joined one of these, would
change loyalties and jump ship overnight!

Pakistan has seen days like 9th January 1953, when the entire press observed a 24-hour strike
protesting governments press policy (The printer and cartoonist of Evening Times had been
arrested for sedition on 30th Dec. 1952 - the cartoon showed government as plunging the country
into chaos. Kh. Nazmuddins government minded it). The catch was that Dawn, which was a
supporter of the government and ideological opponent of Times also joined the protest.
Try getting Express News, Dawn, ARY and GEO in the same ring and see sparks fly!
Media rivalries have always existed, says Abbas recounting an episode from 1949 when in a
never-before-or-seen-since joint editorial titled Treason by seventeen editors of 16 papers including Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Chiragh Hasan Hasrat and Mir Khalil ur Rehman - demanded penal
action against head of Civil and Military Gazette and suspension of publication - a campaign
launched by ideological polar opposites Dawn and Nawa-i-Waqt. C&MG had published a report
that a compromise agreement was at hand between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. The paper
submitted an unconditional apology and that was that, finishes Abbas.
Its another story that C&MG never recovered from the ban.
In simpler times, big groups like Jang and Nawa-i-Waqt had a plain understanding: former would
not publish from Lahore and the latter would not enter Karachi. But political and economic changes
in Pakistan created new opportunities for media groups. It was during Benazir Bhuttos first tenure
as PM that the first private media channel NTM was allowed to function (owner: Interflow
chairman Taher Khan, a good friend of then Information Minister Javed Jabbar), and air content
from CNN. Inspite of the largest advertising group behind it, NTM was unable to sustain itself for
long. ARY which started transmission from London had gold and GEO had Jang to keep it afloat in
the beginning. And booming private sector has lessened the dependency on state patronage and
increased influence of big moneyed players.

Reporter thy name is Profiteer, Spy, Extortionist, Traitor, Martyr:

When Douglas Cater, journalist who turned politician for a while in the 60s, dubbed press the
fourth branch of government (Cater, 1959), he did not mean it literally. His view was that as
shaper of events, reporters exercise independent political power. The reporter can choose, he
wrote, from among the myriad events that seethe beneath the surface of government which to
describe, which to ignore. He can illuminate policy.....he can prematurely expose policy, thus
causing its destruction. At his worst, operating with arbitrary and faulty standards, he can be an
agent of disorder and confusion. At best he can be a creative influence on politics.
Unlike the U.S., where the average journalist is middle-aged highly educated underpaid liberal,
Pakistan is bereft with young, inexperienced, mediocrely literate, conservative and confused boys
and girls who venture into the field to make a name or moolah off information.
I call it LMG - the Loot Maar Group, says Nauman Khan Babar, the 29-year old Multan bureau
chief of Dunya TV, who was previously with Express News. This is his fifth channel. See, smaller
channels do not pay their reporters. So what a cameraman or reporter does is make footage: of a
dairy products factory, where milk is not fresh, butter is not right etc. and then they blackmail the

owner to pay or they will air footage, and earn Rs.10,000-20,000 per case. On a daily basis a
camera man earns two-three-thousand just by making extra footage.
He adds: This is the reality for 98% reporting! They create events. For e.g. a local journalist on the
payroll of a political party will tell its member that you have to fire upon the opposite party. This is
how election propaganda is created.....sometimes they arrange protests themselves. It is being said
about the girl in Muzaffargarh (alleged victim of gang-rape died in self-immolation on 14th March
2014), that a reporter told her to throw a bit of petrol on herself telling her that we will save you,
do not worry. That girl was wearing silk clothes, fire got out of control and that was that.
There is no way to substantiate this claim of Khan, but it does not stop him. He continues, When a
journalist goes to cover a protest, at the end of it, he starts to scratch his stomach - the other party
understands that he wants money......crime reporters get monthly from local SHO. We call it
Aakrraa, if there are gambling dens etc. in the area of local police station, a reporter is paid money
from the station for not writing about them.....You can get so many things done, even governmental
transfers! All you have to say is that so and so politician is your uncle that is, you are fast friends
with him......there is paid content, putting news in the paper or channel, the reporters role is that of
the middleman.
I remember once, for a cricket tour to England - and this is a time when journalists used to get
1000 for a single tour - two crime reporters were also sent. They went and saw a cricket match and
came back! says senior journalist Azhar Abbas about the golden period of state patronage. There
are strong organizations in U.S. to check and balance. Even here, in Dawn, and this was when BB
was in power, she invited a journalist to go along with her team to U.S. tour. The journalist asked
his Dawn editor, and the editor said you can go, but you will not cover her tour, so there are such
examples too.
Syed Alamdar Naqvi, Dep. DG Press Information Department, is about to retire this July after 30
years of service. Right now, he has additional charge of National Press Trust as well. There is
nothing he has not seen. It is not medias job kay jalti pay tayl ka kaam karaye (put oil over
wounds). But when Hamid Mir was editor of Pakistan, a newspaper from Islamabad, the headline of
that paper after killing of Shoaib Nadeem, a sunni leader from Wah Cantt, was Sunni Muslims burn
four Imam Bargah. There was a reaction but it was wrong to put it like that.......There was a time
that if a religious leader said something wrong, he would face 16-MPO (dissemination of rumors
through speech or report), now the DC cannot dare! There have always been meetings on code of
ethics but nothing has ever materialized.
Infact, in the week after Raja Bazaar Rawalpindi incident (15th Oct. 2013) where Sunni shops and
madressah were torched, the most influential of sectarian leaders was invited to give his views on
one channel. The recording never aired because five minutes into the program the leader declared
Shias are waajib ul qatal, this is what every Aalim of authority has always adhered to. There may
be pros and cons of fighting a mindset so deep-seated and accepted in part of society that this leader
comes from and preaches to - but wrong is wrong, no matter which cloak of religiosity it comes in.
In a few hours time, the original source tapes as well as those in the headquarters all lay destroyed!
So much for freedom of speech! And media! And concept of social justice!
Then there are the political affiliations to think of that supersede moral ones. There is the oftrepeated May 12th 2007 massacre photograph where four bullet-riddled bodies lie near an open

white-colored car, the windows smashed and a near-empty street. In Sohail Khattaks piece
(Karachis most famous dead body lives to tell the tale published in Express Tribune, 12th May
2012), in which one of the four survived the attack, though shot six times - where a journalist with
one of Pakistans largest private news channels pointed out the survivor as still breathing to
assailants, who promptly laid the sixth one in him! Then another vehicle carrying journalists came,
took pictures, and left!
Less grievous are the petty quarrels of noted journalists and anchors played out on TV screens
during prime time: Talat Hussain and Najam Sethi called each other spies (argument now made
worse by the fact that Sethi is chairman of a sport that Hussain loves), Ansar Abbasi had a go at
Saleem Safi in the Letter to Taliban fiasco, Shahzeb Khanzada had a punching pow wow with
Javed Chaudhry, Haroon Rasheed and Iftikhar Ahmed had an ideological sword fight over Bhutto,
and Hamid Mir was left to his own devices to get well. The final casualty of the holier-than-thou
attitude is public trust in journalism itself.

Belling the Cat

At the time of partition, there were ten major newspapers in East and West wings collectively.
Though Quaid refused to sign a black press law, many laws since then have been applied with
varied levels of success and tribulation on the press and broadcast media.
From Public Safety Ordinance 1948 to West Pakistan Press and Publications Ordinance 1963, the
rampant handing out of declarations for print during Bhutto years to the over-night checking of next
days edition by officials during Zia years, the mango parties that came later to PEMRA Ordinance
2002, Press Council of Pakistan Ordinance 2002, and The Press, Newspapers, News Agencies and
Books Registration Ordinance, 2002 & of 2009 have all swung between cajoling and controlling the
media. Today, 15 Acts and Ordinances directly or indirectly control quality of information on
media.
And yet here we are, spiraling out of control and purview. There are 609 dailies published across
Pakistan (564 are just solo-district). There are ways to circumvent rules to get license permit to start
a paper or magazine long before the file reaches Audit Bureau of Certification but as Naqvi points
out, it takes but one verbal order of a minister to change the circulation figure from 4,000 to
40,000 so that the publication makes more money off government adverts. Ofcourse people within
PID carry some weight as well. Then there is the practice by the owner of a title to sell it to the next
fellow after getting the name on the Media List. The 181-page Media Commission Report 2013
lamented the dummy publications as well as channels that had not obtained license and yet operated
freely. Of 89 licensed ones, twenty-nine are just news channels, working to attain their own
hegemony. The controversial part is determining the right stakeholders and then to talk to those
willing to be spoken to.
The Commission suggested the following measures:
* Need for self-critical review by media
* However media should not be allowed to self-regulate content
* Refinement of media laws by federal and provincial governments (first by creating Media Laws
Review Task Force by Standing Committee of Information & Broadcasting in NA and Senate)

* PEMRA should be under direct purview of the Parliament and fully autonomous
* The authority to appoint chairman and members of PEMRA or new six-member regulatory forum
consisting of Speaker of NA, Chairman Senate, Leader of House and Opposition in Senate and
NA as well as 3 eminent citizens representing civil society, media and non-Muslims.
* Expeditious hearings of complaints by courts (As Javed Jabbar told newsmen in April, there are
281 stay orders obtained by TV and radio against PEMRA pending in court. The normal duration
of such an order is 15 days. But these apparently have continued for years)
* Exclusion of private monopolies (curtailing cross-media ownership)
* Government handing out plots, money or privileges to journalists needs to stop
* Transparent non-discriminatory allocation of adverts
All this sounds a bit long-term but the moment for action is now, unless the country is ready for
another epic battle of egos fought on the streets and the airwaves - and that also in summer heat! with little reformation and candor.

Disclaimer: The piece does not aim to undermine the professional working journalists or genuine
threats to their life in the line of duty.