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Determining Threats to Journalism amidst Mediatization in Pakistan
By Tarteel Rao
Supervised by Knut De Swert
Master’s Thesis
Student number: 12367826 Word count: 12537 World limit: 12540
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Dedication:
For those whose kids cry all night long Lullabies don’t work, neither do songs Whose tears dwell in their pillows But smile they do for their kiddos Dedicated to those widows
For those who raised children in many years Who held their fingers and fought their fears For the eyes that have drowned in their tears Who lost their pearls fighting the war of others Dedicated to those brave mothers
For those who spread knowledge Who risk being liberal in their college Who lose their lives to religious preachers Dedicated to those teachers
For the watchmen who don’t sleep at night Walking with a stick, gunmen they fight Who blow a whistle until there is light Dedicated to those Knights
For the janitors who clean the mess Who work so hard and paid so less And judged for the way they dress Whose salary contains only 2 zeroes Dedicated to those real heroes For those who spread news
Whose alarm never see the word ‘snooze’ Who withhold their subjective views Have little holes in their shoes
Whose increments are always refused Who falsely get accused
Whose typing clicks echoes in the headquarters Dedicated to my dedicated reporters
For those who questioned conformity Were tortured and faced deformity For those who could not have escaped Were beaten off and then raped Whose integrity was their last gifts Dedicated to all those journalists
For those who are supressed Helpless, vulnerable and depressed Who had no scarf on’ her
Who was killed in the name of honour Who are kept in the fist like a car key Who are crumbling down in the patriarchy Who hold pans instead of pen
Dedicated to my Pakistani women For those who are crushed by authorities Ignored and discriminated by the majorities Who never got to be in the priorities Dedicated to my minorities
For those whose future they took Who have nowhere to look Who cannot afford to buy books For those in need
For those who plead
Dedicated to those who read
For those who are considered very cheap On the footpath they live, and there they sleep Whose lunchboxes has the most space to keep Who wished they had died when they were younger
Who discovered true meaning of the word hunger
In a garden they have thorns to sell Dreams burned in their chest, they smell Who live under the hut of stress
Whose mouth are shut but their eyes express Nothing to lose but piece of bread a success Whose helpless, starving faces are their only address
Snubbed all the time and considered to be less Who shiver in cold and have nothing to dress Dedicated to all those who are homeless For the mud soaked in blood, that is my land For the skin covering the sand, that is my land For trees that no longer stand, that is my land For the forest whose leaves are dipped in Quran Dedicated to my beloved Pakistan
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Acknowledgements:
My biggest acknowledgement to my supervisor Knut De Swert, without whom I could never have done this study. His ideas, support, motivation and supervision really made me step up as a researcher.
An equal big acknowledgement to all my respondents who did not hold back any opinions, experiences and information despite the sensitivity of the topic.
I would also like to thank Penny Sheets Thibaut, Edina Strikovic, and Susanne Baumgartner for preparing me sufficiently to deal with this research.
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Abstract:
Pakistan is a dangerous country for journalists as a number of them get murdered, kidnapped and tortured each year, despite the prevailing mediatization in the country. This study investigates deep into the factors and forces that threaten journalists at extra-media, routines, organizational and individual level. With seven in-depth interviews of journalists who have directly faced such threats, this qualitative study reflects light on their unique and terrifying experiences. This study has yielded new insights including the journalism of blackmail, grassroot level problems, and most importantly the financial crises, that this study considers as the biggest threat. In addition, this study finds that even ordinary civilians can turn out to be a life-threatening danger, if a journalist writes against their religious
sentiments. The findings are discussed and analysed in the light of hierarchy of needs model by Maslow and hierarchy of influence by Reese. Lastly, this study offers suggestions to deal with such threats.
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Introduction:
Pakistan is a country beleaguered by violence triggered by several types of conflicts between groups along ethnic, political and religious lines. Subsequently, it is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists (Campagna, 2014). Pakistan was ranked as the fourth deadliest country for journalists in 2016 by International Federation of Journalists as 115 Pakistani journalists had been killed since 1990 until 2016 (Dawn, 2016). At present, Pakistan stands on 139th rank out of 180 in press freedom (World Press Freedom Index, 2018). Establishment of the country and the threat of terrorism posed by Tehreek-i-Taliban are considered as the biggest threats to Pakistani journalists by Amnesty International (2014) as several journalists have been allegedly tortured, kidnapped and brutally murdered by them. In addition, Pakistani journalists are generally not paid and trained enough regardless of the dangers they face in their profession (Arshad and Ashraf, 2014). To make matters worse, the current government of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf has cut its media spending by 70% and private companies have also limited their spending by 50% that has resulted in a massive financial crises for media in Pakistan. These cuts in media’s earnings have caused almost all TV channels and newspapers to fire several of their employees and reduce the salaries of their employees (Jamal, 2018).
Despite the massive influence of Pakistani media on local politics and prevalence of mediatization that resulted in events such as ousting of the military dictator General Musharaf (Hiel, 2008), the threats journalists face towards their freedom of speech are alarming. At one point, Pakistani media is considered powerful enough to oust a military dictator and criticize government in the most blatant of manners, but the on the other hand, journalists face violence and do not feel independent enough to write freely on many issues.
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Considering the different dimensions of threats, difficulties and barriers for journalism in Pakistan, this study aims to understand the threats perceived by Pakistan
journalists that compels them to self-censor themselves. Moreover, this study intends to probe deeper than just external violent threats and understand how the environment of culture, organization and economy that surrounds journalists play a part in making them censor themselves. Furthermore, this study will also shed light on the intrinsic and psychological aspects of journalists that may serve as a barrier for their journalism. Another aim of this research is to explore what type of content attracts the most threats. Lastly, journalism is considered as beacon of hope for many societies, and this study will endeavour to understand whether this hope can be realistically kept, so this study will discuss some potential solutions and suggestions regarding how journalism can be safeguarded from such intimidations.
Research question:
The research question that this study primarily pose is ‘What are the main threats to journalism perceived by Pakistani journalists?’1
Sub-Research Questions:
(i) What news content/topics are most threatening to cover in Pakistan? (ii) What are the factors outside newsroom that influence news selection for
journalists in Pakistan?
(iii) How do organizational policies and demands affect the news coverage for journalists in Pakistan?
1 Note: After thorough discussions with the supervisor during analysis and supervision sessions, it was decided
that the word-limit of this research paper will be extended to ‘12540‘ words. It is a qualitative study that yielded a number of new insights. Therefore, it was decided that extending the word-limit would maximize the input of the interviews in the results section, as they bring something new and sets the bar high.
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(iv) How do personal beliefs, ideologies and biases influence journalists in their news reporting?
(v) What could be the best possible solutions to eliminate the threats to journalism in Pakistan?
Literature Review and Theory:
Self-Censorship and News selection:
As Simon Lee (1990) puts it ‘Speech is not free. It costs lives; or its price can be another value we hold dear’(Lee, 1990: 09). Similar is the case in Pakistan as freedom of speech is a luxury not enjoyed by a lot of journalists, and many of them often pays a hefty price for it. In other instances, they opt to self-censor themselves.
The idea of self-censorship as a common and somewhat heterogenous phenomenon in which role playing can be essential was discussed by Horton (2011). He explained that several people ranging from a friend, teacher, parent or a journalist censor themselves for various purposes. Focussing on self-censorship by journalists, Cook and Heilmann (2013) accounted public and private as two primary types of censorships. While pubic self-censorship is defined as a series of individual reactions to a public self-censorship game, private censorship is expressed as withholding the attitude of an agent without the factors of public censorship in place.
In agreement with Cook and Heilmann’s (2013) definition of public censorship, Skjerdal (2010) also sees self-censorship as a practice in which journalists exclude certain newsworthy content due to threats posed by public authorities.
Therefore, Skjerdal (2010) emphasizes on external pressure and further mentions government interferences, cultural expectations and organizational processes that provoke journalists to censor themselves. Adding on in Skjerdal’s (2010), argument of organizational
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processes, Donsbach (2004) further explained institutional objectives as expectations that journalists face as a consequence of their employment status. He highlighted the pressure on reporters to highlight specific topics such as crime and use attractive formats, such as pictures for attracting the attention of audiences. Additionally, Donsbach (2004) emphasized on institutional objectives that include pressure to pursue content and certain slants that favour the specific ideological or political goals of the organization. Talking further about external threats, Horton (2011) added that apart from governments, institutions such as churches, commercial enterprises and universities also influence journalists for self-censorship.
Furthermore, he added self-censorship does not only relate to content but also to the manner, time and place of expression.
Taking the debate further Horton (2011) discussed the importance understanding the motive behind self-censorship is the key because if a journalists chooses to self-censor due to a potential fear of violence, imprisonment or harmful consequences, then it cannot be
accounted as censorship as the censoring of content isn’t done willingly. Therefore, self-censorship is applicable when an agent has a choice and is not physically prevented from withdrawing information. On the other hand, Bar-Tal (2017) sees self-censorship through a negative lens and considers it a plague that prevents the world from being a better place by robbing its performers from integrity. He discussed how certain information that can largely benefit societies are often concealed and society as a whole pays for such acts.
Thus, Bar-Tal (2017) look at self-censorship as an act that intentionally and
voluntarily withholds information from others in the absence of formal obstacles and is hence an obstacle itself to the proper functioning of a democratic societies. Sharing the notion, Sunday (2007) associates self-censorship with journalistic unprofessionalism and claims it to be a hurdle for people working with integrity.
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This raises the normative question of whether and when self-censorship can actually be justified. Addressing this question, Skjerdal (2010) defended the concept of
self-censorship and argued that in certain societies including Somalia and various parts of Africa, it is the only possible way to practice journalism as it is essential for the survival of
journalists. Negating the views of Sunday (2007) and Bar-Tal (2018) further, Skjerdal (2010) explained that even foreign correspondents with international reputation and credibility confesses to using self-censorship in order to work in African environment because it is the only way to work in such dangerous regions for journalists.
Most of the aspects covered so far and for which majority of the literature is available are the external factors and hurdles that enable journalists to censor certain content. However, the intrinsic, psychological and behavioural characteristics of journalists that limits them to cover certain content or overly cover other content are also extremely important, especially in the context of journalism and this study. These psychological behaviour and patterns are essential but also quite difficult to explain and understand, as human mind, behaviour and cognitive functions can vary largely and are significantly difficult to measure. Geiger and Newhagen (1993) identified the news selection process as a black box that does not possess much examination about processes taking inside. Schramm and Roberts (1971) emphasized that communication process and behaviour cannot be understood fully unless the central nervous system or ‘black box’ as referred by (Geiger and Nehwagen, 1993) is understood first.
In harmony, Donsbach (2004) also emphasized on understanding the cognitive and emotional needs of actors involved in self-censorship. He described news factors,
institutional objectives, manipulative power of news sources and subjective beliefs of journalists as the primary four factors that influence the decision making of journalists with regard to choosing or discarding any content. He further argued that subjective beliefs and
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predispositions of journalists towards issues or actors potentially affect their news decisio ns, however, the effect of these predispositions vary largely between journalists from different organizations, countries and professional values. In support with Donsbach’s (2004) argument of news values, Kepplinger and Ehmig (2006) argued that news values explicate the selection process of news for journalists and hence demonstrate the news decisions. Price and Tewksbury (1997) illustrated that news values not only represent the selection of any news but also how it is presented. Moreover, Eilders and Wirth (1999) argued that the significant level of variance in news factors add in the process of news selection.
In addition, Donsbach (2004) pointed out the importance of understanding the psychological features that affect news decision of journalists and hypothesized that two basic functions that can potentially explain such news decisions are ‘need for social validation of perceptions’ and ‘need to preserve one’s existing predispositions’. Need for social validation relates more with social needs and nature of journalists, while the
preservation of one’s existing predispositions refer to the cognition of journalists. Likewise, Shoemaker (1996) explained that understanding biological and cultural factors are very important in the news selection process as they can overwhelmingly influence a journalist for choosing or leaving a story.
Therefore, external, organizational and psychological are the primary level of threats that journalists are affected with. In order to analyse and measure these level of threats, following models are presented.
Hierarchy of influence is a model introduced by Reese (2011) that filters news decisions from micro to macro level and focusses on individual, organizational, news routines, extra media and ideological levels. This model sufficiently cover all angles of external, organizational and intrinsic barriers that influence content creation and is ideal for
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the analysis of this study. Likewise, Zhong and John (2009) presented their model of news decision making that relies on two different structures: a hierarchical system of news elements and the associate network of news decisions. Hierarchical structure is based on 3 levels, where level 1 is considered the lowest and possess news elements at cognitive system. Level 2 has news elements at cultural system level, while level 3 has news elements at rational level system that represents the perception of society for a journalist. As for the associative network, it postulates that “not all three dimensions are structured in a hierarchy, although a hierarchical structure may exist between news decisions at the cognitive
dimension and those at the cultural or rational dimension” (Zhong & John, 2009: 08). Similarly, Dimmick and Coit (1982) in their model emphasized ownership, rules by government, competition and impact of organization on news selection decisions. Croteau and Hoynes (2012) on the other hand stressed that journalists are influenced by technology, consumers and media messages alongside society in decision making for writing news content. Rawls (1991 ) argued in his theory of justice that journalists are required to keep themselves behind the veil of ignorance in a manner that they do not think about the consequences of such news content to their own lives. Rawls (1991) further suggested that being behind the veil of ignorance is the best way a journalist can determine the principles to morally pursue a story. He mentioned 5 qualities that such principles of morality must have, i.e. transparency, simplicity, applicability to everyone, preferential order and principles acting as the final court of appeal in reasoning of practicality.
Additionally, Stromback (2008) described mediatization as a process that reshapes the behaviour of political actors and institutions to conform to media logic. He described that mediatization go through four phases, and in fourth phase media becomes strong enough to influence the policy making and campaigning of political actors. With regard to Stromback (2008), Pintak et al, (2016) explored mediatization in Pakistan and 63.8% of his respondents
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indicated mediatization in its fourth phase in Pakistan. Similarly, Abbas (2017) did content analysis on Jang and ARY News and concluded media logic prevails more dominantly in Pakistan compared to political logic.
Lastly, Maslow (1954) described basic needs into five essential categories of
physiology, safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-actualization. He proposed a sequence in these needs through which a person moves on from fulfilling physiological needs, followed by safety and then towards others. Maslow (1954) argued that human beings regardless of their profession first need to cover their basic needs of food, shelter and love before moving towards their esteem and self-actualization needs. Therefore, the process of covering these needs also reflects the pattern through which motivation moves within human beings. The central idea Maslow’s (1954) model elaborates is the correlation between motivation and achieving the intrinsic desires and needs of a human. Hence, fulfilling these needs result in increased motivation and finding meaning in life and thus completing the proposed hierarchy.
Methodology:
This study is centrally built around to focus on the silenced voices of journalists who have been threatened and had their freedom of expression compromised. Moreover, this study encourages journalists to share their stories and experiences with the threats. As Creswell puts it “We conduct qualitative research when we want to empower individuals to share their stories, hear their voices, and minimize the power relationships that often exist between a researcher and the participants” (Creswell, 1998: 48), therefore, the design and approach of this study is qualitative in nature.
The chosen method for this qualitative study is in-depth interviews as they provided the researcher the opportunity to directly confront individuals who have been threatened and have valuable insight from their experiences, opinions and answers. Moreover, most of the
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literature that was reviewed for this study including Mishra (2008), Amnesty International (2014), Aslam (2015) and CIMA(2012) that is an NGO for media assistance also relied on in-depth interviews to gather and analyse data.
Talking about sample of the study, the focus of this research narrows down towards journalists who have been threatened, therefore, purposive sampling was utilized in order to gain in-depth insights from journalists who have been threatened and could provide ample data to analyse. Moreover, it was also prioritized to have journalists working in different departments including newsroom, reporting, column writers, digital media, news anchoring, and organization heads in order to have diverse point of views and insights. The diversity of journalists working in TV media, print media and digital media as well as covering diverse beats was also kept in mind. Lastly, there is only one state owned TV news channel
functioning in Pakistan and all other media is privately owned, so only one respondent working for state owned TV channel was included in the study. As generalisability is not intended in this research and individuals are purposely selected for information rich data to process (Braun & Clarke, 2013), purposive sampling was best suited for this research.
A total number of seven senior mainstream journalists who have faced some kind of threats for covering journalistic content were interviewed in depth. Six journalists out of seven had an experience of working in the field for over fifteen years. All seven of these journalists have been threatened and some of them have even faced extreme violence for performing their journalistic duties.
Threats to journalists:
Threats to journalists are any obstacles caused by state actors, non-state actors, workroom environment, overall culture surrounding journalists or the intrinsic and
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This definition was inspired and adapted from the ideas expressed by (Onur, 2015) in his article ‘Journalism at risk: threats challenges and perspectives’.
Operational definition:
Threats to journalists is a subject that is more qualitative in nature and have different dimensions that could best be understood through open-ended dialogues, questions and unique personal experiences of journalists. In-depth open-ended interviews are best suited to measure such threats as they open the possibility to directly communicate with the threatened and gather insights that may lead to unique or a different interpretation of those threats. In addition, these interviews can help give a voice to the silenced ones and those who were vulnerable to express their ideas and consequently bring forward exclusive stories that may help in demonstrating the severity of these threats. These detailed interviews can then form the basis of further coding and investigating of patterns that may appear in commonality and link certain sources of threats to certain coverage of topics.
This study has adapted the operationalization performed by Amnesty International (2014). However, 7 journalists were interviewed at length instead of 100 done by Amnesty International (2014) as the time, resources, and finances for this research were limited. It was also not feasible for the researcher to travel to Pakistan for taking interviews, so this research relied on voice calls on WhatsApp due to its encryption-based application. Interviews were recorded, and additional written notes were taken during the interviews to note down pauses, hesitations, or other verbal clues. Interviewing journalists using WhatsApp was also
productive in the sense that respondents were able to freely and emotionally express themselves, which is sometimes hard in the physical presence of the researcher.
The length of the interviews varied from 45 minutes to 85 minutes. However, most of the interviews were about an hour long. Responses were detailed and rich in information due
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to the semi-structured nature of the questions as well as the passion respondents showed in expressing themselves. The first preference to conduct interviews was in English, however, all the journalists were more comfortable speaking in Urdu and hence they were recorded mainly in Urdu. Verbal consent of respondents were also taken to record the interview in prior.
Indicators:
Questions that were asked to participants were primarily built around the framework of hierarchy of influence model by Reese (2001), and hence emphasized on acquiring
information regarding the influences of organizations, external forces and individual level of barriers. Background information, personal view, stories of threats received, and solutions to fix the situation were also asked. A total of 18 questions were asked and following are 2 of the examples.
1. Do you think that your personal beliefs, ideologies, insecurities, or considerations influence your judgement for news selection?
2. Please share any personal experiences when you felt threatened or self-censored yourself because of any external pressures.
In addition, the protection and safeguarding of the journalists who already are threatened and vulnerable was given a high priority in this study. Therefore, complete confidentiality and anonymity was provided to the respondents, and they are referred as respondents in the thesis. R1 for the first respondent, R2 for the second and so on are the pseudo names that are designated to the interviewees.
No information regarding their identity including their workplace, name of awards, or any specific details that may help reveal them is used. The audio recordings of the interviews is responsibly kept and will later be deleted once their use is completely over.
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Data Analysis:
First of all, all the interviews were transcribed. Secondly, they were translated from Urdu to English. Afterwards, all the transcripts were coded using inductive coding. Open-codes were first formulated and then similar Open-codes were synchronized and axial coding was performed to categorize codes complimenting each other under one category. Moreover, all axial codes were analysed and central themes were identified for the final analysis. All the transcribing, translation and coding was performed by the author of the study and no external help was required for these processes.
After the identification of dominant themes, a thematic analysis is performed where the central themes are discussed in the light of hierarchy of influence (Reese, 2011), and hierarchy of needs model (Maslow, 1954).
Thematic Analysis:
Grassroot level threats:
It is extremely important to understand how journalism works at the grass root and education level in order to understand the overall context and further threats that impacts journalism and freedom of speech. Journalism is considered as one of the easiest subjects in Pakistan that students can pass easily. Those who don’t excel in other subjects end up
studying mass communication because it is easy to pass and hence is a popular second choice for many students.
It was alarming for this study to know that five out of seven respondents of this research studied journalism as a secondary choice, because they could not excel in
engineering, medical, or architecture. Therefore the standards of education for journalism are very low in Pakistan.
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“I failed in computer sciences, so I thought, why not give journalism a try as it was easy” said R3.
“I did not want to be a journalist and wanted to be an architect, but I failed in architecture so I had no option left but to choose journalism because it was easy to study” said R1.
Therefore, there is a huge influx of journalism students every year with little vacancies to cover, and that creates the situation desperate for these students and opens the path for a vicious circle of employment. Many media channels and newspapers hire interns for little to no money and get them to practice with their senior reporters. Once these interns make their own connections and get acquainted with the required work, those media channels and newspapers fire their senior reporters and recruit the interns for little salaries. Meanwhile, they hire more interns to practice with their previous interns and this circle keeps going on in many cases. In the case when their reporter becomes famous or has some important
connections, then they get to keep their job. Talking about the mainstream media channels and newspapers where this practice is not as much active, it is extremely hard to get
employed there. In addition, even these mainstream media houses hardly pay any benefits or salary for internships, courtesy of the massive supply of journalism students that join the market every year.
Moreover, there is a lot of unprofessionalism even in the biggest media houses of Pakistan and most of them require connections in order to get a job. Either a reference from their friends or someone who has done them a favour as well as the connections with politicians, military or other sources that they can utilize help journalists get a job.
“In my interview, they asked me whether I have any connections to stop CDA from demolishing our illegal 5th floor of the building. I had connections and I stopped it from
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happening, and that’s how I got the job” said R4 who sought employment like this in one of the leading news TV channels.
“In a job interview, my friend was told that the media owner had a business where they make cooking oil with animal’s intestine that is illegal. So, he was asked if a truck filled with that oil is caught by police, how quickly can he use his sources to set their men free?” said R1 while explaining how many TV channels do not care about journalistic skills but only their connections.
Considering the little standard of education that journalism students go through, it is also very worrying that they receive no training from the organizations they work in. It is also important to be noted that many reporters do not even study journalism or even receive formal education. Many journalists have studied until 5th or 6th grade, and they jump into journalism and are hired by some organizations. Therefore, the lack of education, training and inspiration serves as a hurdle for these journalists and journalism.
“Journalists I have encountered have no conscience, values or ideology. Their whole ideology is to find free food, bribes and feasts. When I was the head of the state TV channel, we always invited these journalists for press releases, gave them free food, and then we would give them print outs of what we wanted them to publish, and they always used to publish those press releases without even reading them. ” said R7.
Journalism of Blackmailing:
Another extremely problematic situation of journalism in Pakistan is the blackmailing factor attached to it. The reason that many organizations hire people with no education and skills is because they can get them to blackmail people for them. Media houses give a press card to their employees and then they expect them to not only earn themselves but also earn for the media house.
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Journalists extort money by blackmailing small vendors, restaurant owners and companies. They blackmail these people saying that they will write against them if they do not pay them money upfront. It is a very common practice to blackmail small companies, especially those that make food products and get money from them. Many small time journalists are seen as gangsters for this reason, and their image is considerably negative.
If you look at the mid-level journalists; they work very hard to find individuals, groups and companies that have done some kind of corruption. However, they don’t do it with the intention to expose them but only to blackmail them and get money for not exposing them. In addition, the culture to sue individuals and groups for any damage is little because of the slow and difficult procedures of courts, therefore, journalists also threaten people that they would blatantly lie anything about them and take advantage of the situation.
“Journalists are considered like dogs, and 90 percent people don’t sue because they know we will bark more and tarnish their reputation. Therefore, they stay away and prefer to give a small amount of money. My case is a little different though, I was sued by two people for a total of 550 million rupees, but of course, it was settled and I didn’t have to pay.” said R4.
“My editor’s mother had to wait in queue in a doctor’s clinic and he didn’t like it, so he asked me to write something against his clinic, even though I had no evidence to do it. So, yes, target journalism is a thing in Pakistan” said R1.
“I was asked to collect any kind of evidence against one of the richest tycoons in Pakistan. I spent weeks finding something, and when I did, they did not publish the story, and instead negotiated that story for a large sum of money” said R4.
Henceforth, in cases when journalists do not prefer to do such activities, sometimes their organizations compel them to do it through target journalism. They are encouraged to
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find evidences against individuals and groups that are a threat to their organization. Doing such things for their organization also encourage journalists to do it for themselves and in some instances, journalists fake sources in order to get revenge or target someone.
“In Centaurus Mall, they charged me and my friends for stag entries. It got me angry, so I wrote a story against them and faked five interviews of fictional characters. Of course, no one was going to check if those people existed. We fake sources a lot” added R4.
Lastly, some more shocking information was revealed by participants that few media channels and newspapers only obtain license only for the reason of blackmailing, and some even rent out their TV channels and newspaper to other people for the purpose of
blackmailing.
“There are some publications that publish newspaper only once or twice a year, and there are at least 2 TV channels in my knowledge that rent their channels to others for blackmailing purposes” said R4.
Establishment:
Amnesty International (2014), CIMA (2012) and Aslam (2015) discussed a series of threats for Pakistani journalists but consider Establishment in the country as the foremost dangerous one. They further discussed incidents where journalists such as Saleem Shahzad, Umar Cheema, and Hayautullah Khan had to face drastic consequences for their reporting against the armed forces. Shah and Asif (2014) added the example of Hamid Mir, who
survived an assassination attempt in Karachi and his family alleged that the attack was carried on by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. In addition, it also fits the explanation of Skjerdal (2010) and Cook and Heilmann (2013), who consider public authorities and external pressure central in having journalist self-censor his or her work. Moreover, Pakistan’s intelligence agency and army is also the most recurring pattern and code that showed up a total of 20
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times. Therefore, according to majority of the literature that was reviewed, Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence are clearly the biggest threat to Pakistani journalists.
Intelligence agencies in Pakistan are probably the most powerful and impactful actors and criticizing them can be disturbingly dangerous for journalists. A number of kidnappings of journalists have been associated with them and they are thought to be controlling the media. Four out of seven journalists that were interviewed in the study were threatened by the intelligence agencies and all respondents exhibited some kind of hesitation and fear to even talk about establishment in the interview, considering it is the most violent and
life-threatening danger for journalists.
“I published a story that had something to do with the ISI and I started to get
threatening calls. One day, I was supposed to pick up my sister from her college, and I got a phone call asking if I am ready to pick up my sister. I was petrified, because I don’t usually pick my sister from college, it was one rare day because her bus had not come and I still have no idea how they got to know about this” said R4
“I did a couple of stories that were not appreciated by the ISI. I received a series of threats, and I had to leave Pakistan and live abroad. I feared for my life, so I had to leave my country” said R2.
“We are now autotuned never to even think about writing them, let alone writing about them” said R5
Journalists are compelled to always fear these agencies at the back of their head, so they become autotuned to never say a word against them. Having witnessed journalists being abducted, raped and murdered; journalists think thrice before writing anything about them. Furthermore, they have the resources to trackback, tap phones, and hurt you in ways no other entity can, so it also makes them very dangerous. Also, when the military and intelligence
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agencies are against you, then you can’t even go to authorities and seek help, so a journalist feels helpless and vulnerable . Therefore, it is best not to meddle in the affairs of army and secret agencies for any journalist in Pakistan.
Another major threat posed by military and spy agencies is the proposition that media is being controlled by them. All seven journalists that were interviewed unanimously
conceded that media is actually being run on their instructions.
“Why do you think media started going against Pakistan Muslim League N? and played a central role in making the military’s supported political party win?” said R3.
There is an impression in Pakistani people that the media is very independent courtesy of the open criticizing of the government in talk shows, but nobody dares to talk about
establishment and the channels that did so paid the consequences. In talk shows, journalists are often seen to become very passionate and blunt when questioning politicians and government officers. This gives an indication that media is independent and free to even rudely criticize the government. However, when it comes to establishment of the country, media is as speechless as the government is towards it.
Pintak et al (2016) and R4 both mentioned how Geo TV in Pakistan chose to
broadcast allegations against ISI for attacking its journalist Hamid Mir, and as a consequence their transmission license was revoked, and their leading newspaper’s distribution was disrupted. Afterwards, their number was decreased way down the order on Cable TV that affected their viewership largely.
Regarding the independence of media, R7 said “ A monkey can only jump or walk as far as the rope tied to it allows it”.
“I wasn’t allowed to cover bi-elections despite having an accreditation card from Election Commission to monitor and report the elections. However, I was told by gunmen in
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uniform that media is not allowed to go inside polling stations, so I only did the superficial reporting telling audiences a lot of people are coming in and it’s such an exciting day kind of stuff” said R3.
“My colleagues in newsroom literally get instructions from DG ISPR directly regarding how to run certain stories” said R6
“They say media’s role in ousting military dictator General Pervaiz Musharaf is the epitome of media’s heroics. In reality, I was standing there in front of GPO roundabout in Lahore and there was not a soul there that was protesting against Musharaf. However, we were told to say that there is an ocean of people out there protesting against the military dictator, because establishment was supporting Q-league and wanted them to take over the dictator, as he was getting out of their hands. So, I stood there and reported live that we have thousands of people coming on streets and this is such a historic day when there was no one on streets. However, when we reported things like that, it actually encouraged people and made them so passionate that after a couple of hours people actually started to come out of their houses and Long March became reality” said R3.
Therefore, it is important for journalists, media owners and news organizations to be in good terms with establishment, and consequently be under its influence. In addition to military forces and intelligence of the country, judiciary is also considered to be very impactful and dangerous. It is also incorporated in the policies of most organizations to not talk against judiciary and they are one of the untouchables for journalists.
“If you feel any injustice from the bar, lawyers or civilian side, then it’s fine to report but if you have any record against the bench or judge then you cannot report it no matter how big the evidence you have” said R3.
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Weaponization of Laws:
Mishra (2008) argued that media laws in Pakistan are shaped and enacted for safeguarding the interests of establishment and not for empowering citizens. Likewise, Freedom of expression (2017) featured the dangers of Blasphemy law in the country and discussed the crackdown on journalists and bloggers who are associated with blasphemous content. Islamabad High Court in 2017 requested the extradition of bloggers who were out of the country while those who were in Pakistan were tracked down as well.
In agreement with CIMA (2012), Mishra (2008) and Freedom of expression (2017), R2, R7, and R5 also discussed the potential horrors of such laws and how they are used against journalists.
Blasphemy law is one of the most dangerous laws to target any journalist as it gives a free license to authorities to villainize anyone and justify the crackdown, violence and even execution of anyone charged with blasphemy. A single word ‘blasphemy’ can
single-handedly change people’s perception and make anyone look like a villain if you are to accuse someone with blasphemy in Pakistan. It has become a new tactic from state to justify their crackdown and violence on such people. They show their faces and make a social media campaign where certain journalists and individuals are framed as blasphemers and then the whole country turns against them.
“They kidnapped and brutally tortured some bloggers and journalists in Pakistan and then started a campaign of blasphemy against them to turn the people who had sympathy for them” said R2.
“A journalist as senior as Shahzeb Jillani, who works for BBC was charged with a law as serious as cyber terrorism” added R2.
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Another law is cyber terrorism that is often applied on journalists and used highly against them. This law is extremely severe not only for punishing a journalist legally, but also to tarnish their reputation in the society and international journalism by associating the word ‘terrorism’ with them. Therefore, it is common to declare treason, and use state laws to legally pursue journalists that go against Establishment in Pakistan.
Financial Threats:
“There are two types of journalists in Pakistan. One who belong to wealthy families and are actually passionate to make a difference, and those whose livelihood depend on journalism. The former are countable” said R7.
Aslam (2015), Horton (2011), R2, R4, R5 and R6 pointed out the drastic impact financial restrains bring on journalists. It is indubitably one of the biggest problem that journalists in Pakistan are facing currently as their basic survival is at stake. Making matters worse, the new policy of the government to cut its spending on government ads given to media by 70% has crushed the financial backbone of media in Pakistan. Not only has this budget cuts caused losses for media houses in gaining money from the government but it has also caused the private companies to limit their spending by 50%. This has resulted in a massive economic crisis due to which media houses have fired a lot of their staff and decreased the salary of their existing staff (Jamal, 2018).
“The rate of governmental ads on GEO TV network was 270,000 rupees per minute and now it is only 70,000 rupees per minute, so you can only imagine the kind of deficit media is facing currently” said R4.
“If I am borrowing money from my relatives to pay my children’s school fee and to pay my house rent, and if someone offers me money not to expose their corruption, then how do I say no to that?” said R6.
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“Few days back I went to a petrol station to get fuel for my car, and I saw one of the senior journalists filling fuel in my car. I instantly went outside my car and asked him why he was working there. He said, he hasn’t been paid by his organization for 8 months, so what else can he do to run his household. It brought tears to my eyes!” said R4.
Lack of income is therefore a big threat for journalists as it makes them vulnerable to corruption, bribes, pressures and dishonesty in order to fulfil their basic survival. In addition to the salary for the basic needs of a journalist, there are certain other facilities that journalists require to function properly. From appropriate equipment, to facilities for commuting, and good dressing are all required for journalists to maintain good relations with politicians, bureaucrats, and other tycoons. Consequently, when journalists are denied the facilities and basic salaries, then they opt for side earnings.
Journalists who depend on journalism for their livelihood need to opt for some side-earnings. They are often given NOC letters to open some sort of side business in front of some shop by government officials as a favour to promote them or hide their corruption. In other cases, businessmen or bureaucrats give journalists boards of advertisements that gives them some earning every month in return for journalistic favours.
“Shisha cafes are illegal in Pakistan, but many journalists own them because mayors, and bureaucrats are backing them and hence the police cannot do anything about them” said R4.
Illegal or legal side-businesses and earnings given to journalists in return for
journalistic favours are extremely common and this is how they run their households claimed five out of seven respondents. Even senior most journalists are accused of taking constant bribes from politicians and authorities and some of them have been caught on recorded tapes doing that, evidences of which are available online. Therefore, the drastic crumbling financial
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situation of journalism is a gigantic threat to freedom of speech as it is making journalists vulnerable to all kind of corruption and giving up their journalistic ethics.
Socio-cultural pressures:
Horton (2011), and all seven respondents of the study pointed out the impact of socio-cultural factors on journalists that compels them to self-censoring. As Horton (2011)
mentioned the influence of church and other cultural values are critical, it is very applicable in Pakistan as religion is extremely dominant and deeply enrooted in its culture and people fully conform to it. The country also has a strong patriarchy and many topics are culturally sensitive to cover for journalists. Topics related to sex are considered taboos. Moreover, incestual rape stories are not believed and thought to be fiction for selling more stories. Any content regarding religious minorities that may clash with the dominant religion’s views could also be fatal.
“In Pakistan , you can get charged and banned for even printing an advertisement of a condom. Also, MeToo did not get any recognition in Pakistan because it is against our culture. The reason I also avoid writing about MeToo movement is because I can get threatened by religious parties to cover it” said R6.
In addition, there are certain social factors that also come into play such as peers and family. Journalists have a very unified community, as they always stand for each other when nobody else does. Therefore, it is very common for journalists to self-censor their stories if it involves their peers negatively.
“Many times when I am covering a scandal of corruption or something negative about an influential individual or a group that has done some kind of favour to my colleagues, they request me to drop that story, and I mostly drop them. I am sure they will they do the same for me, so it is a give and take” said R4.
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Moreover, families also play an important role in often making journalists censor themselves. Many families worry for their relatives in journalism and do not want them covering stories that can get them in any danger. While some parents don’t want their children to cover anything that is a taboo or against their personal ideology.
“I don’t write about topics related to women empowerment because my father doesn’t like it. I wanted to write about women’s march in Pakistan but I didn’t because of him” said R1.
“I was writing a story on military in Siachen but my father made me drop the story as he was an army officer and he didn’t want me to write anything related to military” said R5.
The threat of a common man is also something worrying and extremely dangerous. Journalists need to take an extra caution before dealing with any religious story that may vary the values and beliefs of Islam because doing so can get them killed by even common
citizens. People in Pakistan are very passionate about their religion, and a mere hint that someone spoke critically of their beliefs can gather a mob in front of the house of perpetrator within minutes. There are many incidents when bloggers, and journalists faced violence and even death for doing so.
“Mashal Khan was a student and blogger and his class fellows from journalism department killed him inside university premises for writing content that didn’t compliment their beliefs. Even a common man can be dangerous if you are not cautious” said R7.
Lastly, Aslam (2015) pointed out that human life is not considered very important in Pakistan and people have become insensitive towards violence. She discussed the interview of journalist Ahmed Bilal, who was kidnapped by Taliban for many days but fortunately escaped . However, when he came back to his office and informed his colleagues about what happened, he got the response ‘Oh, you’re back. Good. What’s up?’
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Therefore people in Pakistan see casualties and deaths based on terrorism, crime, police brutality, enmity or domestic violence on daily basis and hence are not moved much from them. Consequently, crime is also very cheap in Pakistan. It is very easy to hire a junkie to murder anyone for you in exchange of 1000 rupees or a couple of grams of hashish.
Therefore, there are a lot of socio-cultural angles that come into play in the dangers that limit journalists from their full potential.
Religious groups:
Leading further on Horton’s (2011) argument of the influence of church, an additional extension of this threat in Pakistani society are the religious parties that are highly intolerant and violent in nature. These religious groups in Pakistan want to see the law of Sharia to be imposed in Pakistan and they take extreme measures for their desire to conform Pakistani people to their ideology. Groups like Tehreek-e-Labaiq Pakistan and Jamiat Ulema-Islam Pakistan are the leading religious groups in the country that have openly blocked streets, robbed shops, and shown extreme violence in instances when things went against their ideas.
Four out of seven respondents of this study were directly threatened by one of these religious groups and they expressed serious concerns about the dangers they have to offer.
“I was holding a candle as a peaceful protest for the murder of our ex-governor Salman Taseer, who was killed by his gunmen for criticizing Blasphemy Law, when a group of people belonging to Tehreek-e-Labaik violently attacked me. I was bleeding badly and they were about to abduct me but the police came in time” said R3.
“I spoke in the favour of a certain minority, and just wanted them to have basic human rights but I started to get threatening calls, so I stopped speaking for them” said R7.
Therefore, journalists are highly intimidated by them and usually avoid speaking anything against these parties.
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Threat of terrorism:
After Establishment, the threat of terrorism from groups like Tehreek-i-Taliban are considered to be the most dangerous by Amnesty International (2014), CIMA (2012) and Aslam (2015). Tehreek-i-Taliban have confessed the bombings and assassinations of various journalists including Raza Rumi and Hamid Mir. TTP was also responsible for attacks on Express Media Group and the killings that took place at Peshawar Press Club.
Therefore, TTP and militant groups are violent and dangerous threats for Pakistani journalists, and journalists sampled for this study agreed with Amnesty International (2014) and CIMA (2012). Similar to the threat of Establishment, journalists in Pakistan also think twice before writing a word against these groups because they mercilessly target journalists who write against them. Henceforth, most of the journalists avoid to criticize these terrorist groups bluntly.
Threatening regions:
International Media Support (2009) is a report that discussed the radicalization in Pakistan based on geographical regions, and they mentioned Baluchistan, North Western Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal (FATA) areas as the most dangerous regions to cover for journalists. There was a wide consensus as Amnesty International (2014), Aslam (2015), CIMA (2012) and all the respondents, agreed with International Media
Support (2009) and named the same regions as most dangerous.
R2 was of the notion that not only it is life threatening for journalists to cover these regions but they are also hard to access and require permission from establishment to cover them. Moreover, it is so unsafe to be in certain areas like southern Swat valley of FATA that journalists require bullet proof jackets and guns in order to deal with militant groups.
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Moreover, there is another threat in the name of Baluch Arm Défense Army in Baluchistan that prohibit journalists from covering events and take violent measures against them.
“There is no media angle in Baluchistan and Tribal regions like FATA. Military has strong presence there and I am not allowed there” said R2.
The threats of both military and militants are present in those areas, and with the war on terror going on, these are very unsafe areas for journalists to reach. More interestingly, the human rights abuses such as abduction and torturing that were happening in these regions are slowly transferring to urban cities like Lahore and Karachi. There has been abductions and violence on journalists from both terrorists and establishment in the urban cities as well, so the dangers might also be on the move towards the bigger cities.
Individual level barriers:
Adding to the debate by Geiger and Newhagen (1993), Schram and Roberts (1971) and Donsbach (2004) who put a very high emphasis on the psychological and cognitive features of journalists that play a role in filtering information. Five out of seven journalists also endorsed Donsbach (2004) concepts of predisposition of ideas and social validation that highly influence journalists for news selection. The pattern of both seeking social validation and having pre-existing subjective beliefs could be analysed in the responses of the
interviewees.
For the acquisition of social validation, many journalists do not write about topics such as LGBT community, rights of minorities or topics related to women empowerment because they do not want to face criticism and disapproval of their peers, families and society at large. Likewise, some journalists also cover issues and topics that will be well received and strengthen their need for social validation. Furthermore, subjective beliefs and biases are also
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the reasons that prevent journalists from covering many stories and issues as well as overly expressing them.
“I don’t approve the coverage of LGBT issues as well as any minority rights stories because they will not be appreciated and can be tarnishing for my image” said R7.
“I often write stories that I know will be received well, and which the audiences want to read. Not only do that stuff get you more readership, it also enhances the chances to get your story published on the front page” said R6.
“I don’t write about MeToo because I don’t believe in that movement. Why would women keep silence for so many years, and all of a sudden remember to accuse someone and ruin their life?” said R1.
“I am a liberal person and I was reporting live about the wrong-doings of a religious party. There was a crowd who were blatantly abusing the religious party, and I encouraged the crowd to abuse more and asked the person in the newsroom to let the abuses go live, which he did and later got us in a lot of trouble” said R2.
Journalism as a business:
One big hurdle in journalism is that it is considered a business where profit is the ultimate goal and not the responsibility of informing the society and acting as a watchdog. Journalists are encouraged to find stories that can entertain viewers and attract their interests. Almost all TV channels with the exception of state owned Pakistan Television are doing entertainment based journalism. Intense close ups, continuous repetition of footage with dramatic or Bollywood music in the background is very common to be observed in Pakistan news channels. Moreover, quantity is preferred over quality and journalists are instructed to gather a lot of news stories instead of working sufficiently on an important one.
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“We dig a hole, then cover it with mud, then another hole, then cover it. Such is my life because the news we gather are short lived, so we constantly need new material” said R4.
There is also a race going on in the private channels to be the first one to show any story. This culture of racing towards showing news compromises proper verifications are journalists often end up reporting news that is not true. There is also a WhatsApp group of journalists in Pakistan where reporters share their stories and other journalists simply take them and often publish them without any verification whatsoever.
“Couple of months ago I expressed my suspicion about a news story that wasn’t confirmed and a journalist from the WhatsApp group published it without any verification. After it was proved that the story was false, he called me and said ‘come on bro? why did you do that to me? Next time write true stories’ So, many journalists don’t verify their stories” said R4.
Also, there is a practice of calling any piece of news as a breaking news. Turning on the television will encounter you with a lot of breaking news that are barely newsworthy in terms of quality journalism. Wedding news and ceremony of a Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik with an Indian tennis star Sania Mirza was telecasted for multiple days as breaking news on TV, and had dozens of hours of coverage with Bollywood songs constantly playing in the background.
“People watch news channels more than they watch dramas or films in Pakistan for entertainment purposes” said R7.
Moreover, media mostly cover negative coverage of issues in Pakistan because negativity sells. The amount of coverage of any positive news in the country compared to negative stories will be considerable low in any news channel except Pakistan Television.
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Another extremely interesting angle in journalism being a business is that there is hardly any content in Pakistani media that criticizes telecommunication, mobile phones and banking sectors due to their heavy investment in advertisements. Majority of the ads given to Pakistani media are by telecommunication groups such as Mobilink, Telenor, Zong and Ufone. Moreover, companies like Huawei and Q-Mobile also heavily invest in
advertisements. Lastly, banking sector including Muslim Commercial Bank, Silk Bank, Alfalah bank and especially Habib Bank Limited are the top sponsors for all kind of news media. The fact that these companies invest so heavily in news media and most of the
survival of news media is based on their advertisements, it makes these companies immune to any kind of criticism. The trend of not criticizing your sponsors can be found in other news media around world as well, but what makes it different in Pakistan is the fact that these particular telecommunication and banking sectors invest in all sort of news media, and are the lifeline to their functioning. So, it is not just a few media networks that are vulnerable to criticizing them but in fact most of them.
“There are 1500 mobile BTS towers in residential areas of Islamabad that are illegal and spread cancer but no one talks about this issue, because telecommunication sectors are a no go area for journalism” said R7.
“I did a story on a telecommunication group who had illegally obtained a parking area worth 60 million rupees. After I filed the story, my editor asked me how much I have earned from my news group in my career of 2 years. I replied approximately 600,000 rupees. And, he replied this is exactly how much they pay us in a day, so don’t ever dare to write anything against them in future. It made me speechless!” said R4.
Moreover, the lengths news groups go to protect these sponsors is also something very different in Pakistan. There was a massive scandal of Habib Bank Limited that was first
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not properly covered and then covered in a positive way for the bank despite 150,000 complaints against HBL Bank in FIA for monetary fraud.
“The cyber-attack on HBL caused its own hotline to call customers and ask for their personal details, that were later used to withdraw money out of the accounts of hundreds of thousands people. All the money was transferred into swiss accounts and there were 150,000 complaints against the bank to FIA, but despite that we were reporting in a manner that supported HBL’s angle. We were telling people not to panic, and HBL is doing its best to secure all the accounts” said R4.
Lastly, there are also other considerations that come into play. For instance, HBL is the primary sponsor of Pakistan Super League, and Dunya TV media group is the sponsor for its team Islamabad United, so they have even more mutual interests.
Henceforth, journalism being run as a business in the context of the financial crises that journalists are facing makes the situation worse and is an apparent threat to freedom of speech.
Threats of Ownership:
One of the major reasons apart from the financial crisis that journalism is treated as a business is the fact that majority of the media owners are business tycoons and do not give much weightage to the quality of journalism but to profitmaking. This overall sense of owners treating newsrooms as products to function as commercial units decays the real purpose of journalism. Moreover, there is a concern of cross-ownership at rise. Many media owners also have commercial side businesses that affect their news groups. For instance, owner of Dunya news group Mian Amir also owns Punjab group of colleges and schools. It is a massive industry and thus cannot be reported against by Dunya TV media group. Similarly, owners of 92 news channel have oil and sugar mills, while the owner of ARY news group
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Salman Iqbal has a lot of investment in jewellery and gold market. Therefore, when
advertisers and channel of advertising becomes a single entity, it creates a problem. There are several other mediators, business associates and groups that help these businessmen in their side businesses and hence these entities also benefit immunity and protection from their news channels. Therefore, majority of news media owners have other stakes that cannot be
touched. In addition to being business oriented, a lot of media owners are also very unprofessional.
“Owners of 92 news channel had a meeting and two reporters could not show up because they were covering news in parliament. Instead of understanding their journalistic duties, they punished those journalists by making them go to another city just to meet them, and then did not see them and told them to go back, only to get back at them”
Moreover, certain individuals and groups who require constant image building, promotion and need money laundering also opt to invest in the news business. Extremely controversial personalities such as Malik Riaz who was caught on TV for bribing plots to two famous Pakistani journalists has opened Jinnah Newspaper and invested in Capital TV.
“Money laundering is a big part of journalism for several media owners. Ex-president Asif Ali Zardari is a highly controversial political figure with so many accusations of
monetary corruption, and he has invested in Capital TV”
Therefore, owners having other business stakes and directly influencing the running of their news channels is a big threat to the overall integrity and functioning of news channels as journalism ultimately becomes a commercial product.
Organizational Threats:
Skjerdal (2010) and Donsbach (2004) gave much prominence to the organizational procedures and policy that acts as barriers for journalists. In harmony, all respondents agreed
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that an enormous amount of self-censorship in Pakistani journalism is subjected due to the organizational censorship. Every organization has some particular policies and criteria and journalists are supposed to follow them. Majority of journalists understand that certain content will not pass through the news desk and editorial staff, so they simply do not even try to write anything clashing with organizational policies. Some journalists actually choose to write about issues that synchronizes the demands of their organization for getting a
favourable impression and enhancing their chances of publishing the story on first page. “Zameen.com is a website that took over all the advertisements my newspaper used to have regarding land and property, and is therefore a massive threat to my organization. So, of course I cannot write anything that will promote them, but if I find anything that is critical of them then I have more chances of publishing it on the leading pages” said R6.
A big reason that culturally sensitive topics such as religion, minorities, sexual abuse, and LGBT communities do not get coverage is also because of organizational policies. Even if the journalist is willing to take the chances of people’s wrath, they get stopped at the organizational level and hence some journalists do not even consider making the effort. Similarly, one big reason journalists also do not cover stories regarding establishment and religious parties apart from their violent threats is because such stories are not supported by most organizations and hence do not get featured.
“They don’t care how big your story is. They don’t care how much social impact it can create. They don’t care how substantial the evidence you have. You can have the most amazing story with all the evidences and it will still not get published or broadcasted if it doesn’t synchronize with the organizational policy of your news outlet” said R2.
Moreover, almost all news outlets and especially TV channels are visibly partisan and support certain political parties. You can see the coverage of ARY news channel and clearly
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tell that they are pro-Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf political party. Similarly, Geo TV has been an avid supporter of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz. Therefore, journalists are not encouraged to cover any negative news regarding the political parties supported by their organizations.
“My news organization was supporting PML (N) during last elections, so I had to let go of so many news stories that were critical of them. It is sad, but this is exactly how it is” said R6.
So, if state TV is partial towards not criticizing government, privately owned media is also bounded not to criticize certain political parties and business associates. Target
journalism that was previously discussed is also a product of organizational preferences. Individuals and groups that are not favourable for the organization are encouraged to be criticized and accused on purpose.
Lastly, there is a lot of interplay within the departments. In some cases the content used for broadcasting on TV is used by the website of the organization, and hence digital journalists are advised to write content that can complement their TV channel.
“I handle the website for my organization, and I am always encouraged to write content that has some visual appeal or that can easily be broadcasted on TV as well, because often they don’t find much content of their own and broadcast what is on the website” said R1.
Therefore, even when journalists somehow break themselves free from cultural, individual, and societal pressures, they still have this final filter of organizational considerations that eventually affects their news selection.
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Solutions:
Considering the numerous and unique sort of threats journalism is facing in Pakistan, it is extremely difficult to overcome these problems without drastic measures. Respondents in this study indicated that the first and foremost requirement to deal with these issues is a complete political overhaul. Pakistan needs a crystal clear and transparent democracy with no involvement whatsoever from Establishment. As long as armed forces and intelligence agencies are involved in decision making and functioning of the civilian government, there cannot be much hope.
Secondly, there is a lot of work required in policy making for safeguarding journalists and their rights. Laws such as cyber terrorism and blasphemy law that are highly weaponized needs to be amended in ways that they cannot be used against journalists. Policies regarding education and training facilities in Pakistan has to be improved. The requirements of quality for both teaching and studying journalism has to be lifted immensely. Journalism no longer can be used as a backup plan for students who fail in other subjects or want an easy way out. Furthermore, journalists need practical and theoretical training before they start their careers, and the practice of hiring interns for no money needs to be ended.
Moreover, the licenses given to hundreds of newspapers and media outlets that
publish newspaper once or twice a year and use their journalism license only for blackmailing purposes need to be banned and their licenses need to be revoked immediately. Media
concentration is needed, where a handful of quality newspapers and TV channels are kept for functioning. Afterwards, a complete restructuring and remodelling of media’s finance system is required to keep it free from being vulnerable to sponsors. Subscription based journalism is on the rise and can be very useful in Pakistani system. An annual television license tax is incorporated in electricity bills and is collected annually that partially funds the state owned
