Journalism under threat in Pakistan

November 11 2007

Pakistan’s current ‘State of Emergency’, has led to arrest without charge of many journalists, and the attempted crippling of press and broadcast media. In the past week the army has stormed TV stations and printing presses, halting their production.
Yet despite this, the Pakistani media and its consumers have found ways to solve these problems, to get the news that they want and get their opinions across.The citizens in Pakistan have expressed their opinions strongly through the internet and shed a detailed account of how the average Pakistani feels about the situation. The anonymity provided by the internet has also allowed them to speak in full confidence. A blogger who goes by the screen name Wahidi said: “It’s disgusting, the media is under attack, the law is under attack, dictatorship is taking over and not a single Pakistani civilian is to be seen on the streets protesting. Everyone is concerned about their own family. We call ourselves Muslims, but to what extent are we acting upon what the Q’uran tells us, we're all ignorant.”
After the army managed to shut down the desired cable stations and newspapers, reports came through that a large number of people went out to buy satellite dishes in order to receive their desired media.
Blogger Omar R. Quraishi posted on a local blog based in Karachi: “A resident in Isloo told me that a steep fine has been imposed on the purchase of satellite dishes in order to stop people from accessing media.”
Main domestic news provider GEO news has begun streaming via the internet and also producing an audio only broadcast over the web. However because it has been shut down over the air waves in almost all parts of the country it’s internet traffic has become so heavy that it is at the time of writing having to present itself in light text format.
It is worth mentioning that even though General Musharraf has tried to suppress the media, GEO has remained objective and has continued to simply provide a bulletin based news service without heavily criticizing the government or dwelling on its own situation as an institution, possibly with thought to not angering General Musharraf. Freedom of speech within the Pakistani media has been under threat for some time. Blogging on certain websites in Pakistan has been banned or blocked since the Danish Cartoon scandal first broke in September 2005, and even though that has long since died down there is no evidence that the ban has been lifted. One of the sites, which was completely blocked was the very popular blogger.com.
What is great and brings hope to this situation as that, just as in Burma back in August the people and/or press of Pakistan have refused to be silenced, and it is the power of the internet that has allowed them to make themselves heard on a global level, and now knowing that the international community is watching may be one of the largest positive steps to forcing General Musharraf to resolve the situation peacefully. This is more likely in Pakistan than in Burma because Pakistan has a greater number of dependences and allegiance with the rest of the international community, especially in respect to the war on terror than Burma has.
By Sam Park