AS the second Saarc information ministers’ conference works on its agenda in Islamabad, seven facets of media and information — numbering coincidentally with the seven nations of the region — require consideration.

Not all the facets can be made part of a formal agenda because certain dimensions are real but intangible. Yet each deserves analysis and appropriate responses.

The nature of mass media and the open contemporary environment oblige a combined effort by governments, media, the corporate sector and civil society to deal with issues that arise from the following seven facets:

MEDIA POVERTY: Despite a general perception about the pervasiveness of media in our lives, as evident for example in the recurrent presence of songs and images from cinema, South Asia suffers from acute media poverty. This is part of, and yet distinct from, economic poverty. Media poverty refers to the limited access to newspapers and magazines due to low levels of literacy and education as also to low levels of access to TV due to low purchasing power.

The other side of media poverty is reflected in the small number of media units. For example, in cinema, there are less than 500 cinema theatres in Pakistan for a population for over 140 million whereas, in principle, there should be at least four times the number of theatres.

Radio is another example. With a population of about 60 million, Turkey is reported to have over 1,500 private radio stations. Whereas we have 25 radio stations (22 State-owned, three private FM stations) for a population that is more than double that of Turkey.

MEDIA INEQUITY: In comparative terms, in the sectors of satellite TV and the cinema, India not only has the largest film industry in the region, but also the largest in the world. By using non-terrestrial satellite transmission systems, including Russian satellites as well as others, even in the absence of a law in India during the 1990s to regulate earth- based electronic media, Indian satellite TV channels have quickly multiplied in Hindi, English and in regional languages at a rate far faster than any of its neighbours. While content and quality are always the kings that command viewership, there is a blatant and obvious asymmetry in cinema and in electronic media that expresses India’s dominance, and the consequent media inequity of the region.

MEDIA CLUTTER: This is both horizontal and vertical in its presence. Rapid proliferation of media in over- all terms, notwithstanding the comparative media poverty in relation to other regions of the world, has led to hundreds of newspapers and magazines being published in Pakistan, irrespective of low literacy and education. In turn, the average front-page of a leading Urdu or Sindhi language newspaper will feature as many as 35 to 40 headlines with even more sub- headlines. Outdoor bill-boards and hoardings mushroom apace with the number of vehicles on the road. Congestion, crowding and cacophony are synonymous with media.

MEDIA HOSTILITY: When reporting internal, regional and global conflicts, media often seem to become weapons of war rather than being purveyors of peace. While being loyal to their respective states and supportive of their governments in their bilateral and international conflicts, the media project jingoism and chauvinism as passionately as leaders and extremists. Only some media and only some part of media content, e.g. editorials or analytical comment, resist the pressure to conform.

The media relationship between Pakistan and India in historical terms, but particularly since Kargil, epitomizes the distrust and hate that media can generate even in the face of the people’s remarkable capacity to compartmentalize their acceptance or rejection of media content as when they enjoy listening to a good Indian film song accompanied simultaneously by their condemnation of crude Indian propaganda against Pakistan.

MEDIA ISOLATION: Distance and disconnectedness are the very anti-thesis of media and information because communication is supposed to bring people together, not keep them apart. Yet in two respects, media in the region often reinforce isolation between nations, and within nations. One reason is that the vast majority access media content in their own respective mother tongues or indigenous languages. While content may be common between media in different languages as, say, in reporting about a major event, each language has its own psyche and its own area of perceptual demarcation.

Even though they share many substantive elements, the reader of a Tamil newspaper in southern India and a reader of a Sindhi newspaper in Sukkur, Pakistan, are far away from each other, and not just geographically. Within nations as well, readerships of different languages remain entrapped in their own sub-worlds.

The other aspect of media isolation is the frequency with which India keeps banning the distribution of PTV through cable systems and our own reciprocal response. This creates the tragi- comic situation in which the troops of both countries are eye- ball-to-eye-ball on the borders, yet invisible to each other on their TV screens since Dec 13!

MEDIA GREED: As the mindset of the free market increases its encroachment at an alarming pace, media content in almost every respect becomes ominously shaped by advertising. One extreme form of commercialization is that the sacred text of the holy Quran is now also required to be sponsored by an advertiser for its reproduction, when not too long ago verses were re- produced by media as a public service. Whether in print or in electronic media, whether using any available space to plaster messages, be it police kiosks or beautiful hill-sides, media are facilitating a savage assault by advertising on the sensibilities of citizens.

MEDIA LITERACY: In stark contrast to the growing dominance and omnipresence of media even as media poverty persists, there is virtually no substantive attempt to promote media literacy and media educ