Electronic media freedom: 14 issues

EVEN as the number of TV channels and radio stations increases and as their content becomes more representative of reality and public opinion, several facets of the electronic media sector require continued vigilance, policy review and corrective action. The observance of Electronic Media Freedom Day each year by the Citizens’ Media Commission of Pakistan enables attention to be focused on priority areas. In 2003, at least fourteen aspects require reflection and action.

The date of 14 February is selected for Electronic Media Freedom Day because, on 14 February 1997, the caretaker government of President Farooq Leghari and Prime Minister Malik Meraj Khalid promulgated the Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance. This was the first time in the history of Pakistan that a law was promulgated to enable the establishment of private and independent radio stations and TV channels. The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif which succeeded the caretaker government allowed the ordinance to lapse and it was therefore unenforced.

(In 2003, the date of 7 February has been chosen in view of the fact that the holidays for Eid-ul-Azha coincide with the date of 14 February).

The government of General Pervez Musharraf revived and amended the original text of the ordinance in 2000 and eventually promulgated it under the name of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance (PEMRA) on 1st March 2002.

During the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, the existing, state-owned electronic media such as PTV and PBC made significant changes in their editorial policies to make their news and current affairs programmes more accurately representative of political and public opinion including specially, arrangement of uncensored live telecasts and broadcasts on a range of issues. The cable TV licensing system introduced in February 2000 has also expanded viewership of TV channels at modest cost to subscribers on a major scale.

Five new satellite TV channels telecasting from overseas locations but using the content originating from Pakistan, known as Indus TV, ARY TV, Geo TV, Uni-TV and KTN have also made notable contributions in this period towards changing the electronic media environment in the country.

For the first time, a Sindhi language TV channel named KTN by using content originating from Pakistan but telecasting from Dubai for 4 hours every evening has pioneered new vistas in independent regional language electronic media. Using STN transmitters, Prime TV is also telecasting candid current affairs content. The original FM radio monopolies initiated in 1996-97 continue to operate in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore.

Yet, in respect of the speed and freedom with which overseas-based, Pakistani-rooted TV satellite channels can use the uplink facility through PTV and PTCL there is apprehension that the uplink permission is given on a selective and biased basis. It is only when the uplink facility is available without hindrance but of course with due regard for irreducible considerations of the ethical propriety of the content being sent overseas, that freedom of expression on the air waves of Pakistan can be recognized as a consistent reality.

At the same time, the Authority known as PEMRA constituted under the ordinance promulgated in 2002 has issued about 22 licences for the establishment of commercial and private electronic media channels in Pakistan in the near future.

However, licences have not yet been issued to public interest organizations, development NGOs or civil society groups that are interested in using electronic media on a non-commercial basis. Nor have newspaper proprietors been issued licences so far even though the PEMRA ordinance does not ban cross-media ownership outright.

Rampant piracy by cable TV distributors who download foreign TV channels without paying the original TV operators the actual fees or who grossly under-report their number of subscribers to reduce the fees payable to overseas TV channels has become an alarming phenomenon. Such outright fraud deprives the government of revenue, imposes heavy losses on the channel owners but most of all, damages the reputation of Pakistan in global media circles. The quality of effective action against such piracy is curiously low. This raises questions as to whether there is corrupt collusion between some cable TV distributors and those in the field charged with monitoring and preventing piracy.

While the significant and positive changes in the electronic media environment during the past three years need to be welcomed and sustained, there remain several areas of urgency and concern.

These fourteen aspects comprise:

1- The public service and public interest dimension in electronic media, state-owned and private: is it sustained, or in retreat?

2- The need for even-handed editorial policies of PTV and PBC to be sustained in the future, the impact of private satellite TV channels and the imperative for fairness and balance to be maintained in the new electronic media environment.

3- How increased poverty has affected low levels of access to electronic media by the majority of the people. 4- The continued, unchanged state ownership and control of PTV and PBC.

5- The excessive commercialism in the content of state-owned electronic media as well as in privately-owned electronic media.

6- The need for effective enforcement of laws, rules, codes of ethics in general, and by PEMRA in particular.

7- The principle of cross-media ownership: pros and cons.

8- Portrayal of women in media content and status of women professionals in media: progress and stagnation.

9- The threat to the safety and security of cable TV distributors, particularly in NWFP and, in turn, the integrity and efficiency with which cable TV operators are observing the terms of their licences.

10- The continued official ban on distribution of Indian satellite TV channels in retaliation for the Indian ban on the distribution of Pakistani TV channels through Indian cable systems.

11- The impact of overseas news channels such as English language BBC, CNN and others and the Urdu/Pushto services of overseas radio networks.

12- Projection of minority communities and their concerns.

13- The relationship between enduring social and cultural values and the parameters of the freedom with which electronic media enable free-flow of information, education and entertainment in a world without media borders.

14- The status of independent electronic media production houses in the country and their contribution to the electronic media environment.

Each of these 14 aspects as also the piracy and uplink issues deserve individual and concentrated analysis through roundtable sessions that bring together relevant stakeholders. It is hoped that the roundtable being convened in Islamabad on 7th February 2003 will be the first of a series to be held throughout 2003 to do justice to the whole range of concerns.

Continuous scrutiny of the situation in this sector by specialists and well-informed public opinion and active public engagement will help ensure the progressive development of electronic media in Pakistan.

The writer is the convenor of the Citizens’ Media Commission and a former federal minister for information and media development.

Afghan war is not over

WHILE the US focuses on Iraq and North Korea, it has 9,000 troops risking their lives in Afghanistan to rid the country of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda troops.

The largest battle there in 10 months gave graphic evidence last week that the war is not over. Although there were no American casualties in at least 12 hours of fighting in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, days later four Americans were killed when their Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed near the Bagram air base not far from the capital, Kabul.

Army officials said an accident, not hostile fire, downed the helicopter, but rocket attacks on U.S. forces and allies along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan have occurred in recent months.

There is something even more worrisome than rocket fire: Taliban forces that had dispersed under withering air and ground attacks are re-forming in units of 50 or more to challenge U.S. troops.

That means a longer, costlier presence than Washington had hoped for. It also requires a renewed commitment to prevent Afghanistan from slipping back into the chaos and warlord rule that let the Islamic fundamentalist fighters gain control of the country.

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush pledged to help Afghans “secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children _ boys and girls.” The words need to be matched by action. Afghans remember the United States losing interest in the country after the Soviet invaders were ousted in 1989.

If the United States can’t stick to its promises to the Afghans, Iraqis would have justification to wonder whether the United States would remain there to help that country rebuild after a war.

The United States has begun to deploy provincial reconstruction teams, protected by Special Forces troops, to build roads and schools across Afghanistan.

—Los Angeles Times

Iraq: the schedule slips

IT gets quite warm in Iraq between May and September, and the last conqueror of Baghdad, General Sir Stanley Maude, avoided the worst of the Mesopotamian summer by leading his British and Indian troops into the city in March of 1917.

However, the Arab warriors who beat the Persian army and seized the country at the battle of Qadisiyah in 637 did their fighting in June. Over two thousand years before that, the army of King Hammurabi of Babylon fought in every season — and unlike the current generation of US Army tanks, his chariots didn’t even have air conditioning.

President George W. Bush’s father launched his ground attack on Iraqi forces in Kuwait twelve years ago in this month, but the main reason for choosing a February date was the fact that it took five months after Saddam Hussein’s August, 1990 invasion of Iraq to build up a large American and allied army in Saudi Arabia, and another six weeks to soften the Iraqis up from the air. Other things being equal, it’s obviously nicer to get the fighting over before the hot season — but if Saddam’s army had no problem in attacking in August, why would the American armed forces?

The whole business about a February or March deadline for attacking Iraq because of the fierce Iraqi summer has been got up by the press. No such deadline exists, and the US army can attack Baghdad in any month of the year. Which is just as well if President Bush is serious about killing the man who “tried to kill my dad”, because the schedule for a US attack is now slipping visibly. The problem is not getting the troops into place, but getting all the other ducks lined up facing in the same direction.

Three major issues have to be cleared up before Bush orders the attack to begin, and the hardest to control is the position of America’s own allies. Every opinion poll shows that the American public will back Bush’s war if at least a couple of major allies come along, but gets cold feet if the United States has to do it alone. (The support for a war also drops below 50 percent if the poll-takers suggest that even one American soldier will be killed, but that’s another story.) It’s as though the US public needs at least one friendly foreign country to confirm Bush’s allegations about the need to destroy Saddam Hussein by showing up for the war.

This gives British Prime Minister Tony Blair quite a bit of leverage, for Britain is the only ally that would be likely to provide significant numbers of troops. Recently Blair has been using it his leverage by saying that the arms inspectors’ report to the United Nations Security Council on 27 January on their findings in Iraq over the first 60 days is no kind of deadline, and that Britain expects the process to continue for some considerable time after that. He hasn’t explicitly said that Britain would not go to war without a second UN resolution authorising an attack on Iraq, but he hasn’t said it would either.

Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who could also give Bush very useful political cover if he sent even token Canadian forces to an Iraq war, has bluntly said that he won’t do so without another UN resolution. When his defence minister, John McCallum, tried to soften that line during a Washington visit in mid-January — “Some may say, ‘We’re (sending forces) only with a UN mandate.’ We’re saying we much prefer that, but we may do it otherwise” — Chretien cut him off at the knees. Mr McCallum, he said, had “replied to a hypothetical question, that he has reflected upon and corrected since that time.”

If the allies won’t go without another UN resolution, what are the chances of getting one soon? Not good, for no amount of threats and bribes will get the other Security Council members to vote for war without at least some hard evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction. That has not happened yet, and chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is refusing to be rushed: “There is no way we are going by the time-line of any administration, be it the American or any other,” he said on 18 January.

Then there is the domestic political problem. Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, would not be doing his job if he were not warning the president that a February war could mean he peaks too soon, just like his father did. Bush senior launched his ground attack in February 1991, won his war in March — and lost the election 19 months later because by that time the glow of victory had faded while the economy was still down. Wouldn’t it be better, Rove will be asking, to have the victory a bit closer to the November, 2004 election?

And then there’s the distraction of North Korea, and the difficulty with getting either Turkey or Saudi Arabia to commit firmly to letting the US use their territory for the attack on Iraq, and the probability that Saddam will seize foreign hostages again (maybe including the arms inspectors) if a US invasion looks imminent, and the sheer, foot-dragging reluctance of the US Army to come up with any plan that might involve its soldiers in street-fighting in Baghdad.... President Bush will almost certainly get his war in the end, one way or another, but this month is looking less and less likely.—CopyrightBy Gwynne Dyer

America’s grand charade

SOME western governments led by the United States and Britain seem to be engaged in a charade vis-a-vis Iraq. They wish to convey the impression that they would like to give more time to Iraq provided Baghdad was ready to come clean on the information weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) issue and cooperate more fully with the UN weapons inspectors.

In reality, however, they are trying to mobilize as much support as they can among the European Union (EU) members for their plan of military action against Iraq. As far as war against Iraq is concerned, the question is not ‘whether’ or ‘if’ but ‘when.’

In fact war might have already started but for the fact that the West would not want it to coincide with the Haj, which is due in another week, as that would further alienate it from the Muslim countries. The western strategists would perhaps want the first strike against Iraq to be carried out on moonless nights, as was the case in the 1991 Gulf war. An offensive may not start until almost the end of February. A London-based TV channel believes that the US and Britain have agreed on March 3 as the D-Day. The significance of that date is not unclear.

In the meantime, Washington and London are trying hard to win greater, and more willing, support from some EU governments whom they regard as ‘waverers.’

Germany is opposed to use of force against Iraq, while France has not quite made up its mind. Paris will take a decision “when the time comes”, as President Jacques Chirac told British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a meeting is south of France on Tuesday. He also expressed the view that “war is the worst of all options” and that “we will only adopt a position when we believe nothing further can be achieved... and we are a long way off that.” Going by the press reports, the French president has discounted the speculation that “Paris would fall in behind Washington and London soon.”

Technically, Baghdad has been given time to make its position on the WMD clear and above suspicion. Indeed, Washington and London are convinced that President Saddam Hussein has already been given too much time and that he is actually guilty of a “material breach” of the Security Council Resolution 1441.

Britain has already released more information about Iraq’s WMDs while the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his 75-minute address at the Security Council on Wednesday, made an extensive disclosure of what he claimed to be Iraq’s involvement in the development of lethal chemical and biological weapons, its deceptions and failures in the context of weapons inspections and its links with Al Qaeda and another terrorist organizations.

Dr Hans Blix, head of the UN team of inspectors, is scheduled to report again to the UN Security Council on February 14 but it is already presumed that he would do no more than tell the world body that the inspectors’ work in Iraq continues to be hampered by the Baghdad government. In any case, a fresh dossier against Iraq is said to have been developed by British intelligence and it was handed over to President Bush’s high-powered National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice. The dossier was also discussed by President Chirac and Prime Minister Blair in their meeting on Tuesday. The report maintains that President Saddam Hussein’s security forces continue to obstruct the UN inspectors by hiding evidence relating to WMDs from them and often giving them misleading information.

There is some disagreement among the western governments on whether or not another UN resolution is needed holding Iraq culpable before they could use force against it. While Britain holds that a second resolution specifically calling for the use of force is necessary, Washington insists that the UNSC Resolution 1441 already provides the authority needed to act against Iraq on grounds of “material breach.” In their meeting in Washington last Friday, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed that the question no longer was whether force should be used against Iraq in order to “disarm” it, but precisely what form that action should take.

What sums up the thinking of President Bush — who is actually calling the shots — is what he said while replying to a question at the joint press conference in Washington after his meeting with Prime Minister Blair. He said: “After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn’t hold any water so far as I am concerned.” He believes that the “strategic vision” of the United States had shifted “dramatically because we now recognize that oceans no longer protect us, that we are vulnerable to attack and the worst form of attack could come from somebody acquiring weapons of mass destruction and using them on the American people.” That is a demonstration of the US president’s mind-set.

The candid statement is a matter of concern not only for Iraq which in any case is to be the immediate target. But Iraq could only be the beginning; the next on the line could well be Iran.

It may seem implausible but a section of American intelligentsia actually traces the origins of Iraq’s quest for WMDs to Washington’s own misperception of developments in Iraq going back to the 1980s. It has been said that the roots of the US policy vis-a-vis Iraq was “anchored in the 1979 Iranian revolution that sparked a tilt toward Iraq.” They even argue that Washington was a “silent ally” of Iraq sharing with it vital intelligence. The US also did not impose any “sanctions” against Iraq in 1988 when it used chemical weapons in attacking the Kurds. The late Prof Gerald Hopple, one-time research specialist in information systems, maintained that the Bush senior’s administration at the time rejected making overtures to Iraq and issued a directive favouring detente with Iraq in mid-1989.

Another prominent American scientist Prof Paul Gigot contends that “a decade of consistent US misjudgments could be traced back to Washington’s reaction to Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility (before its shipment from France) which involved condemning Israel while failing to see the threat from Iraq’s potential nuclear capability.”

The fallout of the impending US war on Iraq on its neighbouring countries is bound to be considerable. Except for countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia which have agreed to provide bases to US forces, the Muslim countries will generally experience a strong sense of outrage and revulsion among the Muslim masses in the wake of an attack on Iraq.