June 19, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 03, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 18: While opposing Pemra amendment ordinance and other covert and overt threats to media by the government, speakers at a seminar vowed to uphold media freedom by carrying out their professional duties objectively in the interest of the public and country.

The speakers also maintained that all military and political governments had a tradition of applying different tactics of arm twisting of media for their ulterior motives to clinch and perpetuate their power.

They expressed concern that after penetrating the political and business spheres, the military establishment was now encroaching media through recently introduced coercive measures to blackmail and harass the owners of media organisations and journalists.

Senior Editor of Newsline Zahid Hussain, Director News ARYone Mohsin Raza and senior journalist Matiullah Jan discussed different aspects of media independence at a seminar on “Media Freedom in Pakistan: Opportunities and Challenges” organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Monday.

Matiullah Jan, terming the original Pemra ordinance a draconian law, lamented that there was nothing substantive in the recently introduced amended ordinance which was only meant to influence the owners of media institutions to stop them from independently running their institutions and objectively reporting events.

He said all previous governments had pressurised media for their benefits but the present regime had a distinction as it had full support of the military establishment, which after encroaching other institutions in the country had now started to encroach the media.

Talking about other challenges, he said absolute control of distribution mechanisms with Pemra, cable operators-Pemra nexus, cross media ownership, media dependence on corporate interests, encroachment of serving and retired military officials into public and private institutions and role of state media which misrepresents the facts and misleads people thus overshadowing the hard work of private media.

He predicted a hard time for media in future, urging the journalist community to determine their future roles as no media body has been recognised by the government, which was talking of only owners and representatives of media.

Zahid Hussain shared a brief history of media highlighting its role and the critical challenges it had been facing under different governments in Pakistan, including the present one.

He said the present crisis with media which worsened with the introduction of Pemra-amended ordinance basically started on March 9 when the president filed a reference against the chief justice of Pakistan and the following events, particularly when the media exposed May 12 events in Karachi.

He deplored that media always remained under pressure in playing its genuine role, adding that pressure from the governments reemerged whenever they face any crisis.

He said limited media freedom was acceptable to the government on the hard condition of not covering anything related to military, generals and their roles, adding that Gen Musharraf gave some independence to media not because of love with media but because of some other inevitable reasons.