WHILE campaigning for freedom, media organisations would do well to remember that they are repositories of the public trust and with this honour comes editorial responsibility. This is true not only for the news media but also for entertainment programming.

Pakistan has taken to phone-in competitions and voting games like a fish to water. On the radio, you can answer a competition question and win a prize of anything from an MP3 player to an airline ticket. Televised award ceremonies claim that the public has voted for the year’s best actor, rock band or most popular show. On talk shows featuring media celebrities, fans call in to chat with the guest on air.

Because we trust the veracity of such programming, we live in the faith that the next giveaway announced on the FM radio will be delivered to us; that the award on our favourite band’s mantelpiece was, to some extent, earned by our vote; that those callers lining up to talk to the begum are all besotted by her charm.

Not necessarily so. Many of the callers are genuine but others are simply planted by the programme managers to give the impression of reality. In the absence of a credible media watchdog that safeguards audience rights, there is no way of telling when and where the public is being cheated. Credible systems such as the Gallup poll are not available in Pakistan. Where the Gallup Organisation conducts its polls through door-to-door sampling methods or random digit dialling, similar local exercises tend to be based on conjecture and street cred rather than on representative facts and figures.

Editorial responsibility and safeguarding the public trust are concepts of self-monitoring that Pakistan’s electronic media have not yet internalised. As a result, the audience is cheated in many small ways, each apparently insignificant on its own but together a substantial breach of the public trust.

Anyone who has worked in a media organisation knows this. A programmes manager at an FM radio station, for example, confessed that sometimes, on-air competitions get no genuine winners at all, in which case someone from within the station pretends to be a caller and gives the correct answer. A member of a panel of judges constituted to decide television programming awards said that in the absence of any viewership patterns, decisions can be made as randomly as “X won the award last year, so we should balance it out by giving it to Y this year.” Similarly, a member of a rock band nominated for an award exhorted all his friends to vote for his band as often as possible, through SMS messages and the internet, and himself registered multiple votes.

The importance of media organisations’ responsibility towards the public can be gauged from the fact that a fortnight ago, the BBC suspended a number of senior editorial staff members after finding that certain phone-in competitions had been faked. An investigation found serious editorial breaches in six television shows and for a while, a formal police investigation was considered. Another recent media-related controversy in the UK concerns a documentary on the Queen: the promo had been edited in a manner that suggested that she walked out of a photo session, when, in fact, the two scenes (the photo session and her walk-out) were unrelated.

In response, the BBC immediately suspended all phone-in, interactive and online competitions and its staff is now to be trained on safeguarding public trust and editorial responsibility. It has also announced a “zero tolerance” approach towards any future lapses in editorial judgement.

Such codes of conduct must be self-imposed and self-monitored; it is not for the government or Pemra to make sure that editorial breaches do not take place. Now that they are established and profitable, it is time that local media organisations reviewed their performance in this context.

A perplexing twist in Washington’s “war on terror” has occurred. For over two years the White House has stoutly defended Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's record on combating Islamist extremism, even as a wave of pro-Taliban activism ran through the tribal belt. But now, when Musharraf is finally starting to act — ordering the Red Mosque siege three weeks ago, deploying fresh troops to North West Frontier Province, and rallying Pakistan for a potential civil war against militants — Washington has suddenly decided he’s not going fast enough. In fact it seems to be seriously considering war.

Six years after dropping troops into Afghanistan, Washington seems to believe it invaded the wrong country. A cascade of ever-tougher statements has created the impression that unilateral military action against targets inside Pakistan is looming. First the National Intelligence Estimate pinpointed the tribal areas as Al Qaeda’s global headquarters and warned that it was putting the US at risk. Then President Bush declared that Musharraf's efforts to broker peace in the same area had miserably failed. Finally his homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, said that “no options are off the table” to solve the problem — including military action.

Trigger-happy Democrats chimed in enthusiastically. Whatever rock “those evil people” were hiding under, crowed the Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, “we should go get them”.

It’s not only politicians who are baying for bombs. A Washington Post editorial last week called for “targeted strikes or covert actions” inside Pakistan. The influential New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called on a few good “Army Rangers or Navy Seals” to take care of business.

This sabre-rattling is ill-informed, dangerous and counter-productive. Certainly President Musharraf and his devious intelligence agencies have an ambiguous approach to the Taliban. But this must not be confused with the situation on the ground where, since the Red Mosque siege ended on July 11, Islamists have launched a blistering onslaught against government forces.

The only thing guaranteed to rouse the fire-breathing mullahs even more is the prospect — however remote — of an American invasion.

And what would an American war in Waziristan look like? A full-scale invasion is unthinkable unless the US intends to topple Musharraf and create a second Iraq. They could go for targeted strikes — but in fact they already are. American Predator drones have been secretly hitting Al Qaeda hideouts across the tribal areas for at least two years; to save itself political embarrassment Islamabad claims responsibility.

The military’s last tactic is commando raids — a tactic the US has employed across the border in Afghanistan for the past six years with limited success. How would the same Special Forces, operating in a treacherous mountainous environment with hardly a friend, do any better in Waziristan?

Of course the rocket-propelled talk may be simply a ploy to make Musharraf push faster and harder against his troublesome tribesmen and their Al Qaeda guests. If so, it’s a risky gambit. At best the threats will deepen anti-Americanism and the perception that Musharraf is Bush's “poodle”. At worst they will further destabilise the Pakistani state at an immensely fragile time. Musharraf is politically weak and his forces are at war in pockets of the Frontier.

The suicide bombing — a device previously reserved for presidential assassination bids — has become a thrice-daily occurrence. No matter how much Washington exhorts him to “do more”, Musharraf may be reaching the limits of his power.

This is partly the Bush administration’s own doing. Since 2001 it has propped up Musharraf with $10 billion in aid and endless diplomatic cover-fire, free of cost.

The price has been paid in terms of numerous distortions of politics and society — political alliances between Musharraf and the mullahs, a castrated parliament and, most recently, surging anti-military feeling.

It was no coincidence that as triumphant lawyers tumbled out of the Supreme Court after the victory of the Chief Justice, Mohammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, against Musharraf that some also chanted anti-American slogans.

But even if Musharraf's sell-by date is approaching, American bombs are no solution. Success against bin Laden and his chums at their “terrorist mountain spa”, as Ms Dowd puts it, is inextricably linked to solving the problems of the tribal areas themselves.

The scheming tribesmen have survived on the outer margins of the Pakistani state since independence in 1947. Now, by whatever means possible — greater political freedoms, more schooling or just old-fashioned bribery — they must be brought into the fold. Few consider America a friend; but not all need to see it as the enemy.

Some American officials already know this. Before the latest hard talk they announced a $750 million aid package for the tribal belt.

The plan attracted some criticism, notably about tricky issues like corruption and finding projects that won’t get blown up. But the broad alternative looks much worse.

American military action in Pakistan now could plunge the country into turmoil, swamp its beleaguered democratic forces and fail to yield the terrorist scalps Washington is looking for. In fact it would likely create many more.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service