ISLAMABAD: The Pakis­tan Electronic Media Regu­latory Authority (Pemra) on Thursday announced that stern action would be taken against channels airing foreign content beyond the prescribed limit.

Pemra chairman Absar Alam, addressing a meeting of the Council of Complaints (CoCs), said that a few TV channels had become ‘promoters of hatred’, adding that four or five TV anchors were damaging the image of the country.

“Some media channels are not doing journalism and anchors have become political actors,” he said, pointing out how certain anchors were predicting war between India and Pakistan.

The meeting also condemned the “insulting behaviour” of an anchor, also a bureaucrat, with Chairman of CoCs, Lahore, Dr Mehdi Hassan recently during a hearing. It was informed that the Punjab government had already constituted a committee to probe the incident.

It was noted with concern that certain TV channels had obtained stay orders from the court to air re-enactments, despite a ban.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Mehdi said that presentday Pakistan was not the country Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had envisaged, but was in Gen Zia’s image.

He said that there was a dearth of monitoring content and proper training of journalists and other staff in the media houses. “Media houses should deploy gate- keepers to implement strict monitoring of the content being aired,” he added. It was suggested that channel owners should be bound to train reporters, cameramen and other staff.

Chairman of CoCs, Quetta, Professor Agha Muhammad Nasir alleged that channels did not give importance to Balochistan, while Chairman of Karachi CoCs Professor Inam Bari said that crimes must not be glorified. Shakil Chander, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said channels must not indulge in sensationalism in the name of breaking news.

It was decided that TV channels should be asked to dedicate airtime for airing programmes on Kashmir and Pemra noted that anchorpersons should be registered after proper training and meeting the criteria.

Majority of the CoCs members favoured the ban on airing Indian content, but two members advocated that the policy of continuing six per cent Indian content on TV channels should continue.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2016