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THESE days it’s all about Panamagate; on everyone’s mind is the eternal will it, won’t it question. Can the government weather the storm?
Not too long before, it was all about Imran Khan having taken up seemingly permanent residence atop a shipping container on Constitution Avenue, from where, again, much debate was generated along the same lines. Will the infamous ‘finger’ be lifted? In how much danger is democracy, precisely?
Meanwhile, now just as then, and on many other similar moments of national crisis, it feels as though the machinery of government has ground to a halt. With politicians and leaders involved mainly in addressing the barrage of accusations, allegations and counter allegations that always accompany such periods, the citizenry finds itself stuck in a painful loop of wondering who is responsible for the mundane things — from water to electricity to development — while simultaneously being obsessed with politics.
If every spell of such crises feels like it has stretched on forever, in a sense, it has, and not just with this PML-N government. Before Panamagate there was Memogate. And the ouster of a prime minister by the Supreme Court. And the chaos of 2007. The past decade and a half feel like a protracted period of collective hysteria, both on part of the country’s leaders and the citizenry.
That, friends, is the power of the media, particularly 24/7 electronic news media.
It isn’t the case, after all, that Pakistan has not witnessed far more grave moments of national crisis in the slightly more distant past, as anyone who knows their history is aware. Indeed, those moments are not just within living memory; in terms of especially the political experiences and upheavals that rocked the country from the late 1970s onwards, many of the political actors involved are the same faces as we see today, not the least among them Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
These days, crises always seem to snowball into histrionics.
But somehow, crises as they take place in current times seem to snowball into histrionics that weren’t associated in earlier times. One significant difference between then and now can be identified as the proliferation of news channels from mainly the turn of the millennium onwards, their tactics, perceived importance among the people, and the way they handle topics at hand.
On the one hand, there is the spiral of hectic controversy that is played endlessly out on television screens by emotional anchorpersons who are not always averse to mixing fact with allegation or even indulging in speculation in their effort to generate more dramatic programming. Were this not worrying enough, this is a tactic that even political leaders resort to, having got into the habit of hamming it up for the cameras.
On the other hand, Pakistan has a citizenry keenly aware of, interested in, and invested in politics. It would be problematic enough were it being fed two of three doses of shady information or opinion a day — a newspaper headline, for example, with perhaps a radio or news bulletin later. Post the electronic media revolution, though, the doses have become round the clock and inescapable, leading to something that perhaps in practice resembles indoctrination more than dissemination of information.
Meanwhile, there are the sometimes unsavoury tactics to which news channels resort in their lust for ratings. I know two persons who trained as professional actors and found employment in large media houses to play ‘journalists’ outraged by X, Y or Z issue. Their brief included purposefully whipping up public emotion. The practice of a ‘journalist’ and cameraman carrying out ‘raids’ on premises that should be closed to them caused Pemra, the media regulatory authority, to ban on Friday such shows purporting to be ‘investigative journalism’.
On the record are sorry episodes such as a shop being ‘raided’ in this manner to unearth a story of food adulteration, for example. Later, the shopkeeper can protest his innocence all he likes, or decry how a private space was invaded — through a court system that is notoriously sluggish, and against a media house that is very powerful; but his face and name have already been beamed into millions of homes; the allegation has already taken on the hue of truth in millions of minds.
These are not trifling matters, and those who give in to the temptation of using such tactics need to educate themselves on responsible and ethical journalism. For years, now, there has been talk of the media regulating itself, and there have even been moments when editors/owners have agreed among themselves on how to clean up the playing field. Unfortunately, it takes just one transgression by some one player to queer the whole pitch, and this has happened. It used to be that such failings were excused on the grounds that the electronic media industry was still young; ‘nascent stage’ was the term of choice. But it is no longer young; the failings seem to have become entrenched.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2016
