A NEWS item that appeared in Dawn’s ‘Fifty years ago’ section yesterday, described a 24-hour strike by Karachi journalists to protest what was happening in their city, Lahore and Dacca. It was another era altogether. The journalists were agitating against police high-handedness. As a result of their protest, there was no paper the next day. Half a century later, much bigger issues confront the journalists. There are layoffs and pay cuts along with curbs on freedom of expression. We have the current substitutes of Yahya Khan’s very vocal information minister Gen Sher Ali Khan wanting an iron grip on the media. But we don’t have protests that will effectively convey the message to the authorities — and to the people — that the journalists who are holding aloft the flag of fundamental freedoms on their behalf have it in them to fight the battle for their own survival. The 1960s and 1970s were ideological decades. The divide between the right and left among the journalists didn’t prevent them from coming together for a common cause. What was established by way of the journalists’ trade union in the early decades following 1947 — with much help and leadership from the then East Pakistan — was very much in the vanguard of the fight for liberties throughout the Bhutto and Zia periods.

Factions were created, the most well known during the Zia days, but overall, the journalists managed to continue their struggle together. Later, new divisions came about, making it impossible for journalists and newspaper workers to demand free expression with one voice. There is a distinction between non-journalists and journalists in the media. There are classes and no ideology. There are monetary gaps which disallow those getting good salaries from getting together under one banner with the underpaid. There are irreconcilable factions of journalists, with the owners (in many cases the editors themselves) routinely compromising long-term unity for quick personal gains. It is no surprise that all they can do is celebrate 1969 — the glory that was.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2019