LAHORE: Pakistan’s mass media are known to be robust and restrained at the same time. Nation’s print, electronic and social media have survived a repeated onslaught on their freedom and even threats on their survival throughout the history of the country as an independent state.

A new book, From Terrorism to Television: Dynamics of Media, State, and Society in Pakistan, published by Routledge (London and India), narrates this story with scholarly and well-researched themes contributed by university professors, researchers, and journalists from Pakistan, England, Australia and the United States.

Co-editors of the book, Qaisar Abbas and Farooq Sulehria, , in the first chapter, have set the tone of the volume with a sound theoretical framework and a thorough survey of the evolution of the media in Pakistan within the context of freedom of expression.

Mr Abbas is a media scholar and former professor and an assistant dean based in the United States. Mr Sulehria, a known journalist in Pakistan, is an assistant professor at the Beaconhouse National University (BNU).

The book analyses contemporary issues such as freedom of expression, jihadi media contents and terrorism, TV talk shows and coverage of Kashmir, harassment of women journalists, media images of Mala Yousufzai and Mukhtaran Mai, coverage of Osama bin Laden’s killing, the Oscar winning documentary on women victims of honour killing, Balochistan in the mainstream media, and other topics.

Known scholars and journalists offer fresh approaches and reliable methodologies on multiple themes related to media and society. They include Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Faizullah Jan, Afiya Shehrbano Zia, Ayesha Khan, Amir Hamza Marwan, Haya Fatima Iqbal, Farah Zia, and Adnan Aamir.

The book also includes interviews of three veteran journalists and scholars, I.A. Rehman, Dr Mehdi Hasan, and Dr Eric Rahim, on freedom of expression and the plight of working journalists in Pakistan.

By dedicating the book to the four journalists, Masoodullah Khan, Nasir Zaidi, Khawar Naeem Hashmi, and Iqbal Jaffery, who were sentenced to flogging by the Zia dictatorship in 1978, the editors have paid tributes to the whole community of intellectuals who resist attempts to silence their voices.

Based on the analysis of multiple media types by a diverse group of scholars, this book can be considered as the first authentic anthology on the Pakistani media.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2020