When you mistake the messenger for the message

BOTH Prime Minister Tony Blair and President General Musharraf appear to have lost patience with the media almost in the same month.

Of course, Mr Blair could not have issued an ordinance to amend the Pemra law even if he had such a law on the British law books. But here is what he said on June 12 while making his case for a ‘better’ regulated media: “The regulatory framework at some point will need revision. The PCC is for traditional newspaper publishing. The OFCOM regulate broadcasting – except for the BBC which has largely its own system of regulation. But under the new European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by the OFCOM. And as the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that can no longer be differentiated in the old way.”

However, Musharraf being an all-powerful president general of a military-led government could not only issue any ordinance he thought fit, but he can even use it to force the broadcasters to come up with an agreed code of ethics if they wished it to be withdrawn.

And like Musharraf who claims to have bestowed the Pakistani media the level of freedom that it enjoys today, Mr Blair too has his own claims on this score. Here is what he said: “So for example in my own case I introduced: first, Lobby briefings on the record; then published the minutes; then gave monthly press conferences; then freedom of information; then became the first prime minister to go to the select committee’s chairman session; and so on.”

President Musharraf is perhaps one world leader who in the nearly eight years that he has ruled his country has surpassed all other world leaders in media appearances, both domestic and international. He used the media for almost one full year first to sell the details of his local government concept and then he took almost the same time and again through the media to sell the 17th amendment labelling it with the phrase: I want to bring the army in to keep it out. And since he gave the label of democracy to his military rule after the 2002 elections he has used the media rather than parliament to announce all his important policies – economic, social, political and foreign – and had them debated on the media rather than inside parliament which he has continued to treat with scant respect.

Here is what Simon Jenkins of Sunday Times had to say on Mr Blair’s skills of spin: “He could not really think himself the most persecuted politician since Carlyle declared the supremacy of the “fourth estate” back in the 1840s. Besides, how could the master of spin admit that he had botched his entire modus operandi? He called journalists “feral beasts” who hunted in packs and spread cynicism wherever they went. The media have certainly come to occupy a larger role in public affairs under Blair. But the reason lies with Blair, not the media…Blair always claimed to “set his own agenda”, tell his own “narrative” or, as Peter Mandelson said, “create his own reality”. The Blairites thought they ruled the world because, for a while, they induced the press to be far more horrid to Major than it ever was to Blair. But having deluded the press, they then deluded themselves. Such hubris always ends in tears.

The comparison between the approaches to media of a military ruler of a backward country like Pakistan with little or no democratic traditions and an elected prime minister of a rich country with democratic traditions going back hundreds of years would surely sound too far fetched even amounting to stretching the point to a ridiculous level.

But let me hasten to state that unlike various other institutions in Pakistan like political parties, civil and military bureaucracy, the big business, the feudal aristocracy and politicians ( except of course, the Quaid-i-Azam and some of his close lieutenants) all of whom had remained British toadies until the midnight between Aug 13-14, 1947, the media that Pakistan inherited was very much in the vanguard of freedom struggle. It had suffered the coercive anti-press laws of the colonialists. And the rulers of the new country started using the same laws against this overwhelmingly combative press from the very word go. And in 1962, the first military ruler promulgated the infamous Press& Publication Ordinance which in effect meant that if an insignificant official minion sitting in a remote corner of the country did not like the colour of your shirt, he can send you to jail, confiscate your press and property and there would be no accountability or recourse to law.

The media worked under this law until 1987 and more because by that time it had seen three martial laws in which it was subjected to the most severe censorships. But it kept fighting. It was a Herculean fight. And the fight was so relentless that by the late 1980s the establishment had lost all its will to continue to fight with its outdated and by then ineffective weapons of media suppression. And by 1990s the information and communication technologies had rendered all the remaining instruments of coercion and suppression of governments, even military-led governments totally ineffective. There are supposed to be 70 million blogs the world over today. And there are internet newspapers and now the YouTube. How could any government block unwanted news in such an environment?

So, it is not by way of Musharraf government’s charity that the Pakistani media has acquired what freedom it enjoys today. It has been snatched bit by bit over the last 45 years through the hardest way at a very heavy price in terms of careers and economic hardships for hundreds of unsung heroes who sacrificed in silence. Former information minister of Musharraf, Mr Javed Jabbar, who wrote a well argued and erudite piece in Dawn (The law is not football) the other day knows all this because whenever he was not part of an unelected government he was part of this struggle. So it pained me a lot when I read his conclusion: “These three countries (Iran, Malaysia and Singapore) have achieved per capita incomes, literacy and education levels far higher than Pakistan. Yet Pakistan is far ahead of the three countries in offering optimal choice of electronic media channels. And the contrast is not due to differences in population size. The critical difference is due to government policy which is pivotal to facilitate the people’s access to optimal mass media choices.”

It is only now that the media in Iran is engaged in a mammoth struggle to win freedom from the Ayatullahs. In Malaysia and Singapore there has been no such tradition ever. So, let us not compare our media with that of Iran, Malaysia or Singapore. We have our own unique traditions which I might go the extent of saying cannot be matched even by the Indian media.