Hamzah Saif

The Growth of Pakistani Television Media and Its Implications for Civil Society

Paper Abstract

Introduction

Kabhi dil dil Pakistan tha / Aab bill bill Pakistan hai

Once Pakistan was my love / Now Pakistan is just bills runs a popular satirical song on Geo TV,
whose current CEO, Mir Ibrahim Rahman, recently received the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy
award for public service from Harvard‟s Kennedy School of Government. The accompanying
video depicts corrupt politicians stealing from the poor, IMF policies alienated from Pakistani
ground realities and a public exploited by national and international elite. Now commonplace,
this nationally broadcast, candid and irreverent depiction of indigenous attitudes towards local
and international governments was unthinkable just 9 years ago.

Pakistan‟s recently free and burgeoning television media has been a buoy of international pro-
democracy hopes for the country. However, while television channels have proliferated,
providing unprecedented insight into high- and mid-level corruption, activism in Pakistani civil
society has failed to materialize.

As disillusionment grows, some have begun to question the media‟s contribution towards
democratic change. A few weeks ago, Owen Bennett-Jones, BBC‟s Pakistan correspondent and
author of Pakistan: Eye of The Storm, and an ex-CEO of Geo TV, were asked at a small
gathering at the London School of Economics if, in the absence of resultant grass-roots activism,
Pakistani media should continue to be considered a vibrant force for democracy in the country.

Why have Mr. Rahman considerable efforts failed to overcome civil society inertia? Why have
relentless media attacks failed to catalyze activism in Pakistani politics? How has dramatically
increased access to information affected Pakistani political dynamics?

The Genesis: Media Growth under Dictatorship

The current mushrooming of channels finds its origins in Musharraf‟s open-media policy. Prior
to his coup, PTV, Pakistan‟s state sponsored television channel, was the sole option for Pakistani
television viewers. The short-lived NTM channel provided an alternative source of entertainment
– though, not news – in the early 90s; however, unable to sufficiently monetize, it was forced to
cease broadcasting.

Under Musharraf‟s government, television media burgeoned from one state-run channel to nearly
75 privately owned ones available via cable today, including 15 nationally-broadcast news
channels.

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Significant impetus for fostering an independent media came from the General himself. Seeking
public support for his military action against the Taliban, television proliferation was promoted
to give voice the “enlightened majority”, whom he believed sympathetic to his cause. The policy
met warm welcome in the US civilian and political leadership. Amid giddy excitement at the
prospects of this development, substantial fund and expertise transfer was fast arranged to aid
emergent broadcasters. Conversation of the democratic potential of this media growth
preoccupied NED leadership in Washington, D.C. even during the incipient weeks.

The proliferation was concurrent with, and expedited by, a general relaxation on media
censorship. While PEMRA, Pakistan‟s censorship authority, has remained largely liberal –
notwithstanding the days of Musharraf‟s emergency rule – since, Pakistan‟s violent political
atmosphere prevents truly free reporting. Reports of beat-police manhandling television crews
filming their abuses of power proliferate, as does news of officials bribing journalists to
misreport.

The current fake educational degrees scandal has once again brought media freedom to the
forefront, with parliamentarians accusing the media of „irresponsible reporting‟, „targeting
certain personalities‟ and passing legislature to curb media freedoms. Media response too has
been vociferous: GEO‟s 9PM news hours was dedicated entirely to the issue for two consecutive
days, neglecting even to report a suicide attack that claimed 120 lives. Aag has been running a
satirical skit, at least once an hour, congratulating parliamentarians on reinvigorating a dying
fake-degree industry. The standoff seems to confirm that Pakistani television media is now a
significant political force.

However, despite its vigor, media outrage and ridicule have failed to precipitate civil society
action.

Converting Information into Activism

Larry Diamond‟s popular definition of civil society conceives it as the “realm of organized social
life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, and at least partially self-supporting, autonomous
from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules”1

It is among this segment that Diamond expected the availability of information to create an
“awakening of civil society”2. Carothers, too, expected a similar galvanization: “Opening up a
closed media will allow greater public scrutiny of poorly performing areas of state function.
Creating space for independent civil society permits advocacy groups to monitor and critique
state performance and work together with the state to offer new policy ideas.”3 Democracy

1
Larry Diamond, Civil Society and the Development of Democracy, p. 45
2
Larry Diamond, Civil Society and the Development of Democracy, p. 37
3
Thomas Carothers, How Democracies Emerge: The “Sequencing” Fallacy, p. 20

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theorists linking democratic emergence to free media are certainly not the minority. Dahl even
links the sustainability of democracy to “free and responsible”4 media.

Yet, we see an increasingly inured Pakistani polity: public apathy grows with the each exposé.
Chris Cork‟s recent opinion piece in The News termed this sentiment the This Is Pakistan notion,
the idea that the nation‟s political landscape cannot be imagined without corruption and
duplicity. Similarly, Ayaz Amir‟s recent piece in the same newspaper questioned the outrage at
the fake degrees scandal in the face of corruption pervasive at all levels of public office. On the
streets, the apathy is equally palpable: anecdotes of police rifling through the pockets of suicide-
attack victims circulate with only a resigned public sigh, and the fake degrees draw only
laughter.

Legal inaction against proven offenders – even in widely publicized cases – has become the
expected norm. The acceptance of dishonest public officials and the non-emergence of civil
society action results, at least in part, from the absence of what Diamond terms “the mobilization
of civic organizations and the close cooperation between them and the independent press.” The
fake degrees issue is a dramatic exemplar: despite admission of perjury, politicians are facing no
legal consequences.

Resignation to duplicity in the public office has eroded the distinction between politics and
corruption. The Urdu term, Siasat – politics – has become so tarnished that involvement in
politics is actively shunned by respectable citizenry. Anecdotally, the charter of major Karachi
school was recently updated to ban its students from „participating in politics‟, however defined.
The severely negative connotations Siasat now carries stymie hopes of civil society activism in
the realm of the established political.

However, while action remains absent in mainstream avenues, concerned citizenry has found
alternative routes of addressing state deficiencies resulting from public office abuse. These range
from the formation of environmental NGOs to the formation to alternative court systems, as in
rural Sindh.

This paper explores the emergence of a civil society alternative to mainstream political and civil
negotiations, and the role of the Pakistani American diaspora in the shape this movement is
taking.

4
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics