From Terrorism to Television

Dynamics of Media, State, and Society in Pakistan

Qaisar Abbas, Farooq Sulehria

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000167368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Étude des média

This book unpacks the media dynamics within the socio-cultural, political, and economic context of Pakistan. It provides an in-depth, critical, and scholarly discussion of contemporary issues such as media, state, and democracy in Pakistan; freedom of expression in Pakistani journalism; Balochistan as a blind spot in mainstream newspapers; media control by state institutions; women and media discourses; TV talk shows and coverage of Kashmir; feminist narrative and media images of Malala Yousufzai and Mukhtaran Mai; jihad on screen; and Osama bin Laden's death on screen, to understand the relation between media and terrorism. The book covers diverse media types including TV, radio, newspapers, print media, films, documentary, stage performance, and social media.

Detailed, interdisciplinary, analytical, and with original perspectives from journalists as well as academics, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of media studies, Pakistan studies, politics and international affairs, military and terrorism studies, journalism and communication studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest general readers, policy makers, and those interested in global journalism, mass media, and freedom of expression.

1

Walking in circles

Democracy, state, and freedom of expression in Pakistan

Qaisar Abbas and Farooq Sulehria

The tagline that appears on the title page of the Washington Post, “democracy dies in darkness”, perfectly signifies the existing symbiosis between the media and democratic norms. Although the claim that mass media act as a catalyst to modernity and progress for societies might be an exaggeration, most flourishing democracies in the twenty-first century also demonstrate a high level of freedom of expression. As media are no longer limited to a privileged group of people in this age, a free and thriving media system in any society signifies the level of its political openness, intellectual diversity, and cultural maturity. How true is it about Pakistan, a country shuttling between democratic transition and creeping authoritarianism?

Most international media thinktanks and human rights organisations have been labelling Pakistan as a nation where the mass media are moderately free. On the other hand, until the change of government in 2018, the mass media in Pakistan also offered “a robust media landscape; among the most dynamic and outspoken in South Asia” (Jan 2015). Since 2018, there has been a creeping censorship and attacks on media freedoms in Pakistan, yet the media in Pakistan courageously assert their independence in many ways. This dynamism and media freedom, however, have been achieved after a long history of struggle for free expression by journalists, media workers, and intellectuals during the last 70 years of the nation’s existence.

This introduction explores the complexities of the political process as it hinders or fosters freedom of expression in Pakistan. It synthesises media dynamics against the backdrop of a schizophrenic political process within the context of historically determined milestones. First, it offers a theoretical framework, followed by a historical review of media censorship as a sign of state hegemony. After a detailed discussion on the growth of media structures and the transforming nature of freedom of expression, the final section offers an overall analysis of media polemics and implications. The aim is to provide a context to the debates in the chapters that follow.

Theoretical framework

We claim that a media system in a given country is grounded, as a rule of thumb, in its polity. It is, therefore, imperative that any theoretical perspective to analyse a media system¹ considers the character of the coterminous polity. Hence, we begin by characterising the Pakistani state. Pakistan as a nation-state offers some peculiar characteristics that differentiate it from other nations in South Asia, the region it shares cultural and historical legacies with. The very fact that the Pakistani state was created based on culture and religion different from the rest of the Indian territories makes it an ideological state. Hamza Alavi, in proposing a theory of the Pakistani state (Alavi 1972), argued that both primary and secondary versions of Marx’s theory of state offer a reasonable conceptual framework to comprehend the nature of the Pakistani state as such. The primary version of this theory defines the modern state as “the organized power of one class for oppressing the other”. Here, the state becomes an instrument in the hand of one class, which is dominant politically and economically. In another explanation, the state becomes a protector of economically and socially determined classes, not an instrument to suppress classes.

To Eric Rahim (2014), this Marxist definition of state can be applied to post-colonial states, also referred to as the “Bonapartist” state historically, referring to Napoleon Bonaparte who became patron of the dominant class in France. Also, for Alavi, the post-colonial state is relatively autonomous, mediating between the competing interests of foreign capital, the internal bourgeoisie, and the landed class. By doing this, the state works to preserve the social order on behalf of these three interests, safeguarding their stakes in private property and the capitalistic mode of production.

As a significant aspect of the theory, the internal system in Pakistan has become subordinate to a powerful military-bureaucratic institution. This is primarily due to, among other factors, the legacy of the former colonial system. Thus, this developed and relatively autonomous nature of the powerful military-bureaucratic institution tends to mediate the interests of these classes. Since other institutions are so weak, they allow this domination. In short, Alavi conceptualises the “overdeveloped state” as a top-down, centralised structure apexed by a triumvirate of feudal lords, the local bourgeoisie, and metropolitan capital. Furthermore, the military exploits the system of parliamentary democracy to dominate the state, and, consequently, the current dominance of the military-bureaucratic oligarchy benefits neo-colonialism in post-colonial Pakistan (Alavi 1972).²

Rahim (2014) also observes three factors that help comprehend the nature of the Pakistani state. First, the predominant socioeconomic structures in Pakistan were mostly tribal or feudal. While two provinces, Khyber Pakhtunkhwah and Balochistan, were predominantly tribal societies, the other two, the Punjab and Sindh, were primarily agrarian and feudal. Subsequently, the feudal aristocracy and Sardars (tribal chieftains) have become the dominant classes to rule the country in post-colonial Pakistan. Second, these areas historically did not experience the democratic process as compared to the other Indian regions. In the absence of this political and administrative experience, individual leaders became more central to the political process than the political parties that should have been at the centre of the democratic system. The political games after independence in 1947 were primarily played by this feudal aristocracy that promoted kinship, baradries (caste-based brotherhood), cronyism, and various kinds of socioeconomic fraternities.

However, criticising Alavi’s (1972) notion of the “overdeveloped state”, Zaidi (2014), while arguing that there is no feudalism in Pakistan, assigns the media a centrality in the transformed political economy of the Pakistani state.

No doubt, Alavi’s thesis of overdeveloped state was the predominant model in the 1970s. However, some scholars believe feudalism has not been a critical force lately as its influence has been curtailed drastically due to the fast-changing socioeconomic conditions. Although still a vital force, feudalism has been weakening since the 1990s.

Sulehria (2019: 241–255), proposing an alternative explanation, argues that although the media have become an important institution, they hardly occupy a central place in the state structure now. Sulehria contends that the current Pakistani state can be best described as a praetorian state, while the media are dominated and managed by three institutions: the military, commercial interests, and the Urdu-Punjabi middle class.

Within the above theoretical context of the nature of the state, it should be easier to grasp the dynamics of media and society in Pakistan. Here, the predominant military-bureaucratic oligarchy, with the full support of the feudalistic structure and commercial interests, controls political, economic, and cultural institutions, including the mass media and education. Its primary function is to protect the interests of the dominant classes. As this alliance rules the country using democracy as a political umbrella, the mass media primarily serve the military-bureaucratic establishment, not the masses. There are several models of media systems that can be reviewed and analysed within the context of the contemporary nation-state of Pakistan.

For instance, Bilge Yesil (2014) refers to Hallin and Mancini’s “polarised pluralistic” model of the freedom of the press, which proposes three significant strategies to manage and control media, including clientelism, political parallelism, and state intervention. First, by promoting clientelism, the state becomes a patron of controlling cultural resources of a society including the mass media. State clientelism protects the dominant institutions and classes to promote their viewpoints, predominantly through the mainstream media, effectively rejecting the counter-narrative of the marginalised sectors.

The process of political parallelism allows media outlets to work in collaboration with their favourite political parties, support them, and serve their purpose. This alliance serves media organisations and political parties at the same time. Political leaders and parties within the alliance get space in the media, and media organisations get economic and political perks.

The third strategy of state intervention becomes a practical approach where the government uses different tactics to mould media messages, including direct instructions, legal justifications, and threats to restrict media content (Hallin and Mancini 2012). In several cases, this also leads to self-censorship by media editors and reporters to avoid economic and legal repercussions. This pattern of direct intervention, however, is fast changing because of advancing media technologies and the increasing awareness of civil rights, as we will see in the following section.

In contrast to the traditional model of censorship, Yesil also notes the new model of “dispersion and displacement”, where soft or hard censorship is imposed through a wide range of state apparatuses, rather than by a single government agency, which has been the traditional method. Formal, informal, direct, and indirect methods are used to employ internal self-censorship and impose state laws to mould media content.

Contrary to the above postulations of censorship and freedom of expression, several theoretical propositions also focus on how the media are becoming powerful, especially where democratic systems are in the process of maturation. Freedman (2015), for instance, talks about four paradigms of media power within the context of how media systems function: consensus, chaos, control, and contradiction. While the consensus paradigm explains mechanisms of western democracies where media become part of creating consensus, the chaos paradigm also notices the emergence of social media which have challenged the traditional control paradigm by shifting power from media owners and the state to the ordinary citizens who can communicate in their own time and space as they wish. It has altered the communication process from top-down to bottom-top, where citizens take the central place.

The control and contradiction paradigms, combined, better explain the dynamics of media in Pakistan which are controlled by the state and non-state institutions. However, within the same system, the media also tend to contradict the traditional patterns of control and power by providing space to the marginalised segments of society. Although most of the time the media outlets serve the dominant establishment, they occasionally give voice to the poor, minorities, and exploited groups of the society. When issues such as honour killings, missing individuals, and child labour make their way into the media, they are part of this contradiction within the media system. Additionally, this arrangement also works because media outlets need to maintain a façade of credibility, and there are media workers who, despite the political economy of a given media system, bring in dissenting voices.

Based on the above discussion, we can offer the following propositions as a theoretical framework for this volume:

1. As Pakistan has become a praetorian state, the military-bureaucratic oligarchy has become the sole protector of dominant interests in society in alliance with the feudal aristocracy and commercial interests.
2. The mass media, in these circumstances, have become an effective tool in the hands of this ruling oligarchy, mainly to serve the powerful military, commercial interests, and the Urdu, Punjabi middle class that manages the media systems.
3. The “dispersal” and “replacement” model can also explain the process of media censorship, where, in addition to the establishment, multiple state and non-state agencies use numerous strategies to mute the media voice to promote their narrative. In addition to the traditional and modern approaches of censorship employed by the civil and military establishment, there are several non-state institutions and vested interests that pose severe threats to free expression and media autonomy in Pakistan.
4. Media censorship utilises the strategies of clientelism, political parallelism, as well as direct government intervention. Media outlets are only partly independent as they are aligned with political parties and the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• List of illustrations
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1. Walking in circles: Democracy, state, and freedom of expression in Pakistan
• 2. Journalism in the service of Jihad
• 3. Jihad on screen: The role of jihadi drama and film and their press coverage, 1979–89, in Islamising Pakistan
• 4. The politics of pity and the individual heroine syndrome: Mukhtaran Mai and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan
• 5. TV news as merchant of war hysteria: Framing the Kashmir conflict in India and Pakistan
• 6. Performing piety and sexuality in Pakistan
• 7. The cost of doing their job online: Harassment of women journalists
• 8. Counter-terrorism perspective and the Pakistani TV channels: A case study of Osama bin Laden’s assassination
• 9. The journey of Pakistan’s Oscar success: A Girl in the River: An insider’s account
• 10. What freedom?: Reflections of a working journalist
• 11. Covering the periphery: Balochistan as a blind spot in the mainstream newspapers of Pakistan
• 12. Interviews with I. A. Rehman, Mehdi Hasan, and Eric Rahim: Freedom of expression and sham democracy
• Index