 |
It won’t be an understatement to suggest that on most occasions watching Pakistani TV talk shows can be like experiencing an exhaustive roller-coaster ride.
Within a span of 50 minutes or so, the pendulum of moods, emotions and whole narratives in them, swing to and fro like a giant bell being shaken by an earthquake.
But as some viewers pick up on the resultant dichotomies that usually emerge from the many postures struck by the host and his/her guests (sometimes within a single sentence), one also realises that those spouting self-contradictory statements are doing so knowing well that what they are saying would hardly ever be challenged with facts.
Well, that’s news TV for you in the 21st century. Facts don’t matter. But rhetoric certainly does.
Take for example a popular talk show I watched last evening (April 9) on one of the largest private news channels in the country.
The host kicked of the show by rightly castigating the Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar, after showing a clip from the minister’s press conference held last month in which he had declared Islamabad to be a ‘safe city.’
Ever since that press conference, the safe city has witnessed two gruesome terrorist attacks that took the lives of dozens of people.
The host then turned to his first guest, a state minister in the current federal cabinet. As expected, the minister tried to defend Nisar’s claims by saying that the Interior Minister had actually said that making Islamabad safe (through security measures) would take a year; as such things usually take time and can’t be achieved with a flick of a switch.
Technically, he may be right. But one does wonder why when the PML-N was in the opposition (between 2008 and 2013), its members were not willing to give even a single second to the PPP-led coalition government to set things right regarding matters such as the law and order situation and terrorism?
No doubt the last government failed on many counts but I think it should also consider itself to be a tad unlucky because it wasn’t given the kind of a platform that the present government is being provided by the populist electronic media.
 |
Chaudhry Nisar: Unsafe claims. |
But that’s not the issue and the act of media outlets taking sides is not restricted to Pakistan alone. The problem, in this respect arises when a media outlet becomes an active party in the direct dialectics between political parties and state institutions.
For example, during the same show one of the guests was the head of an obscure religious party. I don’t even remember the party’s name, but its chief who was invited to the show had been one of the negotiators (from the state’s side) during the 2007 Lal Masjid episode.
But the show wasn’t about the Lal Masjid episode, was it? No, but the Lal Masjid episode is about Musharraf during whose regime military action against Lal Masjid clerics and their supporters was taken.
There is now ample evidence out there demonstrating that the local electronic media most certainly misreported the whole Lal Masjid fiasco.
Evidence also suggests that the fiasco was due to conflicting tendencies and views on the issue between the state and the government and how irresponsibly the electronic media tried to jump in without fully understanding the ground realities of the affair; and (more disturbingly) turning the whole matter into a cynical race for ratings. A reproachful race and sprint that was depicted as being some kind of a compassionate exhibition of journalistic bravado and bravery.
 |
A 2008 cartoon saterising the fickle nature of Pakistani media. |
But, again, the show wasn’t about Lal Masjid, was it?
Wouldn’t a person like the popularly elected MNA from Islamabad, PTI’s Asad Umar, been a more relevant choice as a guest on a show discussing the two recent attacks in the city?
But, of course, the show was not just about Islamabad being (or not being) a safe city. It eventually moved on to debate the statement of Pakistan’s military chief, General Raheel Sharif in which he (indirectly) exhibited his concern regarding the kind of language being used for General (R) Pervez Musharraf, who these days is facing multiple cases, including one for treason.
General’s Sharif’s statement in this respect has enough in it to be made into a talking item on TV talk shows.
That’s why the said show’s host also invited an experienced investigative journalist and regular TV personality who only recently exhibited his displeasure over the way the General alluded (in public and through a press release), his resentment towards those members of the government who have been castigating Musharraf at the drop of a hat.
Anyone with a democratic disposition would appreciate the investigative journalist’s appeal of not bringing rifts between the government and the armed forces out in public.
But as another experienced journalist (who had joined the show from Karachi), pointed out, how come those members of the media who are exhibiting such concern over General Sharif’s public statement, had no problem when the military (through a press release) showed its displeasure over certain clauses in the Kerry-Lugar Bill three years ago?
In fact even when the press release on the Bill (issued by the military’s media wing, the ISPR), was short, it was expanded and turned into some kind of a revolutionary, anti-imperialistic indictment against the last government by the media.
No one was asking why the ISPR was issuing press releases on political matters then. On the contrary, some very ‘democratic’ TV anchors began to explain the press release as an encouraging sign foretelling the fall of the government at the hands of the military.
Martial Law was not a concern then, but it is now?
 |
Not Kerry and Lugar |
Well, maybe those who did this have learned from their mistakes. But how can one learn from his or her mistakes, if they fail to first understand and then own up to the fact that they were mistaken?
I believe had the journalist from Karachi not been on the show, the dichotomy of supporting one ISPR press release while castigating the other would have never come up.
So when he did point this out, the pendulum of the show swung the other way and it would have swung even more had someone on the show also brought in the whole ‘Memogate’ saga.
Recently, a well-respected journalist, TV anchor and author, Sohail Waraich, claimed that he has it on good authority that the whole Memogate issue was nothing more than an elaborate farce.
Well, the truth is, one didn’t have to be a genius to see though the farce even when it was prevailing. And yet, all those concerned and bothered about General Sharif’s statement today, ran with Memogate like they had discovered Pakistan’s very own Watergate scandal!
The whole thing began with a few words spoken by PTI chief, Imran Khan, during his first large public rally in Lahore (in late 2011).
Shaken by the number of people Khan had gathered in the heart of the PML-N’s main vote bank, the PML-N leadership picked up upon Khan’s insinuation about how Pakistan’s then ambassador to the US was inviting US authorities to directly intervene in Pakistani politics. PML-N then ran towards the courts with a petition to prosecute the ambassador.
The ambassador cried foul and pleaded that he was being demonised and that he had done no such thing. But thanks to PML-N’s petition (that was gladly accepted by the courts), in came the electronic media, many of whose members wagged their fingers at the bewildered ambassador and judged him to be a traitor and guilty even before the actual trial began.
Of course, the trial went nowhere. The evidence being provided by the accusing party was always feeble.
 |
-Illustration by Sabir Nazar |
On the show I am talking about, guests lamented that it were Musharraf’s lawyers who were inciting a rift between the armed forces and the government.
Indeed, the former general’s lawyers have been rather loud and vocal, but firstly, why are they being constantly invited on TV (by the same people who think they are obnoxious); and secondly, have those lawyers hired to prosecute Musharraf, been any better?
One of the prosecuting lawyers was also prosecuting the former Pakistani ambassador to the US during the Memogate trial. He was a constant guest on various TV channels and was confident that he had enough evidence to bring the ambassador to book.
But almost comically his main witness, an obscure Pakistani-US citizen and businessman settled in the US (Mansoor Ijaz), failed to convincingly produce what he claimed he had (in the shape of text messages from the ambassador), to prove the ambassador’s ‘treachery.’ And that was that.
 |
Lost (con)texts: Mansoor Ijaz. |
The media and political parties that had made such a hue and cry about the whole thing just shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
Now we see the same lawyer locking horns with Musarraf’s lawyers on one TV channel or the other. Well, lawyers are paid to do this. It’s their job. So when and if they get an opportunity to present their points of view on TV, why would they not take such an opening?
But what does this suggest? A contradiction on the part of the electronic media. Many TV anchors are now complaining that Musharraf’s lawyers and the military’s high command are politicalising the Musharraf case.
The truth is, in this case at least, the chicken seems to have come before the egg. First of all, it has become a habit of many new-born (and sudden) democrats in the media to wag their fingers at Musharraf to prove their democratic credentials.
But I am surprised that a few senior members of the PML-N government have decided to do the same. Because they really don’t have to.
Nobody doubts the authenticity of their badges of democracy.
PML-N is a democratic political party. It came to power through an election and is ruling through an elected majority in the parliament. So, it surprises me when some of its ministers go haywire while discussing Musharraf.
 |
General Sharif. |
If the cases against the former general are in the courts, then why so much venom against him on the TV screens? Are Musharraf’s lawyers the only ones politicising these cases? Has General Sharif’s press statement been the trigger in this respect?
No. Like I said, in this case the chicken has come before the egg. I agree with the investigative journalist who, on the mentioned show, suggested that the cases should only be discussed in the courts.
But then what about things like the peace talks between the government and the militants in the north-west?
Should they also not be discussed (by the peace talkers themselves) on TV? Should they not remain a dialogue between the two peace committees without the committee members constantly being invited on talk shows?
If General Sharif’s statement should not have been made public, then how come it is okay to publically flaunt other sensitive issues in the media?
 |
Musharraf: Pakistan’s new punching bag? |
Musarraf has become a punching bag for those constantly being pressured and stressed by the worsening of whatever that is making Pakistan a country on the brink of some kind of an implosion.
He’s no hero as his lawyers would have us believe. But neither is he the kind of villain he is being imagined and portrayed to be.
Some politicians talk about solving the problem of militancy in Pakistan through dialogue and policies based on ‘truth and reconciliation.’ That’ll be great. But why not exhibit the same towards a fallen dictator who has already been dragged in and out of courts and constantly boxed in the media?
If we are to move on by reconciling and making peace with our turbulent past and by learning from our numerous mistakes, then let us do so across the board.