Pakistan has already undergone three waves of COVID-19 infections so far, but the government is now warning of a possible fourth one this month, coinciding with the Eid-ul-Azha festival. With a mere 1.6 percent of the country’s 225 million people fully vaccinated, and many Pakistanis still reluctant to get their shots, those working at the frontlines are worried they may be next to get the virus.
In the media sector, at least 27 journalists have succumbed to COVID-19 in Pakistan since the start of the pandemic last year, according to the Press Emblem Campaign. That figure may even be severely underreported, owing to various taboos attached with contracting the virus. But while journalists are hardly the only frontliners being hit hard by the virus, industry insiders and observers alike say the media’s COVID-19 woes are just part of a wider malaise of subjugation of the sector by the government, as well as of neglect by media owners.
In the last three years, the Pakistani media has been experiencing a government-inflicted financial crisis that many say is meant to ensure the subservience of media houses. Media outfits are being downsized while many journalists have gone unpaid for months, even as hundreds of cases against media professionals are now pending in courts.
The government and the military — which actually runs the country — benefit from a struggling media, which since Pakistan’s creation has never witnessed such censorship and clampdown as it is undergoing today, according to veteran journalists who have worked under multiple military regimes. It was therefore no surprise when the government largely ignored the call of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) last March to vaccinate at least the field reporters.
Journalist Hamza Azhar Salam of The Pakistan Daily at a rally for press freedom. He says he and his team have faced death threats and have witnessed one of theirs be “severely physically assaulted.” (Photo by Hamza Azhar Salam)
In fact, there is no love lost between the incumbent administration and the Pakistani media. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Pakistan at 145 out of 180 countries in terms of media freedom, which the organization claims is curbed by the military. In the three years of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) government led by Imran Khan, Pakistan has dropped six places in RSF press freedom rankings. The financial crisis that was limited under previous regimes has exploded amid PTI’s rise to power, with 500 layoffs in eight months and two of Pakistan’s most prestigious, decades-old, magazines shut down by the end of 2019.
After coming to power in 2018, the PTI administration had immediately cut down government advertisements issued to media houses. While the government maintained that local media models were to blame as publications shut down and journalists were sacked across the board, many say the financial squeeze instigated by PTI is aimed at silencing critics and suppressing media freedom.
“The government is using advertisements to coerce media organizations to report on them in a friendly manner,” Hamza Azhar Salam, editor of the online newspaper The Pakistan Daily, tells Asia Democracy Chronicles. “The news organizations that comply with the government’s orders are alleged to receive a greater share in government advertisements while those who do not comply suffer financially.”
“In Pakistan, many news organizations rely on government ads for their survival so they are not in a position to defy the government’s guidelines,” adds Salam, who used to be a correspondent with Pakistan’s most-watched TV channel, Geo.
Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Those arguing that the government has actively silenced critical voices point to the growing list of high-profile journalists who are no longer on air or in newsrooms. These include Geo’s Editor in Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman, who remained under arrest for seven months last year over allegations of financial misappropriation in a land transaction.
“Mir Shakil-ur Rehman was arrested in (connection with) a 34-year-old property case,” Salam says. “This arrest instilled fear in all reporters associated with [Geo] and we could not report as freely as we would have had this arrest not been made.”
Many journalists say that court cases and even charges of treason have been used to keep a check on press freedom. Media persons allege that the all-powerful military establishment, which many accuse of propping the PTI and enabling it to win a compromised election, is practically running media houses, resulting in the censorship of stories contradicting the army’s narrative.
“Censorship in Pakistani media has increased significantly [and] a strong pro-state narrative is being pushed,” says Remshay Ahmed, a news broadcaster formerly affiliated with Indus News. “In Pakistan, [censorship] is equipped with ammunition that rebuts anyone who [dissents].”
“[For instance], news on the death sentence of the dictator who lived was broadcasted in ambiguous terms,” she says, referring to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf being handed the death penalty for treason, which was soon overturned.
“What particularly irks me,” adds Ahmed, “is how there are no stories on mass human rights violations that Pakistan experiences on a daily basis, especially with regards to religious minority rights. These acts of ‘presenting a good image of Pakistan’ are not in line with journalism ethics.”
Then again, the consequences of crossing the military could be dire. Over the past year, a former PEMRA chief was shot at, senior journalist Matiullah Jan was abducted, independent media person Asad Ali Toor was beaten up; all incidents were work-connected and apparently concerned stories about the military. TV host Hamid Mir and his family face death threats, largely for criticizing the army. Mir was recently taken off the air allegedly because of military pressure.
Nine Pakistani journalists were also murdered last year because of their profession, meaning that every seventh media person who was killed in 2020 was from Pakistan. That makes the country the third most dangerous in the world for journalists, in terms of death toll. According to the International Federation of Journalists, a total of 138 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 1990.
“My team [at The Pakistan Daily] and I have faced death threats,” says Hamza Azhar Salam. “A team member has been severely physically assaulted during the course of their work and we have also witnessed FIA [Federal Investigation Agency] Cyber Crime acting as a coercive tool to silence journalists.”
“Minimal protection is offered to journalists by the state and it feels that we are all alone,” he also says. “Even journalism organizations seldom react on individual attacks on journalists unless the journalists are well connected.”
The violence intimidates journalists across the board, with subjects especially deemed out of bounds including, but not limited to, Baloch separatism, the Pashtun nationalist movement, anything deemed critical of Islam, and indeed anything directly critical of the Army leadership.
“What can and cannot be said or covered has become ingrained in newsrooms,” says Aroosa Shaukat, a senior journalist who has worked in different capacities with, among others, three of the leading media houses of Pakistan: Jang, Dunya, and Express.” What’s worrying is that this has created an environment where journalists have to navigate through the cans and the cannots while trying to make their journalism meaningful.”
In the newsroom for field reporters of Express, one of the leading media houses in Pakistan. Many journalists like them lament that they now have to watch what they say while making sure they come up with truthful and meaningful reportage. (Photo by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid)
But what makes matters worse, Shaukat tells Asia Democracy Chronicles, is that media owners have often been all-too-willing accomplices of the government and military.
“The industry needs a course correction, and while this new dynamic has its own set of challenges pertaining to editorial decisions, journalistic ethics and more, it has forced the industry to consider a more immediate reflection of its work,” she says. “Censorship is more systemic, not just dictated by political but also financial interests of legacy media houses.”
She points out, “Salary delays and backlogs going up to months is not an out-of-the-blue or unpredictable outcome of a ‘financial crunch.’ Some media houses sadly operate on models that work on financially exploiting their own workforce while blaming the industry’s overall financial crisis for it.”
In fact, even in the midst of the pandemic, the PFUJ last year had to summon a countrywide protest against media owners for not paying their employees, with pending wages in some cases having accumulated up to 15 months. Many journalists have also resorted to registering cases in court in order to fight for their years-pending dues.
No wonder then that outside of providing face masks and hand sanitizers, Pakistan’s media houses have done little else to help protect their journalists from COVID-19. Media workers also reveal that their organizations haven’t entertained any individual pandemic- related requests, including helping out with test and treatment expenses, let alone providing vaccines. This is even though many of these media houses are backed by some of the country’s biggest business magnates, such as Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh and the Taseer family.
It seems that even in a pandemic, Pakistan’s journalists will have to go it alone, and unprotected. ●
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a Pakistan-based correspondent for The Diplomat.
