When Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani Islamist wanted in the United States and India, led a kilometre-and-a-half long caravan of supporters on an anti-India protest march across Pakistan to the capital this w
When Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani Islamist wanted in the United States and India, led a kilometre-and-a-half long caravan of supporters on an anti-India protest march across Pakistan to the capital this week, the story was not aired by local TV channels.
Also absent from the airwaves earlier this year were images of the nearly 100,000 hard-liners who packed the funeral of executed assassin Mumtaz Qadri, hailing him a hero for killing a governor who advocated reforming Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws.
The blackouts are the most vivid examples of changing editorial behaviour prompted by a little-reported provision in Pakistan’s National Action Plan, a counter-terrorism strategy that in effect bans broadcast media from covering Islamist militants.
But in a country with a fast-growing but still young broadcast media, Pakistani critics worry that rules intended to fight militancy will spill over into wider limits on criticism of the government or powerful military that could undermine a fragile democracy.
“Projecting militants is undesirable but a blackout does not serve the public interest,” said Raza Rumi, a Pakistani broadcast journalist who is currently a scholar-in-residence at Ithaca College in the United States.
“For public accountability it is important that carefully edited information on militants is aired so that the public can assess the efficacy of state operations against terrorism.”
Pakistan announced the 20-point National Action Plan after Taliban gunmen attacked a military-run school in the north-western city of Peshawar in December 2014 and killed 134 children and 19 adults.
The plan’s main thrusts include expanded counter-terrorism raids, secret military courts and the resumption of hangings.
But it also contains clauses banning “glorification of terrorism and terrorist organisations through print and electronic media” and calling for “measures against abuse of internet and social media for terrorism”. Under the plan, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority has sent dozens of warning letters to TV networks in recent months, and imposed fines for airing content that incites religious hatred or promotes violence.
This included fining a channel whose host likened members of the Hindu minority to “dogs” and issuing warnings to a popular news station that interviewed a woman who said she had gone to Syria to join the Islamic State.
Pemra chief Absar Alam, a former journalist, said banning such content was not censorship but rather “a call to be responsible”.
Many journalists in Pakistan, however, support the blackout. “Media is oxygen for militants,” said a former managing director of state-owned Pakistan Television.
