Times have changed. It is not shoot-on-sight. It is shove, shut and shoot on tweet. The social media era has given the voiceless a voice. It has also given the faceless, a face. The tragic murder of Arshad Sharif, Pakistan’s ace anchor, has just sent this nation into an emotional earthquake. People are shaking. People are breaking. People are shattered. People are emotionally battered. This emotional eruption has taken everybody by shock. One indicator is media behaviour. Under instructions to shut and play down this incident, many channels just gave partial news trying to colour it as an accident. As the emotional lava of the nation erupted, channels were forced to cover it more openly and consistently. There is a mixture of profound grief, anger and disgust. This is a dangerous combo.
What happened to Arshad Sharif is not just a case of a gruesome murder. What happened to Arshad Sharif is not just a case of an outspoken journalist who crossed the red line. What happened to Arshad Sharif is not just a story that was bound to happen. What happened to Arshad Sharif is a case of a heart that does not feel. What happened to Arshad Sharif is a case of a mind that has gone blind. What has happened to Arshad Sharif is a case of a soul that has become dead. That is why continuous mourning and grief that is pouring out from everywhere. It is the complete heartless mercenariness that is aching the feeling hearts. This should not be shoved under the table once enough time lapses. This should be talked about, debated, and written about repeatedly till it gets to the core of the murder, the mercenary and the mystery. Some critical questions that need to be answered are:
From an anchor to a fugitive? This is a critical question. Why would an experienced top anchor settled with his family leave the country? The answer to that one is simple. He felt that he would not be able to voice what he wanted to without being shut down. His channel resisted for quite some time, but when it was shut down for a long time, and almost 4000 staff were on the verge of becoming unemployed, they thought that losing one person was nothing compared to the loss of total business. Arshad had already gone to Dubai and was operating from there. Even when he was fired, he continued his Vlogs. In fact, he became more open, more daring and more challenging for the people who hate being questioned or challenged. Thus, if shoving him out does not work, shoot him. The complete botch-up by Kenyan police, the horrendous mixed explanation by the government and then the circus by Faisal Vawda are part of this tragedy of errors.
The political issues, the political lingo, and the political consequences of such encounters have left a bad taste in the mouth.
The Bootlegger’s Shove-Try shove before you try shut. Based on this principle, find weak links. Hunt compromised items. That is the technique of the enforcers. As Arshad Sharif shooting pointed fingers in the “unpointable” direction, a quick-fix plan was hatched. Let us divert the finger to PTI. It will serve two purposes. One, divert the emotional angst of the public to PTI and also deter the public from going to the long march. The result was a fiasco. They chose Faisal Vawda to perform at the circus. The timing was wrong. Just a couple of days before the march. Just in the middle of the 9 pm news. Just when Arshad Sharif’s murder was engrossing the whole nation. After a rambling preamble of how close he was with Arshad Sharif and hinting and implying and declaring he knew “whodunnit,” he ended up saying there is going to be more killings and bloodshed in the long march. The bootleggers messed it up. The government made a hash of it. There were such obvious flaws that they themselves proved their own guilt. Imagine the government’s own PID i.e Press Information Department announcing formally that a PTI press conference was to be held. Imagine PTV and GEO giving it a live cut and coverage in the news bulletin. Imagine Nawaz Sharif hopping out of his London flat immediately after the presser and saying the narrative of Imran khan is smashed. Every single tweet done by their paid journalists before the presser looked so badly cooked that the public could not digest it. It flopped before it started.
The Historical Media Encounter- As the terrible impact of a fake Vawda media encounter reverberated, where even if some had doubts about what happened to Arshad Sharif also became sure, the DGISPR conference set the seal to this extraordinary sequence of shoot your foot. It was an obvious attempt at damage control. The fact that it was trying to beef up Faisal Vawda’s narrative did not help. The fact that it was directly answering and questioning political working raised so many more questions that the questions they raised seemed to get lost in the political translation. The political issues, the political lingo, and the political consequences of such encounters have left a bad taste in the mouth.
Why have the most horrendous attempts to harass, threaten, beat, and shoot the growing agitation of the public led by PTI failed? Are these not the same tactics that have successfully eliminated dissent in the past? The reason is threefold. Firstly, the governments/Prime ministers removed were under corruption scams. Secondly, the ensuing governments, which in most cases were the military, provided economic relief to the people. Presently, the substituting government has messed up the economy and made people’s lives impossible. And thirdly, the ability to shut truth by closing down media channels is limited as social media has no boundaries. This means that a very aware, awakened and angry public is not going to believe what they want them to believe. They are going to google, post, tweet, chat, and hashtag so much that their voice is going to drown down the monotone of PTV/TV channels and the deafening sound of the bullets. Sorry, Messers and Power Corridors, the Shove, Shut, Shoot strategies have reached their expiry date.
The writer is a columnist, consultant, coach, and analyst and can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets at @AndleebAbbas