Daily Times

I have been seeing these circuses for long, and, believe me, these aren’t getting any better.

I mean, these circuses of the anchors masquerading as pontiffs or some such routine which they enact. They get together every so often to rain down a barrage of self-elevating edicts as if they were the flies on the wall.

Or, then, they perform as the proverbial clowns in a rather unsuccessful circus which has gone drab and boring.

They act it out alone and they act it out in groups. These days, you seldom see them one at a time. They come cosily together in virtual replication of Claudius’s words in Hamlet: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies/But in battalions”. This from the perspective of the viewers, of course!

When alone, they sit there gloating over their position facing the camera and, mostly, an array of grossly tarnished and complicit individuals answering their loaded questions and queries. The moment someone begins making sense, these anchor-pontiffs intervene with the specific intent to stall it and pass the buck to the next who starts blabbering innuendoes of his or her own, leaving the viewers trying hard to make out the mess as such responses have little relevance to the questions asked.

But, then, it is not always that they sit alone with a select group of clowns. They are also eager to be the clowns themselves, thus stealing back the little space which they were grudgingly granting to others who represent the political parties and other interest groups, or who can be classified as analysts, strategists and academics.

While there are multiple manifestations of the onset of ever more regressive tendencies within society, it is this kind of intellectual dishonesty which is at the core of the slump. It
is here that the seeds of degenerate lies and distortions are sown; which blossom over time, thus permanently impacting the growth of an entire nation

In such groups, it is a race for heaping praise on themselves with each taking turns to drive the others to shame in practising the art of sycophancy.

For those of you who have travelled widely, it may be difficult to draw parallels with any similar enactments in the rest of the world. Everyone has a specific role to perform and they are all professionally trained to do so. This role is not interchangeable with the role which other participants perform during the course of a programme. Much to the angst of the hapless viewers, the interchanging of roles here is a matter of routine: one moment, you are the anchor-pontiff and, the next moment, you sit across the table, acting it out as an analyst.

This is not specific to the media alone. It appears that, by and large, there is a dire dearth of competent people in this country because we see cronies and clowns anointed at every top position where they keep gaining in opulence and bank balances while the institutions they head keep declining across all possible spectrums — exactly the kind of objectives which they were appointed to achieve. These are gory symptoms of a paralysis which is rampant.

But, it is the utter lack of substance in these programmes which is really damning. There is a lopsided stress on the optics and mannerisms and virtually nothing by way of issues which are relevant at any given time. Take the case of the stage-managed sit-in by the militant outfits in Islamabad — it was blacked out by the media for a number of days. It is only when pressure grew from all sides that it finally started finding a rudimentary mention in newspapers pages and on television screens. There is very little which is in the media by way of merit. Every news bit is directed at more bounty for the pockets — of the owners and the actors both!

The programmes are mostly pre-planned. There is live footage available to prove that. No pressure is exerted by the anchor-pontiffs on the participants to come up with straight answers. As a matter of routine, they are provided ways and means to dodge past the question and get away with their fabrications. There is no effort to check the veracity of statements made either. Even palpable lies are passed, generating an impression of these being statements of truth.

In order to carry forth their pre-orchestrated agenda, the anchor-pontiffs limit their vision to a close circle of participants often garbed as senior analysts and academics. The reason is simple. While the anchor-pontiffs have a specific paradigm to carry forth, they can’t afford to have guests who would be more circumspect and inquisitive about the subject/s under discussion and may raise questions which would be perceived as obstacles in the way of fulfilling the agenda of the day. So, in a number of programmes, you never see anyone beyond some trademark guests, but they manage to come evening after evening as the ultimate wise people doing a service to the nation through their jaundiced sermons.

While there are multiple manifestations of the onset of ever more regressive tendencies in the society, it is this kind of intellectual dishonesty which is at the core of the slump. It is here that the seeds of degenerate lies and distortions are sown which bloom to full health over time, thus permanently impacting the growth of an entire nation.

Once upon a time, there was much noise of lists of journalists, available with the Supreme Court, who had been obliged by private entrepreneurs as also by the ministry of information using the secret funds at its disposal. One such list contained the money trails encompassing cheque numbers and amounts with bank details at either end leading to some of these self-anointed champions of media freedom.

In the light of the current quest for accountability, my request to the apex court would be to make this list public. After all, the presence of people in the media who put a price tag to their written and spoken words at the cost of integrity and credibility is a major detriment to the cause of inducting a level of transparency in the country and its institutions.

Pending the release of the list, however, the charade is carried forth and the band of anchor-pontiffs continues to rule the roost!

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute — an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan

Published in Daily Times, November 21^st 2017.