Daily Times

Pakistani mainstream media industry looks like a bubble that is going to bust any time. It, however, has been like this since 2002 when it was unlocked by the then president Pervez Musharraf. But of late, the country has been having a hard time adapting itself with social media. Finding a gap to fill many known mainstream journalists have set up online channels. Frequent are the cases when they upload the content they are not allowed to air on TV channels. The level of restrictions on mainstream media can be judged from the fact that an interview of a former president and the chairman of one of the country’s major political parties was recently put off air, while a former spokesperson of the TTP had enjoyed maximum coverage on our television screens.

It is also getting harder for journalists to express themselves on social media. Looking at their social media accounts and threads of tweets, it is not difficult to see that concerted efforts are on to silence them. An army of social media users, fake and genuine, swarm their accounts like flies the moment they say anything. In the case of women journalists, the smear campaign is more intense and abusive targeting their gender. Some self-claimed patriots start distributing certificates of patriotism, provoking violence against them. Nationality and religion are used as carriers of hate. The volume of violence has been upped so much, journalists have first-hand experiences of violence in the big and small cities of the country. Once again a centralised drive has been launched against journalists at an organisational level. A legal probe will help to find its origins and the actors involved in it.

All such attempts have been flatly condemned and promptly pointed out in media. The job of a journalist is to investigate and present before the people as many aspects of an incident as possible. Restriction in the way of information has never been an option, and it is a direct threat to democracy. Prime Minister Imran Khan is supposed to rise to the occasion and take action so that those behind whipping up of hate and violence against journalists are arrested at the earliest.

Such smear campaigns convey a negative message to the global audience, which is given to believe that free speech and freedom of expression are a threat to Pakistan. Building such a perception can never be the work of any patriot. Such a practice must be shunned for the sake of the wellbeing of the country. *