This particular government has made no secret of its dislike of free media right from day one, even though it could not have achieved the electoral success that it did without it. Yet ever since winning the election it has done all it could to undermine all forms of media. It even tried to arm-twist giant international social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to install servers inside Pakistan and censor all news that the state didn’t like, and only backed down when said companies threatened to pull out altogether, leaving Pakistan isolated in the world of connected social media. And even before the market tanked both print and electronic media outlets were suffering because of the government’s policies related to advertisements and non-payment of arrears, which led to thousands of job losses across the country. Now, the Lahore High Court (LHC) has stayed what was yet another attempt by the state to stifle free speech as Pemra pulled Channel 24 off air allegedly because of certain legal discrepancies; but a brief from the channel itself indicated that it was being shut down in light of all the “blackmailing” and harassment it was facing from the government. Surely this trend needs to be checked because the present government has, for all intents and purposes, literally launched an unannounced war on media. Strangely, despite benefitting from record media patronage for two decades, after becoming prime minister, Imran Khan has adopted the position that people should neither read newspapers nor watch prime time news programs. Clearly all this is because previously most commentators used to criticise the previous government’s mistakes and now they tend to talk about the PTI dispensation’s incompetence and failures, and the government does not like what it sees now that the shoe is on the other foot. That is why getting the usual phone call from some very important department, advising against carrying certain news items that would hurt the government, is commonplace in most news rooms in this country. The government does not seem to realise that trying to control free media in this day and age is a futile exercise, especially in the domain of social media. It should, instead of forcing through only the kind of news that makes it look good, embrace the media’s ability to promote free speech and strengthen democracy itself. That is the only way for governments to treat popular media in these times. g