Daily Times

Two journalists were shot dead in separate attacks in Karachi within 24 hours last week. Worryingly, 14 deaths of journalists in 2014 were reported by the International Federation of Journalists. The motive once again is not clear but the Taliban, security forces and political parties have all been linked to the murders of some journalists. Last year, Hamid Mir, the anchor of a top political talk show, was shot and injured in Karachi, just weeks after columnist and analyst Raza Rumi survived an attack in the eastern city of Lahore, an attack in which his driver died.
The media is a powerful communication device that can either be used for educating and informing people or can be exploited for diverse intelligence activities and operations. At the same time, intelligence agencies make use of and exploit the media for its various operations. Whether this is true or not, it remains clear that the media has a significant role in the game of disinformation and defines the basic relation between intelligence and the media today. It is a widely held fact that some intelligence agencies make use of the media to run disinformation operations for different purposes such as drawing attention to certain topics and using false information to cause a desired reaction among the target audience or rather provoke a reaction that would serve the initiator of the disinformation’s interests.
Intelligence agencies work on the principle of ‘networking’, coordinating, developing relations and connections, and the spy agencies seem to be doing this really well. It has always been said that the lesser an intelligence agency is in the limelight and is discreet, the more efficient it is. Intelligence agencies are excellent in Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Communications Intelligence (COMINT) and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT). But still, even today one cannot underestimate the role of HUMINT, the source of human derived intelligence: the agent.
The question is: do journalists work hand in glove with intelligence agencies and why? The answer has now been provided by the leading newspapers of national media itself. Many journalists secretly carry out assignments for our intelligence agencies. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the agencies are tacit and some are explicit. There is cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provide a full range of clandestine services, from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with the case officer and the subject. Reporters share their notebooks with the agencies. Editors share their staff and some of the distinguished television anchors who consider themselves tsars of the media find that their association with the agencies has helped their work. In some instances, agencies’ documents show that journalists have been engaged in performing tasks for the agencies with the consent of the managements of leading media and news organisations.
The history of the agencies’ involvement with the press continues to be shrouded by the favoured policy of obfuscation and deception for the simple reason that the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence gathering. Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence the media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organised by Cord Meyer and Allen W Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA. The organisation recruited leading US journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organisations, and magazines as fronts. As it progressed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA.
The agencies have cut back sharply on the use of journalists primarily as a result of the list of 282 journalists who received payments and gifts from the secret fund of the information ministry, which was made public following a Supreme Court (SC) order on April 11, 2013 by the former Chief Justice (CJ) Jawwad S Khawja. It remains true that some journalism operatives are still posted at home and abroad, and further investigation into the matter would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships with some of the most powerful organisations and individuals in journalism.
There are well-known columnists and television anchors whose relationships with the agencies go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. Foreign countries also invest in Pakistani journalists to keep them on their side in this fourth generation warfare. This is a game of control with fatal conclusions. It is dangerous and is called media manipulation.
In the old days, few were afraid when it came to media manipulation and little was known about the level of threat between the propagandist and the hustling publicist. They were still serious threats but mindfulness worked as a clear and simple defence. Today, the news media has evolved itself as the most powerful and influential political force. With a plethora of television talk shows and the web-driven media cycle, nothing can escape exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and simplification. More convincing than the truth, media manipulation currently shapes everything one reads or views on television screens.
To deal with these manipulations, we must change the incentive. These journalists fight a moral war against their own fraternity and profession and it is not just a matter of who is manipulating the journalist; it is much graver than that. It has direct implications on the ethics of their profession. Critics acknowledge, however, that such contracts will persist as long as the agencies continue to use journalistic cover and maintain covert affiliations with individuals in the profession. But even an absolute prohibition against agency use of journalists would not free reporters from suspicion.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com