News organisations are putting their credibility on the line, writes Hajrah Mumtaz.
As Pakistan’s news media enjoy a period of relative freedom, there are indications that some fundamental rules of journalism are in danger of being left by the wayside.
The ethics of the profession appear, in particular, to be under threat of being forgotten.
First, there is the matter of verifying sources. To take the most recent scandal first, there was the embarrassment a number of media houses faced over the purported WikiLeaks story concerning Indian involvement in anti-state activities in FATA and other parts of Pakistan, as well as other information.
Just a day after some major organisations carried this as front page/headline news, The Guardian newspaper, which has access to all the cables leaked on this instance by WikiLeaks, indicated that it could find nothing in the cables to support this news item. In the event it turned out that the news item was not true, with the probability that it had been planted by some or any of the country’s various shadowy agencies that are believed to run a massive, behind-the-scenes propaganda machine. The story itself was credited to the Islamabad news agency Online, which is believed to have links with the intelligence agencies. Regardless of who exactly was at fault in either creating the news story or letting it through, the fact was that get printed/broadcast it did, and the organisations that carried it published corrections and retractions admitting that the veracity of the story had not been duly ascertained.
There are a couple of lessons the Pakistani media must learn from this experience. First, of course, there is the fact that stories must be checked. But beyond that, questions must be asked whether this story got through the filters so easily because it’s content was such that it reaffirmed the ideologies many in Pakistan have held for a long time about India and its designs on the country’s integrity – ideologies that have, not by coincidence, been popularised through means both fair and foul by the propaganda machine.
The truly worrying trend that is increasingly becoming evident in Pakistan’s news media, echoed by the fake WikiLeaks cable affair, is that some journalists and their organisations are forgetting media ethics to the extent of allowing personal ideologies and opinions to colour news reporting. On TV in particular, it has become quite normal to hear conjecture being passed off as fact, and sweeping sentences being pronounced as self-evident truths without any evidence – or only selective evidence – being presented.
The dangers in this ought to be obvious. It can lead to serious embarrassment for the news organisations, with questions raised about their credibility and standards of professionalism. Credibility is of crucial importance, for without it journalism is nothing more than a farce.
Yet even more dangerous is the fact that it misleads news consumers and fosters the creation of a society that is predisposed to listen to certain sorts of arguments and ideologies, and reject others out of hand. For example, continuous reiteration over decades, in the media and otherwise, that India is out to destroy Pakistan has given us a nation that is willing to believe just about anything bad about that country, and forget within a day gestures such as offers of aid it made for the victims of the recent floods. This, of course, is exactly what the propagandists desire – this is their entire reason for existence.
One would have thought that in a media landscape known to be infiltrated by propagandists and vested-interest parties, organisations and their news teams would be more wary of unverified material, or that from shadowy sources. That they are not is evident in the cited incident. Since it is not credible that any media organisation would put through a story that it knew to be false (if that is even a possibility then Pakistan’s media cannot claim any adherence to the ethics of the field at all), the only conclusion to be drawn is that the fake story struck so many chords – it said something everybody ‘wanted’ or already believed to be true – that it was never seriously examined at all.
That ethics ought to become an urgent and focal point of concern with Pakistan’s news media is evident in other instances as well. Earlier during the year, there was a case where a recording of a phone conversation surfaced on the internet concerning former ISI operative Khalid Khawaja, then in the custody of a group called the Asian Tigers. One of the persons whose voice was on the tape was a member of the Pakistani Taliban; the other, it was alleged, was a senior and influential journalist. The implications of this were far reaching, for the person gave the Taliban member information that amounted to Khawaja’s death warrant and he was, in fact, subsequently killed.
If it actually was the journalist in question, the matter of how deeply certain right-wing ideologies have infiltrated and become entrenched in Pakistan’s media must be examined. Bad reporting can go through not just because of an error, but sometimes because the person putting it through has an axe to grind, an agenda to sell. And that, needless to say, runs contrary to practically every concern about the ethics of the field.
In terms of journalistic ethics, some media organisations have also shown a regrettable tendency to forget the rules to which they adhered earlier. Take the rape that occurred in Karachi’s Defence area just before Christmas. For many years Pakistan’s media has followed the unwritten but important rule of never naming rape victims in order to protect their privacy. In this case, for inexplicable reasons, some newspapers not only gave the name of the victim but also published what amounted to reporters’ and policemen’s speculations about the ‘character’ of the victim, with many and serious aspersions being cast. This was entirely beyond the pale. While the newspaper that gave the most damaging specifics printed an apology, it cannot have done much to assuage the trauma of a wantonly maligned person.
Pakistan’s self-proclaimed defenders of the truth, the media, are making unacceptable errors and lapses of judgement. It is time to introspect and put our own house in order.
In November last year, major TV networks agreed upon a code of conduct to standardise professional guidelines, accommodate viewer concerns about excessive and gratuitous violence and counter state criticisms. Although these have yielded some fruit in terms of the coverage of scenes of violence and terrorism, problems are making themselves evident in numerous other areas. In my opinion, the greatest among these is the right-wing ideological slant increasingly taken by journalists and tolerated, even promoted, by their organisations. Beyond that, there are the questionable influences imposed by the rush for the highest ratings, the most advertisements and the largest viewership/readership.
But matters cannot sustain themselves in this manner. News organisations need credibility, and audiences are not stupid. The murmurs of discontent about the free-for-all that is Pakistan’s media landscape currently could grow into a raucous chorus, destroying the reputations and professional credibility of many a journalist or news outlet. News is not a commodity to be peddled but a matter of public trust. And freedom is meaningless without the freedom to face the consequences.
Hajrah Mumtaz is Features Editor, Dawn. hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
First published in the January-February 2011 issue ofAurora
The ethics of the profession appear, in particular, to be under threat of being forgotten.
First, there is the matter of verifying sources. To take the most recent scandal first, there was the embarrassment a number of media houses faced over the purported WikiLeaks story concerning Indian involvement in anti-state activities in FATA and other parts of Pakistan, as well as other information.
Just a day after some major organisations carried this as front page/headline news, The Guardian newspaper, which has access to all the cables leaked on this instance by WikiLeaks, indicated that it could find nothing in the cables to support this news item. In the event it turned out that the news item was not true, with the probability that it had been planted by some or any of the country’s various shadowy agencies that are believed to run a massive, behind-the-scenes propaganda machine. The story itself was credited to the Islamabad news agency Online, which is believed to have links with the intelligence agencies. Regardless of who exactly was at fault in either creating the news story or letting it through, the fact was that get printed/broadcast it did, and the organisations that carried it published corrections and retractions admitting that the veracity of the story had not been duly ascertained.
There are a couple of lessons the Pakistani media must learn from this experience. First, of course, there is the fact that stories must be checked. But beyond that, questions must be asked whether this story got through the filters so easily because it’s content was such that it reaffirmed the ideologies many in Pakistan have held for a long time about India and its designs on the country’s integrity – ideologies that have, not by coincidence, been popularised through means both fair and foul by the propaganda machine.
The truly worrying trend that is increasingly becoming evident in Pakistan’s news media, echoed by the fake WikiLeaks cable affair, is that some journalists and their organisations are forgetting media ethics to the extent of allowing personal ideologies and opinions to colour news reporting. On TV in particular, it has become quite normal to hear conjecture being passed off as fact, and sweeping sentences being pronounced as self-evident truths without any evidence – or only selective evidence – being presented.
The dangers in this ought to be obvious. It can lead to serious embarrassment for the news organisations, with questions raised about their credibility and standards of professionalism. Credibility is of crucial importance, for without it journalism is nothing more than a farce.
Yet even more dangerous is the fact that it misleads news consumers and fosters the creation of a society that is predisposed to listen to certain sorts of arguments and ideologies, and reject others out of hand. For example, continuous reiteration over decades, in the media and otherwise, that India is out to destroy Pakistan has given us a nation that is willing to believe just about anything bad about that country, and forget within a day gestures such as offers of aid it made for the victims of the recent floods. This, of course, is exactly what the propagandists desire – this is their entire reason for existence.
One would have thought that in a media landscape known to be infiltrated by propagandists and vested-interest parties, organisations and their news teams would be more wary of unverified material, or that from shadowy sources. That they are not is evident in the cited incident. Since it is not credible that any media organisation would put through a story that it knew to be false (if that is even a possibility then Pakistan’s media cannot claim any adherence to the ethics of the field at all), the only conclusion to be drawn is that the fake story struck so many chords – it said something everybody ‘wanted’ or already believed to be true – that it was never seriously examined at all.
That ethics ought to become an urgent and focal point of concern with Pakistan’s news media is evident in other instances as well. Earlier during the year, there was a case where a recording of a phone conversation surfaced on the internet concerning former ISI operative Khalid Khawaja, then in the custody of a group called the Asian Tigers. One of the persons whose voice was on the tape was a member of the Pakistani Taliban; the other, it was alleged, was a senior and influential journalist. The implications of this were far reaching, for the person gave the Taliban member information that amounted to Khawaja’s death warrant and he was, in fact, subsequently killed.
If it actually was the journalist in question, the matter of how deeply certain right-wing ideologies have infiltrated and become entrenched in Pakistan’s media must be examined. Bad reporting can go through not just because of an error, but sometimes because the person putting it through has an axe to grind, an agenda to sell. And that, needless to say, runs contrary to practically every concern about the ethics of the field.
In terms of journalistic ethics, some media organisations have also shown a regrettable tendency to forget the rules to which they adhered earlier. Take the rape that occurred in Karachi’s Defence area just before Christmas. For many years Pakistan’s media has followed the unwritten but important rule of never naming rape victims in order to protect their privacy. In this case, for inexplicable reasons, some newspapers not only gave the name of the victim but also published what amounted to reporters’ and policemen’s speculations about the ‘character’ of the victim, with many and serious aspersions being cast. This was entirely beyond the pale. While the newspaper that gave the most damaging specifics printed an apology, it cannot have done much to assuage the trauma of a wantonly maligned person.
Pakistan’s self-proclaimed defenders of the truth, the media, are making unacceptable errors and lapses of judgement. It is time to introspect and put our own house in order.
In November last year, major TV networks agreed upon a code of conduct to standardise professional guidelines, accommodate viewer concerns about excessive and gratuitous violence and counter state criticisms. Although these have yielded some fruit in terms of the coverage of scenes of violence and terrorism, problems are making themselves evident in numerous other areas. In my opinion, the greatest among these is the right-wing ideological slant increasingly taken by journalists and tolerated, even promoted, by their organisations. Beyond that, there are the questionable influences imposed by the rush for the highest ratings, the most advertisements and the largest viewership/readership.
But matters cannot sustain themselves in this manner. News organisations need credibility, and audiences are not stupid. The murmurs of discontent about the free-for-all that is Pakistan’s media landscape currently could grow into a raucous chorus, destroying the reputations and professional credibility of many a journalist or news outlet. News is not a commodity to be peddled but a matter of public trust. And freedom is meaningless without the freedom to face the consequences.
Hajrah Mumtaz is Features Editor, Dawn. hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
First published in the January-February 2011 issue of
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