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The media and professional standards

Ghani Jafar1

I am tempted to make this presentation most wonderfully short and sweet by taking
the position that, given the state of professionalism – rather, the lack of it – in
Pakistan’s contemporary media by and large, the less said about the subject of
standards, the better. The beginning and the end of my humble presentation.

On a more serious note, however, it has to be recognised by old-time practitioners of

the media in this country that the media of today represents an all but complete
transformation from what used to be a passionate vocation of primarily agitated
bohemian souls to an industry.

To an extent, this sea change in Pakistan is but a dimension of the global rampage by,
what some bitter critics of the plunder have dubbed, market fundamentalists. That
should be hardly surprising. The free run that the forces of market economy have
enjoyed in much of the world ever since the collapse of the bi-polar global politico-
economic order some two decades ago, was bound to target the vehicles of mass
communication as a key element to induce attitudinal changes.

Western – primarily American – values, we were told, were now to reign supreme.
The issue here goes well beyond the scope of what is under discussion today. So,
confining oneself strictly to the given context, it has to be pointed out that those at the
receiving end of the media message had to be veered round to rank consumerism.

However, as indicated, insofar as Pakistan is concerned, this global market onslaught

is, mercifully, only partially responsible for the media metamorphosis. Even a cursory
look at the state of the media in India should suffice to illustrate how much more our
media’s professional standards would have been compromised had those in charge of
our national and strategic affairs brought this country as much in line with the

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The writer is Project Consultant/Editor, the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.
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American scheme of things as our once jealously nationalist neighbours to the east
have done.

So, the basic point here is that the transformation of the Pakistani media, both print
and electronic, into an industry still retains its essentially indigenous character. The
social, political, ethical and national identity elements of the media’s persona have
already been most adequately dealt with in the preceding part of this seminar.

I would, therefore, devote the rest of my presentation to taking a look at three aspects
of professional standards with reference to our media that, in my view, call for
particular attention.

In the first place, given our tangled socio-political experience of the past three
decades and more, the biggest blow to professional standards has been inflicted by the
increasing ingress the publishers have made into the editorial realm. In many
instances, especially in the Urdu component of the media, the publishers have
arrogated not just the nominal titles of chief editors and so on, but also the functional
positions of overseeing the editorial content.

Mr Zia-ud-Din, who gave a most insightful and thoughtful presentation in the

morning session and with whom I have had the pleasure of working in the dear
departed The Muslim in the daily’s heyday of the early 1980s – he in charge of the
commerce page and I of city – would surely bear me out that the publisher’s
exercising editorial control was simply unimaginable in those good old days.

The publisher-editor equation was central to the very scheme of a news publication. I
would not at this point count in the electronic media, for; the state-run PTV was the
only channel running in the country. In the case of The Muslim, again, after the
veteran editor Mr A. T. Chaudhry’s falling out with the publisher and walking out of
his office, the publisher’s quest to exercise increasing editorial control met with such
stiff resistance by the editorial as also the technical staff that the crisis ended only
with both Mr Zia-ud-Din and I – together with well over a hundred other staff
members – finding ourselves on the street. The rest is history; and best not narrated in
public, because, as they say, iss maen kuch parda nasheenon ke bhi naam aatey hain.
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We willingly gave the sacrifice because editorial freedom, professionalism and

upholding of the vocation’s standards came above all other considerations.

Now, in terms of professional standards, the publisher’s assuming editorial control

has been most deleterious on two aligned counts. The first is obvious. Without any
knowledge, training or experience of journalism, it would be futile to expect any
publisher – no matter how well endowed with the art of making money – to even
understand these standards, much less safeguard them in his realm of the media.

The second dimension has already been flagged: money-making. Industries are geared
to making money, the pursuit of which may not necessarily be quite in conformity
with such basic journalistic tenets as integrity and probity. Now, even in earlier times,
the publisher – basically, the investor – was anything but averse to getting returns on
the capital he, oh, beg your pardon, or she had expended on setting up of the business
plus at least the initial running costs till the venture was reasonably expected to start
making profit.

That, in a nutshell sums up, to my personal understanding, the basic difference

between where the media in Pakistan, say, in 1991 was and where it is today: from
being a business to becoming an industry, with early warning signs of its reaching the
corporate level as well. Looking at this veritable transformation from the standpoint
of professional standards alone, the difference lies in that, the editor then acted as the
keeper of professional standards as he performed the delicate task of balancing this
duty with the business interests of the publisher.

The tilting of the balance to the industrial advantage of the publisher in any given case
would inevitably be at the expense of professional standards to varying degrees.
Thus, what we have seen over the past two decades is a proliferation of media outlets,
quite a few of which are – all said and done – unabashed instruments of vile, deceit,
arm-twisting, even blackmail.
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Along with the rise of this industrial class of the media, many a crook in public life –
politics included – has come to wear the garb of journalism not only to acquire the
veneer of respectability but also a shield against any accountability.

The second aspect of professional standards with regard to the functioning of the
media in Pakistan has more to do with the general state of degeneration our country
and society has drifted into. The issues are basic and too well known to the present
informed audience to require any elucidation. Also well known is the harsh reality
that the process of socio-political deterioration is all-encompassing – no sector or
sphere can in splendid isolation thrive when everything else around, of which it is but
a part, is in a downward spiral.

With reference specifically to professional standards, this pervasive degradation has

resulted in such poor standards of education that as against the time – not too long ago
– when parents would encourage their children to read newspapers to improve their
language, particularly English, we have come to a stage where, with the exception of
just a couple of English-language dailies, the last thing a parent would desire the kid
to read would be a newspaper – or even watch local TV news or discussion slots in
English or for that matter Urdu – if the purpose be polishing up the child’s language
skills. “Go read a Jughead comic, kid,” would be my reaction if I detect a child under
my care read an editorial in … well, let’s leave it at that.

So much for such a basic tool of professional standards as the language: the vehicle of
communicating which is the very rationale of the media here as also elsewhere in the
world. I’m affair we would have to live with that. What can’t be cured, as they say,
must be endured.

And that brings us to the last of the three dimensions of professional standards
intended to be approached in this presentation. That, too, has to do with language –
rather, diction: the choice and use of words. This we all, whether in the media or
research and analysis of national as also international affairs, would have to stay most
vigilant about.
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The word still remains sacrosanct. Let us please not unwittingly allow the so-called
strategic communicators of the West mould our diction, thereby our thinking, our
approach, our attitude, our values, our ethics, to their ends. All of us need to wake up
to the reality that we are now well into the age of strategic communication – which,
deprived of its Western-coined, high-sounding nomenclature – is a legitimised, even
glorified, name for propaganda. It has gained acceptability as an academic discipline
as well.

It would be timely to remind ourselves how the worldview of nations of both the West
and the East was transmuted through a simple but ingenious interpolation of
“especially Muslim” in the definition of the word “fundamentalist” as provided by the
Mother of English Language: the Concise Oxford English Dictionary’s Eighth Edition
published in 1990. It has since been taken out – but not before doing the intended
damage.

How many of us give thought to what we are not only adopting but also disseminating
and giving respectable currency to, not just diction, but – mind you – the values they
project, by merrily employing such loaded terms in our written and spoken narratives
courtesy the media? Speaking purely for myself, why do we, for example, feel shy of
calling the valiant Afghans who have been giving great sacrifices for the liberation of
their foreign-occupied homeland for a decade now, freedom fighters?

Finally, a matter of no less concern by way of current professional standards is the

unthinking utilisation of Western news services creeds – the AP, Reuters, AFP, DPA,
what have you – by both the print and electronic media. Let us make no mistake about
it: these news agencies, by and large, almost always report a development with a slant
or twist so outright dishonest that it amounts to nothing but a lie plain and simple.

Then, through repetition, perhaps even in an exaggerated form, they establish it as

gospel truth. Goebbels could have learned a trick or two from these spin-master
editors. Of course, these strategic communicators would falsify things in accordance
with the respective strategic interests they would serve.
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To conclude, allow me Mr Chairman, to cite a personal experience. Sometime last

year, months after Iran and the group of P5+1 had held a round of talks at the
beginning of October 2009 in Geneva. The anchor at a current affairs programme of a
Pakistani channel interviewed me online for a segment on Iran’s nuclear issue. When
he referred to a deal purportedly having been made between the interlocutors at
Geneva, I tried to correct him by pointing out that what had come out of that
particular interaction was a proposal which could not yet be called a deal.

Poor chap; he was totally confounded. Why? All he had read on the subject were
these very foreign new agencies’ reports. He thought I must be crazy or something;
was not convinced by my protestations till the end of the show.

Now that is a most serious matter; impinging on the core strategic concerns and
interests of Pakistan. We have no choice but to develop our own unbiased
understanding of at least the major international and global strategic issues. We here
at the Institute of Strategic Studies do our bit to the same end, but it seems that the
need still remains for much closer interaction and collaboration between the
researchers and the media persons of Pakistan.

I most sincerely hope that this Seminar of today would go some way to that end.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.