The recent summons by the Supreme Court of the representatives of the Interior Ministry, the FIA and the Islamabad Police in a petition on the disappearance of journalists is perhaps going to take the lid off a pattern of oppression of the press in which the proposed Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) law will likely play a key role. The new PMDA would be created by the merger of various government regulators into one behemoth. It was initially denied by the government that it had any such plans, but it has now come out with a regulatory mechanism that merely gives the government control, by the threat of punitive action on various vaguely defined charges. That vagueness is a sure indication of misuse, as that has been the use made of such clauses. The new PMDA is apparently a pet project of the present Information Minister, for it first reared its head during his previous stint at the Ministry, but was shelved when he had removed, and only revived when he returned.
The government has also not resisted the temptation of exploiting the economic difficulties that have hit the media, the print media in particular, because of the effect of electronic media platforms, which have caused a crisis in the print media, thereby causing government advertising to loom larger in media houses’ calculations than before. The government’s use of this leverage has actually been the less unacceptable aspect of its pressure tactics, which has extended to pressure on distributors, where entire neighborhoods have been banned for offending media. More sinister have been sudden disappearances and violence has been offered to offending journalists.
The government has been sacrificing much of the international goodwill it has by developing a reputation worldwide for oppressing the press, for refusing to take criticism. The particular problem of this regime persists, where it is not known where the goalposts are, so that the ultimate aim of any controller of the media, to get journalists to practice self-censorship, is impossible. The Supreme Court has demonstrated in other cases a firm resolve to uphold the rule of law and fundamental rights. Freedom of press may be essential for journalists, but the real beneficiary will be society was a whole.
