ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Monday informed the National Assembly that several innovative steps were being taken to improve the performance of the state media organizations to represent the national narrative at an international level.
Unlike the past practice of state media just projecting the ruling party, the incumbent government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had ensured to use state media as spokesperson of the country, the minister said while winding up debate on demands for grants related to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Division.
“Today’s world was a world of public opinion, now wars were fought through rhetoric, the more the narrative was accepted, the more victory would be determined. With the use of advanced technology and strengthening the state media with more allocations, we can effectively fight media war against enemies of Pakistan,” the minister maintained.
He thanked the Ministry of Finance for allocating enough funds to enable state media to meet the demands of the international standard. He added that a plan of refinements was being introduced in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and its departments to face contemporary challenges.
Fawad stated that the digitalization of official media, including the Associated Press of Pakistan, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation and Pakistan Television, would be initiated by August this year. He added that the functioning of APP would be on modern lines like any international news agency such as AFP or Reuters.
He said that PTV was being made into a full HD channel with having technology and programming of the modern era.
The minister said Pakistan had offered numerous sacrifices in the war against terrorism but past governments failed to articulate its narrative in an effective way through the use of media globally, adding, they did not work vociferously to create public opinion.
Fawad said media was an important tool in the states around the globe to help mould public opinion in their favour, and could an important role in promoting the narrative of Pakistan.
The minister said wars in the world were now fought through the victory of one’s narrative. Ironically, no heed was paid to that aspect in past, he added.
He said that recently an info-lab was captured through which it was observed that 845 fake websites were running against Pakistan while disseminating wrong news on sensitive subjects like Balochistan, Kashmir and so on. He informed that more than 300,000 tweets were shared from India’s city Ahmadabad.
He said all this was happened due to weak media policies of the past governments as they did nothing to build a positive image of Pakistan, nor did they take any significant steps in the realm of the media tactics used by enemies against Pakistan.
Rather than focusing on state media promotion, he said the former governments remained busy in political appointments in the state media organizations burdening the national exchequer.
He also raised a question on the performance of the External Publicity Wing saying that negligence of past governments and fewer allocations was the main reason behind its low performance.
He said that there was no threat to journalists and using this issue was actually part of international propaganda to defame Pakistan. He requested the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party to pass the Journalists Protection Act pending in the standing committee on Human Rights.
He made it clear that journalists’ lives were under threats in the tenure of the PPP as 32 journalists lost their lives in 39 attacks in their tenure while in Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s tenure, 14 journalists were killed in 18 attacks.
However, in the last three years of the PTI government, only eight attempts were made on journalists and all culprits were arrested after a thorough investigation.
On the occasion, he questioned why the Sindh government failed to disclose the names of killers involved in journalist Aziz Memon murder.
He asked the PML-N Spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb to apologize for running a campaign related to the Pakistan Media Development Authority Ordinance without confirming the authenticity of the concerned news as no such ordinance ever existed.
He stressed that fake news was primarily generated from three to four different places from India, which would then get a boost from Afghanistan, and would reach Pakistan to for petty gains.
He questioned why UK media had given high coverage to a protest in front of the Pakistan embassy and the interview of an organizer was also given coverage by top London media.
He categorically said all 250 local and 43 foreign channels were working with full freedom in the country. “However there should be unanimity on both sides about all such concerning issues so that we can jointly face the “nexus of evil” against our motherland.”
