EYE ON ETHICS

Mr. Alam is Lahore bureau chief of the news magazine The Herald.
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In countries like Pakistan, there is a lot to campaign about. Begin with politics and keep moving down the lane to law and order, the economy, foreign policy, education, environment, health and so on. The list is endless of issues and subjects that need immediate attention, and some of them certainly cannot get the focus they require unless someone campaigns for them.

Should the press get involved in such campaigns? For some, the answer is clear. “Some issues will never be addressed if the media do not highlight them,” says the head of an Islamabad-based television network. He does not want to give his name because he does not want to make his views publicly known. In his opinion, campaigning for social, cultural, political, economic and legal reforms should actually be a vital part of how media operate in a third-world country like Pakistan.

“Indifferent, inefficient and self-perpetuating governments need to be severely jolted to do something about the problems facing the state and the society,” he says. The media and the press are well suited to do this because “they have the ear of policymakers as much as they have faithful audiences and readers” among people. “The media, therefore, can trigger policy debates and create public awareness at the same time,” he adds.

But media seldom launch campaigns on their own. Newspapers and television networks lend a hand only when they see someone campaigning for something that media-persons and media organizations—individually as well as collectively—think should be promoted.

The lawyers’ movement

The most obvious example Pakistan affords of media entering and remaining in a campaign mode for more than a year is the lawyers’ movement. This involvement clearly shows that media can become an essential part of a political campaign if and when they choose to do so. This campaign also highlights the possibilities and problems the media in a campaign mode may have.

Apparently some of the implications of the media’s involvement in the lawyers’ campaign have been far-reaching if not downright harmful for the state and society. The lawyers started a movement in March 2007 when then president Pervez Musharraf suspended the then chief justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and filed a legal reference for his removal on charges of misconduct and corruption. After refusing to resign on his own, Justice Chaudhry took his case to lawyers across the country besides putting up a spirited defense against the reference in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

In less than six months, he was back as the head of the top court in the country. But even before his reinstatement, the lines had already been drawn for more battles to come – with media having openly declared on which side they stood.

In his fight against the presidential reference, Justice Chaudhry was projected by the media as a people’s judge who would put to right everything Musharraf had done wrong. The lawyers’ movement, later joined by a number of political parties mainly from the right of centre, was highlighted as the epitome of the people’s desire to change the country’s political system, its economic and foreign policies, as well as its social, cultural and religious ethos.

From championing an Islam-based legal system to social and economic equality, from democracy to poverty alleviation, from anti-Americanism to freedom of expression and movement, from the removal of ugly customs against women to traffic jams – Justice Chaudhry and the lawyers on his side were shown by television talk shows and newspaper commentaries as a one-man solution to all the ills afflicting Pakistan under Musharraf.

By the time the country suffered another, albeit brief—bout of military-led emergency rule in November 2007, thanks to the media Musharraf was evil incarnate – a Machiavellian dictator who could stoop to any low to keep himself in power—while Justice Chaudhry, his only nemesis, was an upright champion of democracy and people’s rights who would not hesitate to take on anyone and anything in his struggle to put the country back on the right track.

Battle lines remain despite changes

Since then, the players in Pakistan’s great game have changed, but the battle lines remain as firmly placed as ever between the forces of good and evil mainly due to the media’s projection of the political situation in the country as a fight between vice and virtue. In fact, the media are not even thinking of changing into some other mode, even though political and other realities in the country have changed quite a lot. For one, there is a totally democratic dispensation in place in Pakistan instead of Musharraf’s quasi-democratic military rule. But in the battle between good and the evil being played out on the idiot box and in news headlines, President Asif Ali Zardari has replaced Musharraf as being essentially vicious while his opponents—no matter if they have a very unflattering past—have assumed the mantle of virtue, aided and abetted by mainstream television stations and newspapers.

“It’s exactly this kind of pitfall that media must avoid,” says Asha’ar Rehman, the Lahore-based editor of daily Dawn. “Our job is not to sit in judgment. Our job is to report, analyze and comment. We are not working here to demonize or glorify people, parties, groups, ideas and activities,” he adds.

The black and white worldview of politics, society and state the media have been projecting in Pakistan and that is mainly based on religion-inspired interpretations, or misinterpretations of what is good and what is evil, “runs the risk of eliminating debate and dialogue”. It can “turn the media-space into a battlefield between people coming from the opposite ends of the ideological and political spectrums.” Or worse still, it will end up dividing the polity along dangerous fault lines.

Though Rehman understands and acknowledges the need for the media’s working in a campaign mode against social, economic, cultural and even political evils, he is sure that a free-for-all campaign is always harmful.

No witch-hunt

“The campaigning should have its limits. It should not become a witch-hunt. It should not turn into malicious and vicious propaganda against individuals, groups, their ideologies and their worldviews,” he says. He warns that “extended beyond limits, campaigning becomes biased and opinionated and ends up painting the opponents in black.”

In its worst form, Rehman says, campaigning brings in religion to “damn or defend” people and their ideologies. “Television, newspapers, reporters and anchorpersons take upon themselves the roles of clerics issuing decrees, condemning some to eternal damnation and conferring unconditional glory on others.” This holier than thou attitude, he says, makes media an arbiter rather than a mediator between individuals, groups and communities espousing different opinions, worldviews and ideologies. “It’s this that media must shun if and when it decides to enter the campaign mode,” he adds.

But, in his opinion, the media in Pakistan are already treading dangerous territory. “Religious edicts on keeping promises have become the staple of talk shows and newspaper columns after Zaradri reneged on his commitment to reinstate Justice Chaudhry,” the editor says. Such overreach, he concludes, undercuts any real or perceived social, cultural, political and economic good that the media can achieve through effective, focused and unbiased campaigning.

But for Arifa Noor, the Karachi-based editor of an English monthly, the media can never actually overreach in a country like Pakistan where too much is to be fixed in almost every sphere of life.

“If the media do not get involved in campaigns for the rule of law, for the removal of corruption in public life, for the cleaning up of the courts, for reforming the political and economic system and for upholding the people’s fundamental rights like the freedom of speech and movement, the performance of the state apparatus and the government will be even worse,” she says. “The media need to take the government on. Otherwise we will be stuck with complacent, incompetent and corrupt rulers,” she adds.

Anything but journalism

Is Noor’s observation valid even when such campaigns may result in tilting the political and social arena in favor of a certain type of politics and ideology? Will it still hold even when campaigning achieves the opposite of what it intends to achieve? What if media contribute to destabilizing the state and society by campaigning for a cleaner polity? In a fragile democracy like Pakistan, these are very relevant questions, though their answer seems to come from another country.

N Ram, the owner-editor of the Hindu, one of the widest circulated newspapers in India, deems campaign journalism to be synonymous with propaganda which he believes is bad journalism for being what it is: Propaganda. With the media in campaign mode, reporters are required to make “snap judgments” on all kinds of issues without knowing anything about them, he says. “Such careless treatment of important issues by the media should not be taken lightly,” he told a recent seminar in India.

In the final analysis, unqualified campaigning throws up uncertain, if not always harmful, results. To answer whether the media should engage in campaigns largely depends on another set of questions: Who is campaigning for what, how and why and what are the terms and conditions as well as the possible outcomes if and when the media join those campaigns? Campaigning can only be effective if the media have reasons strictly justifiable in media’s own professional terms. The media, therefore, should participate in campaigns only after properly equipping themselves with ethical as well as regulatory tools to avoid becoming biased and imbalanced. Campaigning is good if the media know what they are in it for and are aware that their internal core values should not be subjected to the dynamics of the campaign itself. All the rest is partisan politics—that is, it is anything but journalism.