The selective outrage of our national media has been profiled many a time in this very space, the most recent being the differentiated reaction that was given to the unfortunate incident of the Nato attack on an army checkpost in Salala, Bajaur and the abduction and murder of 25 soldiers of the Frontier Constabulary by the Taliban in Waziristan.
Another example of the attitude emerges in the reaction given to the other day’s attack in Dera Ismail Khan. This wasn’t even a rustic border outpost but the offices of the District Police Officer in the biggest town of a settled area. Eight people – jawaans and one civilian – died in the attack, during which the four attackers were also killed. The national media gave the incident but a casual glance and moved on.
The lack of interest in the incident can be explained, broadly, by three sets of reasons.
The first is that the media isn’t really interested in the goings-on of anything outside Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. On better days, this list is also extended to include Faisalabad, Hyderabad and Multan. A limited coverage of the peripheries is eaten up by central and northern Punjab. This is a result of the dual economic reasons of the advertisers being more interested in the middle-class and elite residents of these cities and, secondly, because of the costs involved in out-of-station reporting.
The second reason is the general response towards civil departments. Among the two FCs, it is the Corps, not the Constabulary, that is picked up by the media. Similarly, an attack on the army is covered more effectively and with more sympathy than one on the police. Consider: in the attack on the police training college in Manawan outside Lahore, the media railed against the lax security despite the visible lack of funds that didn’t even allow the college to repair its boundary wall. Contrast this with the attack on the GHQ, the most heavily fortified building in the country, where TV anchors were full of praise of how the jawaans managed to overpower the assailants in “just one hour”, an already puerile claim that was proved, later, to be factually incorrect as well.
And third is the differentiated reaction that is a result of how we are playing the great game in Afghanistan. Attacks by the extremists, especially up north, are allowed to slide by, not only consciously by the media but also by the powers that be, who make it difficult to get the data and coverage of such incidents.