While Pakistan may have come out relatively unscathed from the tumultuous proceedings on the 11th, one thing it has clearly shown that our media only knows how to whip up a frenzy. While we do not know how the burgeoning civil-military confrontation will unfold in the upcoming days, one thing is for sure that many of our anchorpersons are not only waiting for a coup but actually cheering the military from the sidelines.
One has seen too much and heard too much from these ‘analysts’ to expect any impartiality from them. The way they screeched and beseeched the other day has clearly exposed where there loyalties lie.
How someone with such a pompous air of earnestness and an overly smug sense of righteousness could blame the civilian government of creating the crisis is beyond me? In a polity like ours, where no thing can come to pass without the establishment’s approval and the military has historically refused to stay in the turf that it has been assigned, how can one take the civilian to task for asserting themselves?
The civil-military imbalance in our country is the root of all political evils and till it continues and is hailed by the establishment’s sycophants, we cannot have a functioning democratic system and a media that is truly an arbiter of the system and an accountability mechanism for the powers that be (be they civilian or military).
Those media persons who hold a pro-military stand are entitled to their opinions and can dispassionately air them but they cannot be allowed to add fuel to fire and try to push the situation of the edge by their theatrics. If not objectivity, then a mere semblance of it, please.
ALI AMJAD
Karachi
