Al-Jazeera TV Channel was forced by the Chinese authorities to close its China news operations. Its correspondent, Melissa Chan, an American, was expelled from Beijing after the government refused requests to renew her press credentials or to allow another correspondent to replace her.
The decision came out after the channel reportedly run a documentary showing the Chinese labour camps being used to punish dissidents and other troublemakers. The documentary called the camps a form of slavery in which millions of prisoners produce goods sold worldwide by major companies. China denies using slave labor in its prisons.
The Melissa Chan expulsion from China reveals a number of things; one, that probably rival countries use media persons for spying purposes; two, the foreign correspondents, TV channels or newspapers have to adhere to the media policy of their host countries; and three, the most important of all is that there is no free-for-all run in any other country, except perhaps Pakistan, where media certainly is supposed to adhere to the norms, ethics and laws.
PEMRA has advertised to give suggestions over a law-draft which has a number of things missing. Earlier the media itself has been trying to formulate codes of ethics with the APNS and CPNE help to implement on its own under a self-accountability mechanism, but it hit the snags due to internal differences. Now, referring to various articles by Hajirah Mumtaz, Nazir Naji, Ayesha Haroon, Sana Bucha, Amina Jeelani, Shafqat Mehmood and Ayaz Amir etc, all are agreed upon one thing that there should be a law that ensures discipline to the media codes of ethics, like every country, including China and even America is very much conscious over the reporting where even the top journalist Christina Amanpur had to face legal questions on certain reporting.
Whatever the political dimension of the Chan episode are, the fact remains that there are certain limits of reporting which needs to be adhered to. Why not Pakistan government has been able to shut down the BBC network in Pakistan and expel its correspondents from here, like the Chinese government did, puts on us the question mark. It is because of weakness on our part, but also lack of sufficient legal bindings, checks and balances on the media.
MARYA MUFTY
Lahore
