How about a 180-degree turn for the media’s lens?
THIS follows a bit of a hiatus for the Media Watch column. And what a better time to resume it than with the first edition of this new avatar of Pakistan Today?
I would like to restart this column, not with some take down of a talking head on some talk show (which is the bulk of what the future editions of this column are going to be) but with an illustrative tale regarding the media – one that happened in Islamabad recently. This is a story that the post-modern types would classify in the meta category, like a snake eating itself.
So, here goes. One of the reasons one sees rising prosperity in a number of segments despite abysmal GDP growth figures is our huge, undocumented cash economy. The times are good for some but there’s no paper trail to show for it. There are randomized visits by the taxman under the self-assessment scheme and that’s it. Margins in the restaurant industry, for instance, are huge. We’re talking profits of the textile mill proportions. But the taxes they pay aren’t a fraction what are due.
Well, on one of the randomized visits by a tax team to a popular coffee house in the F-6 Markaz in Islamabad, the prosperous owner of the establishment was aghast. How dare these individuals – whose job is to have a look at the books of individual businesses – have a look at the business itself? So the owner, a well-connected lady, calls a higher-up in a television channel, who promptly sent a camera crew to the coffee house. But what would the reporter say in his report? Since there was nothing wrong in what the taxmen were doing, the TV crew could always play up the “tax amlay ki badtameezi” card.
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“The national media can dish it out but not take it. You would have noticed the omerta in the Pakistani media amongst themselves. Don’t say anything against us and we won’t say anything against you.”
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Under siege by the media team, the income tax inspector calls up his superior officer about how difficult his work was becoming. The officer decides to dig in his heels. Do your thing, he told his man, while I send in reinforcements. What followed (the fascinating bit of this anecdote) wasn’t a proper plan by the officer but was an intuitive flight of fancy: he sent a camera crew of his own to the site. Just a couple of guys recording those who were recording their own guys. Were they doing it for a TV channel? Of course not, they were income tax employees. Were they doing it for their own records? Maybe, but the tax department probably does not maintain video records, only written ones. Why were they filming this scene of others filming a scene, then?
Well, whatever it was, it worked. The private TV team was nervous at first. And then made a run for it. They dashed out of the coffee house much quicker than they came in. Why? No reason in particular.
Is there, dear reader, an irony you find in this account? Yes, but as far as extracting a message from this story is concerned, irony is a low-hanging fruit. The meaning is far, far deeper. One that goes into the very nature of how subjects interact with the media that is inspecting them.
The great doyen of media, Marshall MacLuhan, points out the common misrepresentation of the classical myth of Narcissus. He had not, says McLuhan, fallen in love with himself and stayed staring at his reflection till he died. It was his inability to recognize himself that had numbed him. In his own words: “Technologies create new environments, the new environments create pain, and the body’s nervous system shuts down to block the pain.” What, really, did the TV channel crew “see” when they saw this other team filming them?
We might laugh at the behaviour of the private TV crew. What were they scared of? But what, exactly, was the tax team scared of? What is it with the camera and the presence of a reporter that throws us off?
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“The deification of the sahafi baraadri, which erroneously calls itself the fourth pillar of the state, can only be reversed if the media takes on the media.”
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The national media can dish it out but not take it. You would have noticed the omerta in the Pakistani media amongst themselves. Don’t say anything against us and we won’t say anything against you. This was broken only recently in the ARY vs Geo battle. Things might improve if we see more of this. The deification of the sahafi baraadri, which erroneously calls itself the fourth pillar of the state, can only be reversed if the media takes on the media.
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CREDIT to a gentleman by the name of Shahid Khursheed Kunwar, who has written an open letter to columnist Irfan Siddiqui, one that is doing the rounds on mailing lists on the internet. Citing a column of his in Jang, Mr Kunwar says, “In the 2nd column you wrote… ‘Unhon [Gen Kiyani] Ne Mera [Irfan Siddiqi] Naam Lekar Kaha Mein in Ka Fan Hoon; phir Angrezi Main Bolay, ‘I can miss anything but don’t miss his column’. Mein 9 (the columnist Siddiqui) Sharma Sa Gaya.”
This is followed by 12 bullet-point style comments, which I will clean up, with apologies to Mr Kunwar, and intersperse in italics.
1. First of all it doesn’t seem true but even if it was, it should not have been written and boasted about in the column which you write purely for your readers. This was too private.
2. Self-praise is no recommendation, Siddiqui Sahib.
3. A writer doesn’t praise his own self in his own column.
(From here on, Mr Shahid decides to turn up the heat by several notches.)
4. Make a billboard or a banner and paste this on your house.
5. It is womanish (sic for the word and the misogyny), liking such sentences and blushing upon them.
6. Now you have certainly no need to use “blush on.”
(By this point Mr Shahid decides to pull no punches.)
7. It is a beautiful and the worst (simultaneously) example of a ‘Darbari Style’ of writing.
8. You should join some local darbaar if you don’t have any as yet.
9. Such darbaars would pay a lot for your blushing.
10. Writing such an article on the eve of Kayani is only to publish one’s own advertisement of availability for the incoming boss. Iqbal says: Bari Baareek Hain Waiz Ki Chaalain/Laraz Jata Hai Aawaz-e-azan Se
(And towards, the end, our irate reader lets it rip and twists the knife…)
11. Kindly develop some sobriety in your closer-to-grave personality.
(…leading to the line of the show, folks; the cherry on top; the cigarette at the end of a sweaty session.)
12. One’s must (sic) die before writing such a column.
