Political parties’ supporters and their problem with “bias”
The Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. Though they are also present in KP, it is only the Pashtun belt of Balochistan where they have electoral clout. This loyalty extends to Karachi, where they usually support the ANP. But, to cut it short, this is a specific, region-within-a-region, ethnicity-within-an-ethnicity political party.
Yet, around 2006, their turnout at events in the city of Lahore were bigger than those of the PTI in the same city. Yes, the PTI’s street force was smaller than the shovel-bearing school kids that Allama Mashriqi’s Khaksaars have been reduced to. Yet, you wouldn’t have believed that the PTI was a small, tonga party had you been watching the TV shows of that time. The party head, Imran Khan, was all over the airwaves, hopping from one political talk show to the next. Current coalition partners Jamaat-e-Islami, with its national grid of a cadre, weren’t getting a fraction of the attention the PTI got.
In the 2013 elections (by then the party actually was large), virtually unknown PTI candidates won because of Imran Khan’s charisma, which the voters saw on TV. Many of these were constituencies that had not even been on Khan’s campaign tour. Barring a few, most anchors’ coverage of the PTI rallies sounded like they were activists.
Compare the blanket coverage of even the smaller ones of Khan’s canvassing stops to the diminutive coverage the JUI’s mammoth rallies got. Again, the JUI is basically a south-KP and Pashtun-Balochistan affair. Their rallies in Karachi and Lahore, however, were gargantuan.
The supporters of the PTI, strangely, think the media is biased against them.
When one starts investigating, this is a major concern of another party that the media famously treats with kid-gloves, the MQM. Ditto for the JI. And the PML-N. And the PPP. And the ANP.
What gives?
First things out of the way: the media is, by and large, against the PPP and the ANP. Why? Demographics could play a role. They (are perceived to) try to reach out to the working class, hence a particular set of talking points; the journalists, on the other hand, are all middle-class. In the ANP’s case, matters are compounded because much of the support base is far from the three-city-axis that has come to define the Pakistani news media. If it’s not happening in Islamabad, Karachi or Lahore, then, orphan-kid-on-fire, stop wasting my time.
Then there is the dismal performance of these parties on several governance fronts as well, leading to hostile coverage by the press. But the League also performs dismally, why not so tough with them? Which brings us to the party with the best media management in the country, the PML-N. Not resorting to the sort of fear that the MQM (and sometimes the JI) reportedly resorts to, it is a media-obsessed party that knows how to spend money on the hacks. When it chimes in the media-is-against-us cacophony, it is doing it because everyone else is.
This column has received a letter from the MQM in the past and will in the future. In light of the storm that seems to be about to hit the party, we shall cut it some slack and not discuss them this time.
The tweedle-dee to the MQM’s tweedle-dum, the Jamaat-e-Islami, has a lot of personnel manning positions, specially subbing positions in the Urdu press. Now though this has yielded a penetration of the JI’s viewpoint into the mainstream, but somehow, not great press for the party itself. Not an enviable position for a party to have, do I hear? Well, yes, but they are, in effect, ruling the streets now. Too many people saying, “Look, I disagree with them but they have a point when they say…”
And then there is the PTI, where we started this. One by one, all the anchors who were initially generally pleasantly predisposed to the party are turning against them. Why? Because if an anchor conducts one out of ten programmes mildly construed to be against the party, the supporters let it rip on social media. This is not just Saleem Safi that one is talking about. Talk show host Asma Chaudhry, just to quote one instance, was harassed on twitter merely for announcing on the said medium that Fauzia Kasuri (then estranged from the PTI) would be the evening’s guest on her show.
Consider the case of the ANP and AVT Khyber. A famous tussle, one that led to a boycott of sorts like the sort that the PPP had with Geo for a little while and the Obama administration with Fox. A boycott of a section of the press is a serious, kamikaze act of desperation for any party; it is more of a comment on that particular news outfit than the party in question.
Now that the channel is being tough on the PTI government’s performance in KP, the party’s followers have actually started accusing the AVT of being an ANP-run outfit!
So where does the truth lie, then?
When you gaze into an abyss, Nietzsche said, the abyss also gazes into you. The fact of the matter is that, though the media’s talking heads are no doubt biased, the viewer is more biased than these can ever be. Show me what an individual construes to be biased coverage, and I can, more or less, show you their placement on the political spectrum.
An anchor explaining how the power crisis is a more complicated problem than one that could be solved in a short period of time is going to seem reasonable to a PML-N supporter right about now. Exactly the same argument would have seemed not just ridiculous but biased a year or two ago!
******
THE iconic CJ finally retired. In the ensuing Chaudhry-gasm that left the Pakistani media, one group most notably, breathless, there were voices of criticism as well.
The PPP’s Faisal Raza Abidi, who would stare in the apex judiciary in the eye, only to have them blink, was a given amongst the list of detractors. But it is criticism by others that has surprised many. Aitzaz Ahsan, for one, who was Chaudhry’s deputy of sorts during the restoration movement. But the best line of the comments belonged to lawyer-movement firebrand Ali Ahmad Kurd (He of the Hair Toss) who was as blunt about the man he helped restore to his office as he was about the dictator that had thrown him out.
“He (Iftikhar Chaudhry) proved to be neither a good judge, nor a good human being.”
Just goes to show that, when meant with all one’s heart, the simplest squelches are the best.
