Absar Alam, the country’s broadcast media czar, conducted a press conference the other day about PEMRA’s restrictions on certain aspects of crime reenactment shows.
At the presser, one of the reporters asked a question that seemed to sum up the mindset of a lot of people across the nation have about the ambit of regulation of the media.
Sara Saal Dance Karnay Wali Ramadan Main TV Par… door aliyaali123456
The reporter asked whether PEMRA would allow the women morning show hosts who “dance” about all year long, to act all pious during the Ramzan shows. Alam replied, sensibly, about not being in a position to decide who is pious and who isn’t.
But, as mentioned earlier, the question was quite illustrative of the role people think the government has in the regulation of the media. Are these feeling remnants of sensibilities of the heavily regulated and bureaucratised PTV era or something else?
If you were to go out and interview ten people on the road about the role of the news media, chances are that all ten would have a negative opinion. This includes the ones who are happy, in general, that there is an independent news media.
Take, for instance, a popular gripe that people, specially in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore have: the excessive coverage of terrorist activities. If one were to ask the people of KP, Fata and Baluchistan, however, the general consensus is that terrorist activities aren’t reported enough; that the rest of the country doesn’t care what goes on there.
But the public of the three cities that dominate Pakistan’s airwaves goes one step further: they demand that the channels should be legally barredfrom showing too much coverage of terrorist activities.
Just the way the government should prevent the likes of Amir Liaquat Hussein to be allowed to host religious shows because he “isn’t a scholar.” If one were to argue that, barring downright hate speech and incitement to violence, there should be no restrictions on any person who claims to be a scholar because one denomination’s scholar is another’s charlatan, the response would be the usual “lekin phir hukoomat hai kis liye?”
Actually, this lack of understanding of the limits of regulation emerges from a deeper source: our obsession with the man on horseback. A benevolent dictator who will right all wrongs with an iron-fist. The county will then come together like it does in acid-battery commercials. This construct has an apple-pie order. There is no “errant behaviour.”
Vibrant democracies like the UK and the US have horrible popular media. There could possibly be nothing more trashy than US local TV and the British “red top” tabloids. These countries are not proud of them. The people who consume this media are not proud of it either and rarely admit it to watching or reading it. But there is a consensus: if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Because such tripe is the price we pay for freedom of expression and the free market.
Nowhere is this sense of self-entitlement, this sense of all of the media being there to serve you, specifically you, more strong than in Ramzan, where the slight whiff of fluff entertainment complex leads to pitchfork wielding crowds.
It is this fascist sense of self-entitlement that is more troublesome to watch than the fake market-let facade of piety that the starlets show during the holy month.