Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb has said that media faced multiple challenges and threats and tackling them required joint efforts by democratic forces, civil society, and media organisations.
In a message on the eve of the World Press Freedom Day, he said that some of those challenges were structural, institutional, personal and transient. Only a joint front could defeat the enemies of the press freedom, she said.
She said that the freedom of the press was no longer a luxury or a choice but it was the foundational stone of all modern societies without which they could not function. On the one hand, the World Press Freedom Day was being celebrated and on the other hand the media faced many restrictions, she pointed out.
The state minister said that in a country where independent media was drifting towards censorship and it was not independent in the true sense, it depicted a very regrettable situation.
