The content of television, or, for that matter, any medium, is determined primarily by two sets of people. Those producing it and those consuming it.
The people producing television news are from the urban middle-class. And though the people consuming it are not only from this class, the people that advertisers want to target are from the urban middle-class.
The issues that appeal to this class will take the lead. If there is any single argument that the series of articles on the media, of which this is the first, attempts to make, it is this.
Most of the times, the simplest explanation is the correct one. Most of the times, peculiar media coverage is neither the result of a major conspiracy nor is there some deep rooted plot that goes all the way to the top of the military or the office of a real estate tycoon. It is simply a group of people wanting to make television that the people that they know will want to watch.
Take the vetting process of the election commission and the media coverage thereof. Before the ROs really turned the thing into a circus, the issue that was getting the lion’s share of the media’s attention was that of the fake degrees.
The media would have had you believe that, other than the ROs, it was only the HEC that was coordinating with the ECP. That the FBR, NAB and the State Bank weren’t even a part of the vetting process.
Now getting a fake degree is a crime, no doubt about it. But there is no moral compass that I know that would say getting a fake degree is a higher crime than tax fraud. In one case, one is getting around a dictator-made law to contest an election; one that these candidates won as a result of their rapport with their constituents. In the other case, one is stealing, plain and simple.
Why, then, does the media promptly report the HEC’s reports and not the FBR’s? Because most of the viewing public and the reporters and newsroom personnel don’t have fake degrees. Most of them do, however, cheat on their taxes. Liberally. Yes, the journalists might have their salaries taxed at source but that might not be their only source of income. And within the viewing public, the poor aren’t taxed to begin with and the middle class and elite, if the FBR’s records are to be believed, pay tax only and only when they absolutely cannot help it. Even the mere 800,000 registered taxpayers in this nation of 180 million grossly under-report their incomes.
Reporting on tax evasion takes away the gratification of watching TV. Political talk shows were meant for watching politicians – apparently the root cause of all evil – squirm in their seats, not for inducing personal guilt. Schadenfreude is dampened when coupled with introspection.
The bad guy to hate on in fake degree cases is this guy who couldn’t even get a simple BA, printed out a spurious diploma and then lied about it; the bad guy to hate on in tax evasion cases is yourself.
So no one held Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s feet to the fire when this fabulously wealthy Pir with a Cambridge degree was revealed to have ridiculously small tax returns. But Sheikh Waqas Akram’s degree issue was splattered all over the airwaves, despite impressive tax returns (though, given our tax culture, he just might have cheated on taxes as well.)
An aside: yes, Akram did make things bad for himself when he got the education ministry. The ministry had originally been devolved and given to the provinces and the bit that had remained had been renamed Professional and Technical Training. He moved quite a few strings to get it renamed to the more impressive sounding Education and Training. Bad idea, if you know you have a fake degree, because “Education minister with a fake degree” just makes really good news copy.
Loan default is another issue, the one that the State Bank is supposed to liaise with the ECP on. The viewing public, by and large, aren’t loan defaulters, so it’s kosher for coverage. Unless the media owners are loan defaulters (one prominent media family that has a niche paper and a general TV news channel was specifically named in the Justice Jamshed Commission) and they slam the brakes, expect more of the coverage of bad loans.
