Yes, it is the tail that wags the dog in our hapless republic but there have been few instances during (officially) democratic stretches in our country where the deep state has been as brazen as the infamous tweet by the ISPR in the aftermath of the Dawn Leaks investigations.
The problem here is that the tweet, due to its sheer disregard for even the veneer of propriety, has overshadowed the contents of the prime minister’s notification itself. Only one thing has been made clear: the military isn’t happy because the enquiry report had recommended a different course of action. That begged the question of just how strict was the action that the military wanted.
The aforementioned overshadowing, though understandable and necessary, took away the scrutiny from some rather important issues regarding some misunderstandings regarding the news media and the government spin doctors’ roles.
Let us start with the removal of Tariq Fatemi, the special advisor to the prime minister on foreign affairs and the Principal Information Officer Rao Tehsin. These two heads rolled after the federal information minister Pervez Rasheed had also lost his job in the past.
Out of these, even if one doesn’t not agree with the need to remove Fatemi, at least his culpability is plausible. He was, and this is loud conjecturing, probably not behind the leaks. At the most, the whole affair might have been his idea, one that would have been approved by the apex powers in the civil government. But the government, in a tough spot after the original leaks, could at least sell his guilt.
But the case against the PIO seems to be that he was not effective in ensuring that the leak does not see its day in press. That is a strange case, completely out of tune with how the news cookie crumbles. As Pervez Rasheed mentioned in a media interaction last week, it is not the job of the information minister to block news. The same also applies to the PIO.
The management of information and public diplomacy are critical aspects of modern governance. To that effect, the information service serves as an important tool of the state. Not the ruling party, mind you, but the state itself. The men and women employed by the state’s information apparatus – can, should and do – try to influence what goes into press. There’s nothing wrong with ensuring that there is maximum dissemination of information and best possible placement of pleas to the public for, say, how to best deal with malaria. But to think that this cadre can, in a democracy, ensure that a paper does not run a news item is wishful thinking. A bureaucrat asking a member of a free press not to publish a solid news item that the civil government doesn’t want published is not going to get a spirited opposition but bemused chuckles in response! Yes, even in Pakistan, where freedom of the press is compromised by western standards.
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APNS and CPNE not staying in their lanes
And now let us move on to the directive by the government to rope in the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS.)
First, it is not actionable. The APNS is under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to take “disciplinary action” against Dawn, its editor or the correspondent in question. We are not getting into the moral argument yet. Moreover, even Dawn isn’t under any obligation, legal or otherwise, to comply by any fine of punishment. This is a double whammy.
The APNS is not like other regulatory bodies like the PTA or the SECP. The APNS is a union of newspaper owners and publishers which is in its element when it accredits advertisers. It is sort of like a clearinghouse for advertisers. Imagine you are a publisher and your publication is a member of the APNS. An advertiser places its ad in your paper and then doesn’t pay up. In addition to the methods and techniques that all businesses, not just publishers, employ for recovery, you have the option to complain to the APNS. The latter will then instruct all its member publications to refuse to take advertisements from the said advertisers till dues are cleared. The APNS is, essentially, a platform where the nation’s newspapers close ranks against errant advertisers. An effective one at that.
The more appropriate (or less inappropriate, but inappropriate still) platform for asking for said action against the paper is the Council of Pakistani Newspaper Editors (CPNE.) Whereas the APNS has no say on matters editorial, it is the CPNE that talks about the content of the newspapers and the quality of journalism.
Why did the government mix the two up? Well, it’s partly the fault of these two organisations. They’re not exactly colouring within the lines here. Recently, a delegation of the CPNE met with the CM Punjab and congratulated him on having the best government-ad disbursement policy amongst the provincial governments. They even gave him a certificate to the effect. What business was it of the CPNE to talk about advertisements? And that’s not getting into the argument that it would also have been inappropriate for even the APNS to be so gushing in its praise of a government for….paying them money.
On the other side, the APNS is also encroaching upon editorial matters, as could be witnessed in the recent “request” to members to refer to all fallen soldiers as shaheed or martyr. Though one could argue that it was a noble directive, it wasn’t still not their call to make.
But the Pakistani press being a lot where there are many editor-publishers and few professional editors, the two bodies are becoming less and less distinguishable. The CPNE has also become an ancillary organisation of the APNS, for all practical purposes.
POSTSCRIPT: Even if the APNS that were to call the shots on such matters, one wonders how such a disciplinary action would play out. The APNS is dominated by the Jang Group and Dawn.
