“THE INFORMATION SECTOR OF PAKISTAN”

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Globalization of Media MCM404

Lesson 20

"THE INFORMATION SECTOR OF PAKISTAN"

Text of handout for students

Note: From a perusal of the verbal content of this lecture and the PPTs, students will have to obtain a

reasonable portrait of the overall composition and vital features of the information sector of Pakistan. The

purpose of providing this particular handout to students is to help them appreciate the importance of

Government perceptions, policies and practices including the choice of terminologies, words and phrases in

relation to the information sector. Perhaps more than other sectors, words used in the information sector

become especially significant in conveying intentions and agendas.

The handout reproduces a short essay written by the lecturer and published in a leading newspaper of

Pakistan (Daily Times, Lahore, 12 June 2003) in which the readers' attention has been focused on the

inadvisability of changing the name of the Information Ministry by reverting it to its original name. More

than at any time in the past 58 years, the information sector of Pakistan requires that the policy-making

institution of the Government of Pakistan, i.e. the Information Ministry, should be named in such a way that

it becomes reflective of the rapid changes taking place in media technology and, most importantly, that it

emphasizes the need to develop media in a progressive direction and enable the maximum number of people

to have access to media.

What's in a Name? Plenty!

By Javed Jabbar

Through a notification of the Government of Pakistan in the last week of May 2003, the name of the Ministry

of Information and Media Development has been changed, or rather, reverted to its previous name of:

"Ministry of Information and Broadcasting."

Underneath the ostensibly innocuous nature of the change, there are several areas of concern.

The Information Ministry is greater than the sum of its parts. In a country where governments are subject to

frequent change, and at unscheduled times, the Ministry provides an abiding communications infrastructure

and capacity which functions in a predictable, pedestrian but reliable manner, a quality specially valuable for

an in-coming government!

Even as the entire structure of the Ministry now requires radical re-construction and de-construction to

reduce the scope for authoritarian misuse, its constituent units render vital services in co-ordinating support

provided to the Federal and Provincial governments in virtually all sectors of the mass media. These include:

relations with the independent Press through wings such as, Internal Publicity and the Press Information

Department which continues to exercise an out-moded control --- prone to misuse --- over the placement of

government-related advertising in the independent Press; External Publicity for the country; the Audit Bureau

of Circulation, which certifies the claimed sale of print media, the Department of Films & Publications, the

State-owned electronic media; including direct supervision by the Ministry of PTV and PBC, and Shalimar

Recording Company Limited and some other sections.

The very fact that the Ministry continues to operate as the official spokesman of the Federal Government

makes it necessary for us to reflect briefly on the inadvisability of re-enforcing a relatively primitive dimension

of this entity by re-introducing the term "broadcasting". At the very time in 2003 when the name, the

approach and the operations of the Ministry need to be recast to meet the challenges of a fierce and

formidable era of free and independent media, a change has been made that is opposite to what is required.

When this writer served for the first time in the Federal Cabinet between December 1988 and August 1990

and, in this period, for the first 10 months as Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, a tentative

proposal by me to change the name of the Ministry to "Ministry of the Media" proved to be abortive.

So one concentrated, instead, on improving policies and rules to remove obstacles in the way of a free and

open media environment. Ironically, even when a Ministry retains its original and inappropriate name, a break

can be made with the past. But while words can be ignored, they can also imprison. Some of the reforms of

1988-89 survived successive Governments. Some did not. For example, for unexplained reasons, the

Globalization of Media MCM404

corruptive newsprint import permit system abolished in 1989 was revived during the first Nawaz Sharif

Government of 1990-93 and was then abolished once again when this writer served for about one year in

General Pervez Musharraf's Cabinet in 1999-2000 as Adviser on National Affairs and Information Minister.

In November, 1996 when President Farooq Lehari dismissed the second Benazir Bhutto Government and

appointed Malik Mairaj Khalid as Caretaker Prime Minister, the Information Ministry was allotted to the

eminent journalist Mr. Irshad Haqqaani and this writer was appointed as Minister for Petroleum and Natural

Resources. In the same cabinet, the honorable editor of the Daily Times was Adviser to the Prime Minister

on Accountability.

At the very first meeting of the Caretaker Cabinet, after taking the decision to abolish the term "VIP" from

official parlance, and converting airport VIP lounges into executive lounges which were available to all

citizens willing to pay a small usage fee, the Cabinet considered a proposal by his writer to change the title of

the Information Ministry altogether to: "Ministry of the Media", or "Ministry for Media Development".

The rationale presented in support of this name-change was that, in view of the commitment of the Caretaker

Government towards a free and open environment in the country and towards the reduction, or complete

eventual elimination, of controls over arbitrary information flow, the focus of Governmental attention should

shift from interfering in the information flow towards increasing the level of access by the people to mass

media.

By the indicators of low literacy, the low number of electronic media units such as radio stations and TV

channels and the generally low purchasing power of the people, the prime responsibility of the Government

becomes that of facilitating convenient access by the people to media at low cost. Thus, there was abundant

justification to change the original name in its entirety. I also cited the examples of Australia and the UK

wherein there exist Ministry level "Departments of the Media".

Without making the proposal for a name change of his own Ministry a contentious issue, Mr. Irshad Haqqani

kindly supported the proposal in principle but suggested that we could combine the old and the new names

by dropping the word "Broadcasting" and accepting the term "Media Development" while retaining the

general word "Information". The Cabinet agreed, and the name change was immediately put in place.

Innovative laws for electronic media and freedom of information were introduced --- but were deliberately

allowed to lapse by the second Nawaz Sharif Government only to be eventually revived by the Musharraf

government in 1999-2002.

The global media environment and the regional media sector have witnessed significant change in the past

few years with the proliferation of new media. Notwithstanding the new excessive commercialism of media,

the world has clearly moved towards a reduced interventionist role for the Government in operating or

controlling media as also a role in "broadcasting".

There is certainly a role for Government to ensure a public service dimension in all media without itself

becoming a "broadcasting" unit. During the period 1999-2003, a fundamental new element has come to

shape the media environment of Pakistan. This strongly invalidates any possible argument in favour of

bringing back the term "broadcasting" to the full name of the Information Ministry. This basic change is the

fact that several new satellite TV channels telecasting content originating from Pakistan are being beamed out

of overseas locations such as Dubai, Singapore and London but are entirely Pakistani in their identity: e.g.

Indus, ARY, Geo, KTN, Uni Plus. Their wide and popular viewership by millions, often at the expense of

Government-controlled PTV reinforces the argument for distancing the Information Ministry from the

function of "broadcasting". This function, in any case, is an operational action that is not meant to be within

the responsibility of a Ministry whose principal duty is to formulate policy and oversee its application.

Moreover, "broadcasting" refers more to "radio" than to "television".

Now that the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority known as "PEMRA" is fully operative and has

already issued licenses for new private radio stations, the regulation of private broadcasting becomes the

primary responsibility of an Authority whose law requires it to be autonomous, and whose majority of

members are non-officials.

Globalization of Media MCM404

Therefore, the reversal to the old name of the Information Ministry is a regressive step that is out-of-synch

with the pulse of the age. As words and names do exercise a formative and direction-setting influence on

perceptions and actions, there is a need to shift the entire emphasis of engagement by Government in the

information sector towards reducing the media poverty of our country. This can only be done by promoting

the quantitative and qualitative development of media rather than reverting to the comparatively narrow and

restricted term of "broadcasting" which does not cover the new media such as the Internet or other new

technologies which are making possible "narrow-casting" in unprecedented and exciting new ways.

Cellular wireless units that combine telephony, the Internet, photography and messaging into a single, hand-

held device and will come to displace the previous, monolithic, "one-way only" broadcasting functions with

new, remarkable scope for inter-active communications represent many of the reasons why the Government

of Pakistan should now function only with a "Ministry of Media Development" rather than an entity with the

redundant title of the "Ministry of Information and Broadcasting."

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