Putting the media on trial

The immediate seizure of media and communications is a basic requirement for a successful coup. The people cannot protest if they don’t know what is happening after all. Oblivious to their fate, they wake up to the new normal. The next step in establishing authoritarianism requires the press to submit to what is known as “viewpoint discrimination”. A state of affairs in which you are destined to perpetually write good things about the ruler.

Only good things.

But you’re still free — to lash out at the ruler’s opponents. For that, your freedom is limitless.

In a week filled with ludicrous decision-making by the PTI, its decision to establish “media courts” is perhaps the most ominous. One purpose of the courts, as given by Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, was to curb “unnecessary criticism” of government officials by the media in the name of free speech. From its very inception, this proposal lacks any use of grey matter by the Cabinet. According to Fahd Husain, in his column on Sunday, it seems like a close associate of the Prime Minister took some criticism from a television host a bit too personally. Therefore, prompting a decision of the Cabinet on the issue.

Is this how decisions are made by the PTI Cabinet? Does Imran Khan sit in these meetings twiddling his thumbs while people propose making undemocratic laws for the sole purpose of protecting their fragile egos?

We should be grateful that our media still has some semblance of freedom because the resistance it put forward forced Dr Awan to backtrack from the proposal.

But if the PTI is actually pondering over establishing “media courts” it should get some misconceptions out of its head. First, the PTI thinks that the media is unfair in its criticism towards it. Pointing out that it is disproportionate as compared to previous governments. This sort of thinking is a product of the PTI’s goldfish memory and the fact that Imran Khan is new to power in a democracy.

The job of a free press, at its core, is to inform the people about the current government. For that, it will inevitably criticise the government for policies that make no sense. The PTI can’t blame the media if it serves it a buffet of bad policy decisions. Just consider the past week or so: the decision to impose Article 149 (4) in Karachi (myopic, because it won’t fix Karachi and is based on a misunderstanding of the Constitutional provision); K-P government’s moral policing in schools (shortsighted and archaic); Fawad Chaudhry acting like a toddler on Twitter (not a policy decision, but an embarrassment nonetheless); and the K-P Actions Ordinance (undoing the good work of integrating FATA). Really, the PTI digs its own grave and then blames the media for questioning it.

The PTI also feels that the media doesn’t criticise the opposition, or past governments, who are to blame for all the problems that the PTI can’t fix. But, it’s the PTI who is in government. Not the PML-N or the PPP. When those two were in government they were met with a barrage of criticism daily from the media, with members of the PTI being one of the most vocal groups.

The PTI owes the media for its popularity. It owes the media for covering protests that lasted for weeks from dawn till dusk. In those days the PML-N government was the one being assaulted in print and on television. Often by columns and news shows in which members of the PTI contributed. Yet, no mention of “unnecessary criticism” was made then, because it seems the PTI gets to decide what is “necessary”.

That’s not how free speech works in a democracy.

Legally, a law that says one can talk about one side of a debate but not the other is considered unconstitutional in established free speech jurisdictions such as the United States. This is known as “viewpoint discrimination”, and is almost guaranteed to be struck down by a court. While Pakistan has not adopted the US approach to free speech jurisprudence, our Constitution’s Article 19 has no limitation regarding “unnecessary criticism” of the current government. If it did, then there wouldn’t be a fundamental right to free speech in our country anyway.

I have written about this before, but it requires repetition: free speech is necessary not just from a democratic perspective but also because it allows people to learn the truth about the government. If the PTI succeeds in making the press a propaganda machine, the people will never know the government’s truths from its falsehoods. Our government does lie. Just last week, Zartaj Gul Wazir took to Twitter to lie about organising a climate march even though she had nothing to do with it.

A free media that criticises the government also educates us. Shahzeb Khanzada provided education to all of us when he exposed the shallow thinking behind K-P’s mandatory dress code for school girls.

These nuances seem lost on the PTI. When Imran Khan goes abroad and says the media in Pakistan is free, he forgets to mention the laundry list of topics that the media is censored from discussing. Think about it: you can’t criticise the establishment; you can’t criticise the judiciary; religion is a topic off-limits; certain foreign allies can’t be criticised either. You take out the ability to criticise the current government and the media might as well pack free speech into a body bag and throw it into the Indus.

Imran Khan doesn’t like criticism, that seems to become clear with each passing day, but Khan should learn from the history of the perils of groupthink. Irving Janis in his book Groupthink gives an illuminating example. He writes how groupthink led to the disastrous decision by the Kennedy administration to invade the Bay of Pigs. The decision-making process showed clear signs of bad leadership. Such as suppression of opposing views, and Kennedy guiding the decision so that there was minimal disagreement. But when the same administration was trying to disentangle the Cuban Missile Crisis, they learnt from their past mistakes. Now dissent was welcome, Kennedy asked everyone to think sceptically, and sometimes left the room so that he couldn’t influence the discussion.

I will leave it to Imran Khan to determine which process resulted in a better decision.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2019.

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