Culture of impunity

Broadcast journalist Sadaf Naeem died while covering PTI’s Long March on GT Road. She was run over by the container in which she had interviewed Imran Khan for a private TV channel a day before. According to reports, she lost balance while trying to mount the container and fell down. The news left many of us devastated. Already the air was prosaic and heavy with Arshad Sharif’s gruesome murder in Kenya.

Death, by any means, is an irreversible loss. It becomes a ritual of ire and hatred when brought to someone to equal scores and gross when the deceased has been forced to slog in an unprofessional environment. The TV channel Sadaf was serving owed her almost five months’ salary the day she died. Former information minister Fawad Chaudhry and one of the owners of the TV channel were present at her funeral. Both influential men had done little or perhaps nothing to ensure that journalists and other media workers get their salaries not only in time but commiserating with their workload and the government’s minimum wage limit.

The channel in question is not the only one to delay the payment of salaries of its workers. Usually, the trend is to give one month’s salary after five or three months — whatever the duration. Once Fawad Chaudhry, in a private gathering while he was the minister for information, was heard claiming that media owners were lying about the paucity of funds and that the money they got from the government against advertisements was splurged on personal expenses.

At that point he was struggling to break the standoff between the government and the media on forming the Pakistan Media Development Authority. The idea was to merge different media entities — Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, Press Council of Pakistan, Central Board of Films Censors, Press Registrar Office, Audit Bureau of Circulation, and Implementation Tribunal for Newspapers Employees (ITNE) — into a single authority to cut down costs, build vertical organisation structure and get away with departments that for years had hardly delivered on their mandate. He had also planned to institute a framework for proper and timely dispensation of salaries. However, the plan failed primarily because the journalist community was not aligned with the proposal. Later, the PDM government scrapped the law terming it draconian.

This, as it may, did not match with the concerns of journalist associations knocking on Islamabad High Court’s doors a year back to intervene for the protection of the rights of newspaper workers. Invoking Articles 9, 14 and 19-A of the Constitution, the petitioners lamented that more than 40,000 cases were pending in ITNE. All these cases could not have been about anything other than the pending salaries of the journalists. Because the Tribunal’s sole function, as published on its official website, is “to implement the Award of the Wage Board for journalists and non-journalists”.

The IHC had appointed two senior journalists to assist it on judicial matters. Journalist Hamid Mir, in his argument, said that while print media journalists had a governance structure under relevant laws that regulated their service and wage framework, there was none for those working in electronic media. On the other hand, journalist Mazhar Abbas is of the opinion that PEMRA rules make it mandatory for electronic media owners to maintain a certain liquidity ratio so that their payables, especially to their workers, are not delayed. Nevertheless, it raises a pertinent question: Are labour laws not applicable to journalists like they are to other workers?

To this end, Abbas blames the division within the journalists union, the nexus between media owners and government, and the inefficient judicial system for letting the attitude of impunity affect the rights of journalists.

Sadaf Naeem’s survivors have been compensated with a large sum of money. This political gimmick to keep her death from becoming controversial is in nobody’s interest. It will be business as usual unless the pattern is reversed: justice must be swift, sure and seen to be done.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2022.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.