Hear no evil

Appears to have whipped the cable operators into a kind of nationalistic passion, motivating them to act on their own.

A local NGO has taken cable channel operators and Pemra to court for their decision made some weeks ago to remove foreign news channels from their list of channels.

The petition has been accepted by the Sindh High Court. The channels had been removed from the airwaves, apparently by cable operators acting on their own, after the Nato air strike that ignited a furore earlier this month, and coincided with the airing of a BBC programme which claimed links existed between militants and Pakistani intelligence agencies. While this charge is hardly a new one, it appears to have whipped the operators into a kind of nationalistic passion, which motivated them to shut down the channels. Pemra, the electronic media regulatory body, appears to have done nothing at all to intervene in the matter — with no apparent legal basis in place behind the decision taken by the operators. The situation is such that a channel like Fox News is the only Western news channel still on offer for most cable subscribers.

This is obviously a chaotic scenario. Tens of thousands of viewers across the country have been deprived of the right to access crucial information and to make their own choice with regards to what they view. Such choice is, of course, vital; it is in the first place a right of citizens — and secondly, no ‘bans’ should be required, given that the persons watching news broadcasts or other programming have the choice to simply switch away from a channel they would prefer not to watch. All it takes is a tiny finger movement to flick a button on the remote control.

It is even more absurd that the decision on this was taken by cable operators themselves. Where was Pemra, we ask? And for that matter, why were no questions asked by the government? We need to step forward carefully. Censorship has become too frequent in our country; websites of all kinds have been blocked by the PTA and there has even been an attempt to regulate text messages. The closing down of key channels is a continuation of this trend. It must not be permitted and urgent steps should be taken to allow the channels back on air without further delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2011.