The story of a story

Anonymous ISPR denial to Nergis Sethi's comment reported in press shows disconnect, willing to exploit for a sizzler.

A story in this newspaper captioned, “Sethi says Kayani to visit US; army denies”, begins by pointing to the “awkward disconnect between the civil [sic!] and military authorities” and goes on to inform the readers that while Ms Nargis Sethi, secretary defence, told reporters after a meeting of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Defence that “Even though the exact details of the army chief’s visit had yet to be finalised, a tentative agenda was being prepared in consultation with all the concerned ministries”, unnamed sources in the army “denied the report, saying Gen Kayani had no plan to participate in the strategic dialogue in Washington”.

Let’s try and deconstruct this.

Firstly, the intro takes it upon itself to begin with a comment even before we really get to know the story. This raises the question of whether the reporters — or was it the desk hand? — intended to give this slant to the story from the word go. Or was it simply a woeful lack of understanding on the part of the reporters/desk hand of what constitutes the essence of an intro, using their interpretation to substitute for story?

There’s another issue too. Some time later on Monday (July 16) evening, Ms Sethi, I am told, called a couple of TV channels and newspapers and dispelled the impression that she had said what was being ascribed to her. If that is correct then in the print there was only one Urdu-language newspaper that published her denial, on the backpage I may add, most of the story then carried on an inside page. The Express Tribune seemed to have missed the denial. Of course, we are assuming here that she never said what was reported and the denial was not an “afterthought”.

While this story, as also many other stories, raise important questions, as an AP correspondent did with me on Twitter, I do not see any institutional effort by the media to address them. The Express Tribune, to my knowledge, is the only newspaper with an ombudsman, a highly commendable institutional check. His/her work, however, I am not familiar with. Perhaps, the newspaper should carry a weekly comment by its ombudsman the same way that the Washington Post ombudsman does. The readers would then get to know how the ombudsman is working.

That said, there are two other issues which — coupled with a media prepared to run away with a story faster than one can say Mustansar Hussain Tarar — muddy the waters. One relates to how the ISPR should have tackled this story; the other to the functioning of the institutions and, by extension, the entire process of policymaking.

The ISPR chose to deny the “reported” statement by Ms Sethi and did so anonymously. On both counts it faulted. Firstly, as the official PR arm of the military, the ISPR has no business saying anything anonymously; it can deny, confirm or refuse to comment but any choice it makes must be on the record. Secondly, in this case it should have coordinated with the defence secretary’s office. They claim that’s what they did, in the first instance. However, when they saw that some channels had continued to run the story, they chose to jump in and issue an unnamed denial. Funnily, and not least ironically, they were not prepared to commit themselves because they didn’t know how the issue would pan out until a decision has been taken.

Once again, please note that this in itself, at both ends, manifests institutional disharmony. Who decides about the participation of the army chief: his office or the civilian government? Ideally, a harmonious working relationship would see the civilian government getting the army’s input before making a decision. That decision could in fact be based entirely or partially on the input given by the army. In which case, let’s be very clear, the ISPR will have no business denying or confirming his participation. It would be the task of the official spokesperson who sits in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But this is the ideal scenario. We have been grappling with the unsavoury problem of civil-military imbalance and even small, unwitting inefficiencies can be read into beyond the text. Hence, the report’s intro beginning with the idea of the “disconnect”. It is precisely for this reason that the ISPR has to play it better and not bungle up because if there were no fault lines, the reporters, after picking up the defence secretary’s comments — and here we are not discussing the veracity or otherwise of the story — would have had no reason to “check” with the army.

They did because anyone would have done that, given that Rawalpindi is one of the power nodes even if its power might be on the decline, a necessary though not sufficient condition for civilian supremacy. Whether the civilians are prepared or even willing to take responsibility is, of course, a separate issue altogether.

It should then be obvious that this story has afforded us a peek into how we, in the media, are working; the institutional disharmony and the impact of this “disconnect”, to use the term the story employed for its opening shot, on policymaking.

The media, the army, the civilians have all come out scathed. But the more disconcerting aspect of this is that it is the institutional problem which the media has played on. People often ask the question about the media’s role — how can it help bridge the fault lines. This should be an instructive case. Is there an argument that the media only reflects? Some will say yes. But another one could be whether this is merely a case of mirroring the disharmony. To me the answer in this, as in many other cases, is no. It appears to me to be an attempt, even if an unwitting one — I am being charitable here — to exploit the problem for getting a sizzler. That, I hope, would be seen by my senior colleagues as a problem that needs to be dealt with.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2012.