The crisis media creates

The chief just sneezed, that means the ‘boys’ are all set to do what they do best. The prime minister (PM) looks pale at the meeting; the military is definitely by his neck. One of the ministers is having a bad day, the cabinet must not be happy with the PM. Lahore is having an orange line, the budget is Punjab-centric, so is the PM.

Unfortunately, the media and especially some of the journalists have succumbed to writing sensational masala articles with flashy English, fleshing out details which are not just far from reality but paint a fallacious picture that doesn’t exist.

Three broad misconceptions are being floated around recently. The first is that the military is unhappy with the civilian government’s efforts on peace talks with the TTP and normalisation of ties with India. What none of these journalists see, or purposely overlook, is the fact that talks with the TTP is not the PML-N’s strategy. It’s the military’s strategy that it has been practising with different militant groups since 2003-2004. Even as of now, it’s the military and intelligence agencies that are supporting and guiding the peace talks. So to say that the military is unhappy over the talks and wants to launch an allout operation is an incorrect reading of the journalists on the subject. The military is not hesitant about the operation because of the fear of civilian government, if anything, the issue of sleeper cells being activated in the cities and the phenomenon of the ‘revolving door’ — militants exiting Pakistan, regrouping in Afghanistan and returning again to pace up insurgency — is what stops the military. The military and the PML-N government are completely on board with the strategy to deal with the Taliban, something the media doesn’t accept and instead cooks up delusional stories to boost ratings.

The second popular myth nowadays is that Nawaz Sharif is a scared PM who is wary of the military, especially after the media debacle. Media has a unique way of painting anybody anyway that fits to the situation. Nawaz Sharif from the first day has been a bold PM who not only extended his hand to India, but also has openly cautioned the military to stay out of Afghanistan. From the perspective of the security establishment, the Taliban are not the only monster it created; the media is also another one. For long the establishment tried to control it through conventional means, buying out journalists, etc. But now the civilian government, the military and major political parties might all be on board with the notion that if progress must come in Pakistan, there has to be a control on the narrative.

The most vivid of all myths, however, is that Nawaz Sharif is a Punjabi prime minister and his government is all about developing Punjab. This argument is without any legs if we look at the new Annual Budget of Pakistan and the share Punjab has received in the special provincial development fund. For those who are not aware, Punjab has received absolutely nothing in the special provincial fund. Moreover, while the PPP government was at the centre, Karachi didn’t face any load-shedding crisis while Punjab was dark 14 hours a day. Not a word came out of Punjab that it was unfair or the PPP was a Sindhi party. Why, then, it is that journalists are trying hard to create a rift on provincial lines. Are we not divided enough already? Most of the new projects are being developed throughout Pakistan be it energy, coal, infrastructure. How then is the current government Punjab-centric? Nations are what they make of themselves, and for ratings, the media has created a crisis in the nation.

Pakistan is, what I call, a media ‘hyped’ state where each and every move of each and every institution head is watched, fleshed out for some hidden meaning and then presented to the public as ‘analysis’. For the country to progress, perhaps we all need a break from the breaking news.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2014.

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