The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) has released a disturbing report, which paints a portrait of a media landscape that is unremittingly grim, with space for free expression having shrunk even further in 2021 as compared to the previous two years.
Most journalists in Pakistan will testify that this is indeed the truth. The report highlights how, in the last year alone, five journalists were killed in the line of duty and how overall attempts to stifle the media and block access to information have grown.
Not only does it speak of the serious threats to the lives of media workers who report on sensitive and controversial issues, it documents how the pandemic, too, claimed the lives of nine journalists. In the past year, the financial standing of media houses has also worsened. Two media workers took their own lives due to unemployment.
The report highlighted that many journalists had to face murder attempts, threats, lawsuits, and telephone calls from “unknown numbers”, in addition to online harassment on various occasions. The family members of the affected journalists were also subjected to physical and mental torture, it added.
Pakistan is one of the countries, where violence against journalists is increasing and not even a single murderer has been brought to justice. Such reports point to an ugly truth, that the space for free speech and truthful accounts in our country is shrinking. Unfortunately, the ruling party has no concern for the media’s plight.
The primary duty of a responsible, professional journalist is to report truthfully. That would include reporting where the state and government are going wrong. When intimidation forces media organisations to self-censor, when violence is instigated against individual reporters, and informal pressure is put on media, the end result is a media that is fearful of doing its job.
The fact is that media freedom in Pakistan has been under assault for a while, and the solidarity needed to resist that has been weakened via a deliberately deployed divide-and-rule strategy. The CPNE report shows, we still have a long way to go before we can say that Pakistan’s journalists are truly free to do their jobs.
