YouTube Revolution Upstages Established Mainstream Media in Exposing Pakistani Power Elites

Social media revolution is well underway in Pakistan. The new media are coming of age, and trumping the traditional commercial media. Many of the top journalists in the mainstream media knew about Arsalan's Iftikhar's massive corruption but it was through Youtube that the world first learned about it. The same pattern repeated itself when Duniya TV's incriminating off-air video footage found its way on Youtube.

 Familygate or Arslangate:

It has now been established that Malik Riaz Husain of Bahria Town approached a number of top TV talk show hosts in Pakistan and shared detailed information, videos and documentation about $3.7 million in illegal payments made to Arsalan Iftikhar, the son of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, over several years. Others, including Chaudhry Aitazaz Ahsan, knew about it and shared it with Justice Chaudhry a while ago. While rumors swirled among the Capital insiders, the public at large was kept in the dark until recently when a video of Shaheen Sehbai talking about it surfaced on Youtube and forced the mainstream media to finally discuss it on air.

Here's Shaheen Sehbai breaking the scandal on Youtube:

 

Mediagate: 

Several behind-the-scenes video clips of a Dunya TV talk show leaked on Youtube reveal
the television hosts appearing to be helping Malik Riaz Husain prepare his
answers, and in certain cases even spoon-feeding him the answers.
 
The leaked video also shows a son of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and a daughter of Pakistan
Muslim League (Nawaz) chief Nawaz Sharif calling in to try and influence the on-air contents. “Why don’t you start talking about it yourself, otherwise [if we ask]
it will seem planted, which it is, but I don’t know if it should look
planted,” says Ms Mehr Bukhari to Malik Riaz while Mr Lucman say that “I’ll say it on air that
I’ve been "pressurised" by Mian Amir Mehmood (Dunya TV's owner) and
Malik Riaz to do this program.”

Here's two-part Duniya TV's leaked video on Youtube:

 



Questions:

The fact that mainstream media sat on these stories raises serious questions about whose interests are its journalists serving? Why are they afraid to expose the top judges? What kind of illegal payments and other favors are they accepting  from the rich and the powerful? How are the commercial interests of the media owners influencing the editorial opinions and news coverage? Are they trying to hide their own guilt? And to what end?

What's Next:

Free and independent media are often seen as an effective watchdog in a democracy. But the question being asked now is who's watching the watchdogs? One possible answer is that the new super watchdogs are  the ordinary citizen journalists and bloggers who are active in the new cybermedia and not beholden to any special interests.

High-speed broadband expansion led by PTCL has propelled Pakistan to
become the fourth fastest growing broadband market in the world and the
second fastest in Asia, according to a recent industry report.
Serbia leads all countries surveyed with a 68% annual growth rate from
Q1 2010 to Q1 2011. Thailand (67%), Belarus (50%), Pakistan (46%), and
Jordan (44%) follow Serbia. India is in 14th place worldwide with a 35%
annual growth rate.




 In spite of rapid growth, the level of Internet penetration is Pakistan is still low. In a
population of 180 million, only 30  million ( about 16 percent) are
connected to the Internet, according to Internet World Stats. It's enough to put Pakistan among the top 20 nations in terms of Internet subscribers. And Internet use in Pakistan is
growing at a rapid rate, particularly in urban centers where 40% of the
population lives, which are also home to the middle class which often
forms the backbone of mass-scale uprisings. Mobile Internet use shot up
161 percent in 2010 alone.

Summary:

I believe Pakistan is entering a new era of the Internet media. And I hope that the new social media will continue to enjoy sufficient freedom and growth to provide wide enough access in Pakistan for the citizen journalists to play their role as a watchdog where the mainstream commercial media fails. Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant for the rot that characterizes Pakistan's power centers today.


Here's the video of a recent TV interview on this subject I participated in:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Imran Khan's Social Media Campaign

Culture of Corruption in Pakistan

Pak Judges' Jihad Against Corruption

Pakistan Rolls Out 50Mbps Broadband Service

Mobile Internet in South Asia

Media and Telecom Sectors Growing in Pakistan

Internet Service Providers of Pakistan

Chaudhry is No Angel

Justice Chaudhry's Address to New York Bar

Incompetence and Corruption in Pakistan

Zardari Corruption Probe

NRO Amnesty Order Overturned

Transparency International Rankings 2011

Views: 240

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 29, 2012 at 10:12pm

Here's an Op Ed by Pak journalist Mazhar Abbas published on CPJ Blog:


With ratings driving the profits of media channels, journalists and political talk show hosts are being motivated to stir up controversy at any cost. Meanwhile, the professionals who believe in credibility, objectivity, and honesty as essential parts of ethical journalism are becoming sidelined.

This corruption within the media is spreading like a cancer, and there seems to be no antidote. If it is not checked, it could prove fatal for the media industry. We must take steps to address this problem ourselves. If not, Pakistan's journalists could lose the credibility they have earned from years of struggle.

Earlier this month, a video recording of the off-air conversation between two prominent talk show hosts on Dunya TV was leaked. The hosts, Mubashir Luqman and Mehr Bokhari, were speaking to controversial real estate tycoon Malik Riaz in what was purported to be a confrontational interview broadcast on-air. But the leaked video showed the hosts off-air agreeing to questions, discussing questions to be planted, and talking on the phone to government officials about how to construct the debate.

The video appeared on YouTube [here and here, both in Urdu] a few hours after the show aired, and generated a huge debate both in print and online media about the hosts' credibility. Dunya management claimed there was a conspiracy to defame the channel and ordered an internal inquiry. Bokhari, meanwhile, struggled to clarify her position and denied involvement. Luqman was fired because of the insulting remarks he made about Mian Aamir, the station's owner, that were broadcast in the leaked video.

All 17 of the Pakistani Supreme Court's justices took notice, too. They watched the recordings in the presence of Abdul Jabbar, chairman of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority. It was not an official proceeding, but Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry questioned Jabbar about his inaction over the interview, the leaked video, and other TV programs ridiculing the judiciary.

Even while the consensus within the Pakistani press was that the credibility of broadcast media had been brought into question, talk shows' viewership went unaffected. This was no surprise: In the past, hosts fired from one station went to another, often with a much higher pay package.

Are these the norms of our society? While controversies, real or staged, often help the popularity of the channels and the anchors, such serious and blatant abuse damages their credibility.
----------

The problem is clear: The media has failed to establish any professional standards or rules of conduct for journalists, editors, or outlet owners. There are no professional organizations like bar associations or engineering or medical councils. There have been very few instances in which any media group or press organization has taken action against its members for violating ethical standards.

It is time for our profession to set some basic rules of conduct, which we will have to enforce ourselves if we want to keep our standing in the public's eye. The time to begin is now.

http://cpj.org/blog/2012/06/can-pakistans-corrupt-media-be-checked.php

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 25, 2014 at 9:47pm

Here's an interesting piece from Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) on Pakistani media:

Pakistan’s raucous and increasingly lethal media sector is exerting a powerful effect on decision-making in the country, even though journalists themselves are divided on whether their influence is positive or negative. That’s the key finding of a survey of more than 350 Pakistani journalists, policymakers, and academics. ..... More than two-thirds of policymakers surveyed said the media has a “significant” effect on their decision-making and 94 percent said they “always” or “sometimes” take media reaction into account before making a decision. That group includes current and former government officials and analysts at policy think tanks and civil society organizations. Those policymakers actually have a more positive view of the media than journalists themselves. More journalists and academics believe the media makes societal divisions worse than say media helps heal those divisions; it’s exactly the reverse among policymakers. Likewise, far more policymakers than journalists and academics believe the impact of private TV has been positive. Pakistani foreign and domestic policies are inextricably linked, shaped by a complex web of political, military, and sectarian factors. Media is one element in that equation. Just over half the journalists defined as “significant” the media’s impact on relations with the U.S. and with India, Pakistan’s key rival for power in South Asia; policymakers and academics agreed with the journalists regarding the U.S., but slightly more than half the policymakers and academics said the media’s influence was “minimal” or “none” when it came to relations with India. All three groups surveyed are united in overwhelmingly believing the media has played a “significant” role in exposing corruption, though a sizable minority of journalists were more cynical, seeing their role as “insignificant.” Pakistan is locked in a virtual civil war with Islamist militants, both home-grown and from Afghanistan. Even on this complicated issue, more than one-third of those surveyed from each group believes the media has a “significant” impact on relations with the militants, who recently issued a fatwa against the media, which it declared to be a “party” to “this war on Islam.” The willingness of Pakistani journalists to speak truth to power has consistently proven lethal. In the four years since TV deregulation sparked an explosion of private television channels, there have been almost twice as many deaths as the previous decade, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the most infamous of which was the 2011 torture and murder of investigative reporter Saleem Shahzad, who, like Hamid Mir, claimed he had been threatened by Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence wing, but who also had just published a book on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Yet the complex calculation involved in determining what kinds of stories could prove fatal and which push the envelope just short of that point is reflected in the responses to the question, “Can journalists report sensitive stories without fear of reprisals?” Almost 30 percent of journalists responded “yes,” double the percentage of policymakers and academics who thought that was the case, and another 30 percent of journalists said they could “sometimes” tackle such stories. Pakistan is a nation of contradictions, not least when it comes to the news industry. Nothing better sums up those contradictions than the response to the question: “Should government officials mislead the media if they think it is in the national interest?” At a time when Pakistani journalists are dying in the pursuit of truth, the response seemed to turn reality on its head: More policymakers than journalists said “no,” the government should not have that right.

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/media_policy_and_conflict_in_p.php

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 23, 2015 at 8:37pm

Never before in its media history has Pakistan experienced such a large scale of resignations from top journalists based on the investigations of a foreign newspaper. Some jaded skeptical citizens are complaining why their own secret services and the media organizations are unable to dig out stories as big as the one reported by the NYT. Journalists can be blamed for their inefficiencies but they must be commended for this stance they have taken in the wake of the scandal surrounding BOL. This was probably the most highly paid job these journalists had ever held in their careers. Many of them had worked hard for decades to rise on the top and they had reached here in spite of encountering peer jealousies and frequent criticism. They had already been labeled as greedy and selfish. It must have been a tough decision for many of them but they have surely made the journalism community very proud and instilled a new spirit of hope that journalism is not for sale.

These journalists have set a new precedence for their country's media. They have acted as bravely as the lawyers did in 2007 by standing up against General Musharraf when the former dictator deposed the country's Chief Justice. Many lawyers lost income and missed opportunities to be promoted as judges because of their commitment to the country's constitution. They struggled for two daunting years before General Musharraf was compelled to reinstate the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Today, it was the journalists' turn to show that money did not solely define who they are and what they stand for. Many of them made a decision that they would perhaps never regret.

The resignation episode also comes as a reminder that the media in Pakistan is gradually changing for better. The recent years have seen more journalists coming out and refusing dictations from the military and other non-state actors and now they have said no to a business tycoon who believed he could buy the best of the country's journalists. So, what are the lessons learned from this episode? Husain Haqqani, a former journalist and Pakistan's ex-ambassador to the United States, summarized it this way on Twitter: "Lesson for journo friends from #Bol #Axact saga: When someone offers way more money than market rates, the money is often shady."

The NYT report has pushed the Pakistani media into a new age. One lesson that Pakistan's press corps should learn is that that foreign journalists who produce excellent journalism do not do so on the instructions of any foreign governments or intelligence agencies, as they accused journalist Declan Walsh. Quality journalism is extremely essential for a functioning democracy. Journalists should keep questioning everything and everyone, including themselves, so that a culture of accountably and transparency is developed and promoted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malik-siraj-akbar/how-the-axact-scand... 

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