Conspiracy Theories Dominate Media Coverage of Pakistan Elections 2018

Pakistani media coverage of the general elections scheduled for July 25, 2018 is dominated by discussion of conspiracy theories about the alleged involvement of Pakistan's "establishment" (euphemism for Pakistani military and intelligence agencies) to "rig" the vote to favor Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Some in the media also accuse the "Deep State" of "worst ever censorship".

In a recent airing of BBC Hardtalk, the host Stephen Sackur challenged Pakistan Dawn Media Group's CEO Hameed Haroon to show evidence of Pakistani "Deep State" interference in the upcoming elections. Haroon responded by saying there's strong perception of it and said "it's all over social media". Sackur then told Haroon about the widely held view that Dawn Media Group is openly taking sides by supporting PMLN for the last two years and its now "convicted" leader Nawaz Sharif.

BBC's Hardtalk:

Mr. Hameed Haroon, Chief Executive of Pakistan's Dawn Media Group, claimed in a recent BBC interview that the Pakistani military and intelligence services were "orchestrating" July 25, 2018 general elections in favor of a particular political party. Here's an except of the interview with BBC's Stephen Sackur as the host:

Sackur: You are defenders of journalistic integrity, independence and impartiality in Pakistan but you are not seen as entirely neutral and impartial because over the last couple of years you are increasingly giving platform to one particular political player Nawaz Sharif who's run into an awful lot of trouble due to allegations of corruption ....you, the self-proclaimed impartial, independent, neutral media group covering Pakistani politics are now seen to be supporting and sympathetic to Nawaz Sharif and his daughter who it has has to be said are convicted criminals...


Haroon: There's an element of orchestration by military of a campaign against us...


Sackur: Where is your evidence of orchestration?


Haroon: If you look at the social media attacks on Dawn by the ISPR trolls....not just going after us but anybody who stands in their way.

Media Censorship:

Some in the media accuse the "Deep State" of "worst ever censorship". They say that their coverage is being limited and their distribution disrupted.

This claim of "worst ever censorship" is undercut by almost all media outlets widely covering all political speeches by leaders and candidates of all political parties, including Pakistan Muslim League (N) favored by Pakistan's two biggest media giants Jang and Dawn groups. The fact that there is a lot of discussion of "deep state" trying to "fix elections" reinforces the relative media freedom to show all points of view.

Orchestration vs Influence:

Those alleging "orchestration" of elections by Pakistani "establishment" cite documented history of involvement of Pakistani military and intelligence services in previous elections on behalf of one party or another.

For example, they mention the mea culpa by General Ehtisham Zamir, head of ISI political cell during 2002 elections.

It should be noted that the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto issued the executive order creating a political cell within the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) with the purpose of influencing political processes in Pakistan, according to Hien Kiessling, author of "Faith, Unity, Discipline: The Inter-Service-Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan".

Bhutto's fateful decision in 1975 eventually brought about his own downfall when he used this cell to unnecessarily rig the 1977 elections and was overthrown and executed by General Zia-ul-Haq. It was also this cell that helped Nawaz Sharif , a protege of General Zia-ul-Haq, get elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan after the General's death in a mysterious air crash followed by a brief term in office by Benazir Bhutto. In 1990 the ISI received 140m rupees (US$2.2m at current values) to rig national elections, according to supreme court testimony by the then chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg.

While it is possible that the Pakistani military "establishment" is attempting to influence the outcome of the elections, there is scant evidence of "orchestration" as alleged by Hameed Haroon of Dawn Media Group and others. While the military is a key player and has the ability to tip the scales to some extent, it lacks the capacity to determine the outcome of the elections.

Orchestration, as alleged by Haroon and others, would challenge our credulity to believe all of the following:

1. Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) colluded with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to hack and leak Panama Papers.

2. The "establishment" made sure that Nawaz Sharif's family's undeclared assets were part of the leak.

3. Pakistan Army chief and ISI ordered NAB to investigate Panama leaks and Nawaz Sharif family's assets.

4. Pakistan Army Chief and ISI chief called a meeting of the top Supreme Court judges to hear the case, remove Nawaz Sharif and transfer trial to a NAB court. 5. Pakistan Army Chief and ISI ordered NAB court to render a guilty verdict.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui:

Pakistani media have widely reported the remarks of  Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui regarding the attempts to influence his decisions in cases pending in his court relating to Nawaz Sharif's recent conviction.

The broad coverage of Justice Siddiqui's remarks in Pakistani media appears to negate the claims of media censorship made by Dawn's Haroon and others.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui is a right-wing judge who was a Jamaat e Islami candidate for elections in 2002. He represented Lal Masjid clerics after the Pakistani military cracked down on them  in Islamabad. He has become increasingly vocal against the military and his fellow judges since he was charged with misappropriating funds and hiring relatives to fill jobs at the Islamabad High Court. There’s a judicial reference pending against him.

Summary:

Media coverage of Pakistan's July 25, 2018 elections is dominated by conspiracy theories alleging "orchestration" of the election process by Pakistan's "Deep State". A recent episode of BBC's Hardtalk with Dawn Group's CEO showed that such allegations fail to withstand any serious scrutiny. The "orchestration" conspiracy theory challenges credulity by asking you to believe that everything starting with Panama Papers leak by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was managed by Pakistani intelligence agencies to oust Pakistan's ex prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Wide reporting of open criticism of the military and the judiciary by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui shows that the "worst ever media censorship" charge is not credible.

Here's a short video clip of BBC's Stephen Sackur's Hardtalk interviewing  Hameed Haroon of Pakistan's Dawn Media Group:

https://youtu.be/JQbt2QlVbwI

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

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ISI Mea Cupla in 2002 Elections

Pakistan 2018 Elections Predictions

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Panama Leaks in Pakistan

Nawaz Sharif vs "Khalai Makhlooq"

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Views: 354

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 21, 2018 at 11:17am

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of High Court alleges manipulation by in .

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 23, 2018 at 5:41pm

#Feudal landlords may hold balance of power in nuclear #Pakistan. #Elections2018 #electables #PTI #PMLN #PPP #GDA https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-23/feudal-landlords... via @bpolitics

Near the rural town of Badin in southern Pakistan, about a four-hour drive from the financial capital of Karachi, dozens of men wait through the night for a chance to meet with Zulfiqar Mirza.

The landowner’s family holds sway in a part of Sindh province the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, and villagers go to Mirza for everything from employment to education to settling disputes. One of them, 69-year-old Khalid Hussain, said this month he needed help after being abandoned by his children.

The Mirzas “help people out,” Hussain said while waiting at the family’s 700-acre estate. “I just want a job to feed my stomach.”

Local power brokers like the Mirzas may end up as kingmakers in the nuclear-armed nation after a July 25 election, with polls showing that no single party is likely to win a majority in Pakistan’s parliament. For national politicians, courting large rural landholders known as “electables” is a Catch 22: Their support is essential to win elections in Pakistan, but many also tend to oppose measures like modernizing the country’s labor and tax laws that would boost economic growth in the cash-strapped nation.

For a Quicktake on Pakistan, click here

Known as biradiri, the rural patronage system helps explain why Pakistan scores the lowest in Asia on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index after Afghanistan, North Korea and Cambodia. While urbanization and redistricting has steadily eroded the power of rural politicians, in many areas they still can provide favors, administer justice and even pressure villagers into voting for a certain candidate.

Feudalism is still “very strong” in the countryside, said Mustafa Kamal, the former mayor of Karachi, who heads the urban-focused Pak Sarzameen Party. “The common man does not have that much strength to stand up to the feudal lord -- he will just squeeze him like anything.”

That power structure has come under attack in the election campaign. Imran Khan, a former cricket star who has seen his popularity surge, has sought to rally younger, urban voters by denouncing feudalistic and dynastic parties that still dominate Pakistan’s political scene. Since the 1970s, the country has alternately been ruled by the military, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister serving a jail sentence for corruption.

Protests against landlords and their families have also taken place in cities. During a rally this month in Karachi, the convoy of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari -- head of the Pakistan Peoples Party and son of assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- was pelted with stones.

“People are tired of the old guard,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, a research associate at the SOAS South Asia Institute in London. Voters aged 18 to 35 comprise 44 percent of the electorate, she said, and many will likely vote for Khan.

Khan, whose anti-corruption campaign helped spur Sharif’s arrest, has pledged to widen Pakistan’s low tax base and strengthen government institutions. Yet even while railing against feudalism Khan has found it necessary to court key rural politicians, particularly in the breadbasket province of Punjab, which provides more than half the nation’s federal seats.

The Mirza family in Badin is running with the Grand Democratic Alliance, a minority party that hasn’t said who it will back for prime minister after the election. Hasnain Mirza, the 34-year-old son of Zulfiqar, acknowledged his family’s political lineage but also denied it was feudal.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 1, 2020 at 12:09pm

Sackur did it again! He debunked all falsehoods about the military rigging #Pakistan’s 2018 elections. Last time he did the same with Pakistan #media mogul Hameed Haroon of Dawn. #IshaqDar #HardTalk http://www.riazhaq.com/2018/07/conspiracy-theories-dominate-media.h... Ishaq Dar also had to earn humiliation when the host quoted the European Union report to reject his allegation of rigged elections in 2018. https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/bbc-anchor-rebukes-dar-for-de...

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 18, 2021 at 10:05am

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp the most powerful Australian political actor

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/utterly-unaccountable-turnb...


Giving evidence by video link, Mr Turnbull said the Murdoch media business had evolved into a powerful political force that, unlike political parties, was unaccountable to the Australian public.

“This is the fundamental problem that we’re facing: the most powerful political actor in Australia is not the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Labor Party. It is News Corp. And it’s utterly unaccountable,” Mr Turnbull said. “It’s controlled by an American family and their interests are no longer, if they ever were, coextensive with our own.”

Mr Turnbull, a Liberal, has joined former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd as a strident critic of News Corp and has backed his push for a royal commission into the influence of the Murdoch empire on the Australian media and political landscape. The media diversity inquiry, which is examining issues of media concentration in Australia, was established by the Senate after more than 500,000 people signed a petition by Mr Rudd voicing those concerns.

In his evidence to the inquiry in February, Mr Rudd said News Corp used systematic character assassinations to cultivate a culture of fear among politicians and engaged in campaign journalism against issues such as action on climate change.

At the same public hearing, News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller dismissed Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull’s criticisms as “a convenient diversion from their own failings” during his evidence. News Corp executive Campbell Reid gave evidence the company was “professional, accountable media” that operated in the Australian landscape “with an extraordinary degree of both government, and indeed regulatory, oversight and legal oversight if we get things wrong”.

“Our editing process – for all professional media – is high stakes because we can be charged with contempt of court, our journalists can be threatened with jail, we can be taken to the Press Council, and we can be held up to scrutiny by other organisations, which is completely different to the misinformation industry that is perpetuated by and is a driver of, frankly, profit online,” Mr Campbell told the inquiry in February.

Mr Turnbull echoed many of Mr Rudd’s concerns, saying he had experienced “bullying and standover tactics” from News Corp when he served in the Parliament.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 18, 2021 at 1:18pm

In 1791 it was articulated in the First Amendment to the US Bill of Rights. In 1795, Edmund Burke stood up in the British House of Commons and asserted that the press had become what he called “the fourth estate of the Realm”.

https://theconversation.com/media-have-helped-create-a-crisis-of-de...


If the media are to play their part in any democratic revival, however, financial and material security will be only a part of what is required.

One factor that has contributed to the present crisis in democracy is polarisation, the opening up of deep divisions between the main political parties of mature democracies. This has been magnified by media partisanship.

There is a lot of research evidence for this. One of the most significant is a 2017 study that showed the link in the United States between people’s television viewing habits and their political affiliations.

A further factor in the crisis has been the emergence of the “fake news” phenomenon. In the resultant swirling mass of information, misinformation and disinformation that constitutes the digital communications universe, people have returned to traditional mass media in the hope that they can trust what they see and hear there.

Read more: Trust in quality news outlets strong during coronavirus pandemic

The Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual global study of public attitudes of trust towards a variety of institutions, including the media, showed that since 2015, public trust in the traditional media as a source of news had increased, and their trust in social media as a source of news had decreased.

Populism and scapegoating
A third factor in the crisis, exacerbated by the first two, is the rise of populism. Its defining characteristics are distrust of elites, negative stereotyping, the creation of a hated “other”, and scapegoating. The hated “other” has usually been defined in terms of race, colour, ethnicity, nationality, religion or some combination of them.

Powerful elements of the news media, most notably Fox News in the United States, Sky News in Australia and the Murdoch tabloids in Britain, have exploited and promoted populist sentiment.

This sentiment is reckoned to have played a significant part in the election of Trump.

It is also considered to have played a part in the outcome of the Brexit referendum.

It follows that if these are contributing factors to the crisis in democracy, then the media has a part in any democratic revival.

To do so, it needs to take four major steps. One is to focus resources on what is called public interest journalism: the reporting of parliament, the executive government, courts, and powerful institutions in which the public places its trust, such as major corporations and political parties. This work needs to include a substantial investigative component.

A second is to recommit to the professional ethical requirements of accuracy, fairness, truth-telling, impartiality, and respect for persons.

The third is to take political partisanship out of news coverage. Media outlets are absolutely entitled to be partisan in their opinions, but when it taints the news coverage, the public trust is betrayed.

The fourth is to recalibrate the relationship between professional mass media and social media.

That recalibration involves taking a far more critical approach to social media content than has commonly been the case until now.

While it is true the early practices of simply regurgitating stuff from social media have largely been abandoned, social media still exerts a disproportionate influence on news values. Just because something goes viral on social media doesn’t make it news unless it concerns a matter of substance.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 3, 2021 at 10:54am

The Pakis­tan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Sunday continued their war of words over the outcome of recently-held by-election on a National Assembly seat (NA-249) in Karachi as the latter submitted an application to the chief election commissioner (CEC) asking him to place election material, including ballot papers, under the supervision of the Army or Rangers.

The application was submitted by Miftah Ismail, the PML-N candidate in the constituency, after the PPP “welcomed” the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to stay announcement of official results for a recount, and asked the PML-N not to accuse the party of winning the seat with the support of the “establishment”.

The leaders of the two parties, in their statements, however, continued to attack each other with the allegations of having a covert support of the “establishment”.

PPP candidate Qadir Mandokhail had won the NA-249 by-election in Karachi by a small margin after securing 16,156 votes, while Dr Ismail had secured second position with 15,473 votes, according to provisional results released on Friday. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and PML-N had cried foul and subsequently rejected the results.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 27, 2022 at 7:21pm

Journalist Saleem Safi accuses #PMLN and #NawazSharif of corrupting #Pakistan #media with "Lifafa" (Checkbook) #Journalism in #Pakistan. #Lifafa #corruption https://youtu.be/YoqA_W0qJ8o via @YouTube

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 27, 2022 at 7:22pm

Not 'Lifafa', Pakistani media has a new name: 'Basket Journalists'. Thanks to a leaked audio

https://theprint.in/go-to-pakistan/not-lifafa-pakistani-media-has-a...

New Delhi: A new leaked audio between Pakistan Muslim League (N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz and party leader Pervaiz Rashid is fuelling the Pakistani public’s anger towards the media.

While the politicians can be heard purportedly scheming to control independent media, the audio claims that certain journalists will receive ‘baskets’ from former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The ‘aam aadmi’ of Pakistan now have a new name for those who are betraying public trust: ‘Bas

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