Roundtable
Quest for credibility

Mushahid Hussain Sayed

In Pakistan-India coverage, both the market and the nation-state converge to an extent in the expectation of the audience. India is not just another foreign country in Pakistan. There is a special aspect to the relationship, and coverage is coloured to the extent that both states largely define each other as adversaries or even ‘enemies’. Nationalism and the so-called national interest, what I call the officially certified truth, take precedence. The market represents what consumers want and there is a passion for Pakistan-India news. When Musharraf visited Agra he got the kind of coverage in India that even Clinton did not get. That was because he happened to be the President of Pakistan. It was the same when Vajpayee came to Lahore. The special relationship is therefore an element of the market.

But there are other ways in which the market comes into national considerations. When I was in govern-ment, we launched PTV World. An important factor for us was that Zee TV was getting a lot of Pakistani advertisements in the Gulf area. Pakistani adver-tisements were going to ‘the other side’. In that sense the market factor is important. But in a fundamental way, political considerations and the so-called national interest, and not economic factors, take priority.

Since Indian news has a certain allure in Pakistan there is the question of how to counter it, how to make ourselves more credible. That is one of the reasons private channels have been licensed and this will to some extent redress the television imbalance between the two countries. This is the change that could potentially manifest itself on the airwaves. It has been basically motivated by competition with India, but it is not economic competition. It comes out of the quest for credibility and the need to reach out to the Indian audience. The emergence of private channels will also drive the market forces, but it is useful to remember that trade between India and Pakistan and pure commercial considerations are way behind political factors.

That being the case, some specificities of politics are significant in influencing coverage. It is interesting to note that there is a similarity of pattern in the coverage of the military regimes of Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf. Military regimes elicit a particular kind of coverage, especially in the Indian media. Because they are not legitimate, they tend to reach out more. Musharraf is a very media-friendly person. He loves to talk to the Indian media. Zia, who was carrying so much excess baggage, used to do that too. He had hanged Bhutto and his rule was quite oppressive. But despite that he got reasonably good press in India.

This of course applies only to coverage in relatively normal circumstances. Under conditions of tension, it is a different matter altogether. There have been two near-war situations, Kargil in 1999 and again continuing tension after 13 December. In such situations nationalism, even chauvinism come to the fore. There is little room at such times for so-called independence, objectivity or even liberalism because that is deemed to be unpatriotic. Nation, mindset and market come together in a particularly potent form on such occasions.

Because the nation-state commands the relationship between the two countries, the attitude of the estab-lishment becomes crucial, and in both the countries it is very rigid, conservative and hard-line. This can be a hindrance to greater media access. At the time of the Lahore Declar-ation, one of the basic aims was to really open up on the media front. There was a lot of pressure from within Pakistan and India for more media exchange. We considered visa exemptions for accredited journalists cleared by both sides. But the security establishments of the two coun-tries came in the way. They objected on the ground of security risks.

Because of all these reasons, between India and Pakistan many of the conventional rules and protocols of journalism do not seem to apply. The focus often is to look for negative stories. The killing of Muslims in Gujarat would be of interest. Similarly, sectarian terrorism in Pakistan is of great interest in India.

A certain mindset and world view by and large influences media issues. In 1999, when the Indians banned PTV there was a lot of pressure on me as Minister of Information to do likewise with Indian TV. Since the instinct is tit-for-tat, we do not often think things through. Instead of banning Indian TV we decided to counter the Indian point of view by taking columns from the Indian press that were critical of the Indian government and using them against India. That is legitimate propaganda.

The retaliatory mode is pointless. When the Musharraf regime banned Indian TV, I was one of the first and one of the few to publicly condemn the ban. I said this is not necessary; Pakistani viewers are capable of making their own distinctions without having to be supervised. I know of many Pakistani households in which children are not allowed to watch Indian TV because of its proclivity to show half-naked girls dancing in a strange manner and that sort of thing. There is no doubt a lot of that in the international media too, but Indian TV is of more consequence because the language is so much more accessible.

On the whole, despite periodic efforts made by the leadership of both countries, I see difficulties ahead in promoting accommodation. There is an appreciable level of interaction but interaction has to be a two-way street. A lot of Pakistanis who went to the Agra summit came back with horror stories. So it is clear that just interaction is not enough. But the conflict between the two countries notwithstanding, I think we in South Asia have been far more civilised with each other than most Western countries. The coverage of the war on terrorism on American TV has been absolutely offensive. No Indian or Pakistani journalist would stoop to the levels that American journalists have. There is a civilisational sophistication among South Asians and that is a saving grace and a reason for hope.