The year 2002 was a turning point for media’s evolution in Pakistan when the country’s airwaves were opened up for private ownership and the first of dozens of TV channels started to be licensed to run news and current affairs independent of hitherto state oversight. The experience was heady with plurality of opinion and real-time coverage, a radical departure from the cautious, staid state-owned broadcasting behemoth PTV. The expectation was that an informed citizenry would be fostered, tolerance increased and democratic tendencies strengthened.

A decade down, though, and an argument can be made that these private TV channels -- the staple source of information for tens of millions of viewers across the country -- have come to be instrumental, instead in increasing intolerance in society by giving disproportionate airtime to non-representative forces, extremist and fringe groups and fostering an overall narrative that spreads despondency and despair and reduces trust in state and government.

Agenda of caricaturisation

The media is guilty of playing up issues, such as violence and terrorism, and while there are ample margins for fair and public-interest critique, the media disproportionately criticises, satirises and caricaturises democracy and legitimate political actors who have public mandates, thereby generating sympathies for actors who don’t want to play under or don’t operate within constitutional parameters.

This is a clear outcome of the private electronic media, straying from its mission of upholding public interest. Increasing competition, as manifested in the ratings race, and pressures from various quarters, including state and non-state actors seeking to influence the narrative, have forced the media houses into a fractious war of dominance and survival at the cost of its core mission.

And this divergence from the core mission has come about through increasingly diluted editorial controls. The current affairs TV channels, without exception, have by now become so lax in enforcing basic journalism principles that opinion is freely offered as fact in news bulletins and the line between opinion and analysis is deliberately blurred in prime time talk shows.

The lowest point in wanton abandonment of even the pretentions of professional journalism has come in the aftermath of the murderous attack on Hamid Mir, which triggered a rash of recriminations between media groups with the unsightly spectacle of them bandying about allegations of treason and blasphemy against each other. They have also taken their ungainly, bitchy battles over the airwaves to the courts for added measure.

Compromising ethics

The biggest ongoing stories from Pakistan over the last decade -- the same period in which the private broadcast media has evolved -- have been the rise of terrorism and the transition from military to representative rule and the attendant two elections. The pressures that have come with reporting these stories in a milieu where access to reliable information is patchy at best, where rumour is a staple and where statements and allegations drive journalism, have come to impact the current affairs TV media in ways that have affected it adversely: over 100 journalists and media workers have died reporting terrorism and the political transition.

Reporting these two ongoing stories has morphed into the format of either breaking news or hyperbolic talk shows. The hyperactivity of breaking, rolling news has meant objectivity taking a back seat and can be argued to be at the root of many a media problem today. The war for ratings and the competition, which is manifested in the breaking news syndrome and sensationalist text and tone of the media, have proven to compromise journalism. Look at Geo TV and its parent Jang Group cycling serious but unsubstantiated allegations against ISI and its chief in the context of the Hamid Mir attack. Clearly, the right editorial questions were not pondered at the critical moments before broadcast, or for eight hours thereafter. Or look at Express, ARY and Dunya channels dabbling in slander on their prime time shows.

The credibility of media taking a hit now is not new. As long back as in 2010 the parliament proposed a central code of conduct for the electronic media to temper graphic coverage of terror attacks and libelous portrayal of politicians as corrupt in general. While there are several codes of ethics lying around, the discussion of a central code of conduct that can help steer the media back to professionalism has been in the works for a long time. In 2011, the government set up the Press Council of Pakistan with the mandate to receive complaints against newspapers and TV channels for errant and sensationalist reporting. But while the media scrambles for higher ratings and even well-known journalists and anchorpersons continue to spew bile and hatred, the PCP hasn’t exactly emerged as a catalyst of media professionalism as aimed.

Putting editors in charge

Those in media who do end up doing investigating stories, implicating state authorities or invite the anger of religious groups are often intimidated by either official security forces or militant groups. While the media could be able to defend its practitioners better if they had an agreed set of media guidelines, sadly even though it has been urged to develop its own guidelines on professionalism it has shown little eagerness in doing so. Commercial interests seem to outweigh social responsibility for the independent media for the moment.

To tackle the crisis of credibility afflicting the current affairs and news media today how can media in Pakistan become professional? The role of editors, news directors and news editors has to be strengthened to serve as a buffer between the media owners’ right to profits and the media consumers’ right to public interest journalism. It is high time professional editors, senior working journalists, news directors and editors form an "Editors Guild of Pakistan" or "Council of Pakistani Editors" that can provide the proper platform needed to push for greater professionalism in news media.

There is already the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) but the problem with it is that most of its member editors are also owners and also simultaneously members of Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA) and All Pakistan Newspaper Society (APNS). Also, CPNE is restricted to print media editors only while the print media is only a tiny part of the media landscape.

The proposed council of editors (either as a new body or as a reformed CPNE structure) needs to have broad-based consultation with editors and reporters and come up with a central code of conduct or charter of media professionalism with the mandate to enforce it in all media houses. This is possible if PBA, APNS and PFUJ also endorse it to build ownership for it. If they can form associations to defend their business interests, can’t they band together for journalistic integrity of their media and to foster professionalism?