The electronic media explosion

[Olive]

The electronic media explosion




By Mohammad Waseem


IN recent years, Pakistan has moved into the age of multiple-channel television broadcasting. The cable TV has brought the world close to the domestic viewers, earnestly making and shaping their opinions in the process.

Is the exposure to western media expected to globalise the thought and behaviour patterns of the public? Can the Indian TV channels bring down the walls of ignorance and hostility between the two countries? Will the private channels finally render PTV ineffective and unpopular in terms of coverage of news and views?

Let’s look at the news and entertainment broadcasting by the western TV channels. The former provide an instant look into the world events big or small, near or distant. Pakistani viewers of CNN, BBC, Sky News, Bloomberg and other news channels from abroad experience the process of compression of time and space, without being conscious about it. The producers and consumers of the media operate in different social and political contexts at a distance of thousands of miles from each other. When messages about the Washington-led war on terrorism reach Pakistan across thee continents, its meaning is transformed at the receiving end according to the consumers’ prior commitments to the Muslim world.

On the other hand, a lot of the international discourse sticks in terms of argument and idiom of communication. The TV may cover Iraq, Iran, North Korea or Afghanistan, WMD, A Q Khan, London bombings, Pope’s remarks about Islam or Islamabad’s agreement with tribal elders in South Waziristan. But the terms of reference are comprehensively shaped by the western media. Apart from that, the latter seems to have lent a spirit of professionalism to the electronic media in Pakistan in terms of quality of presentation, editing of the available visual material and the format of talk shows.

The entertainment aspect of the western media, as viewed in Pakistan, has created interesting, sometimes unwelcome, results in what is still the widely operative context of a lounge TV. For example, there are regional variations of the level of accommodation of the cable TV. The NWFP under the MMA government banned it while most other areas of Pakistan remain open to the broadcasting of western TV channels. Islamic parties and groups generally oppose the ‘liberal’ content of programmes on the mini screen as a threat to morals and manners of society.

Secondly, one can point to the gender-based variation in TV viewing of liberal programmes. The male viewing is typically more expansive than female viewing because the former is allowed wider latitude. Thirdly, there is a generational pattern of TV viewing, whereby the youth is ahead of the older people in watching western films, concerts and fashion shows. Both male and young viewing of the ‘liberal’ stuff point to the ‘side viewing’ insofaras it represents an act of opting out of the lounge TV syndrome.

The expanding electronic media has faced opposition from the ascendant, conservative and Islamically oriented middle and lower middle class sections of the population as represented by political parties, NGOs, as well as mosque and madressahs networks. It seems that the cable TV group has found a way out in the form of providing ample channel time for coverage of Islamic teachings and events. This concession to religious elements is tantamount to recognising their social power base.

It is not unusual for TV viewers to constantly move from one channel to another and thus shift from scenes of veiled women to swimsuits on the beach to the pulpit of the mosque onwards to a fashion parade. Some call it tolerance and co-existence between the old world and the new world. Others call it schizophrenia, rooted in the utter lack of direction in public morality.

Not surprisingly, foreign observers find Pakistan as a land of contradictions. For one thing, this situation is an indicator of the limits of social power as exercised by Islamic forces in the nation at large. The entertainment industry has jealously guarded its interests against criticism from the conservative lobby.

The Indian channels enjoy a sizable share of the foreign broadcasting by the cable network. These channels are popular because of films, serial plays and musical shows. A long-term and indirect result of watching Indian TV channels can be a comprehensive march towards dedemonisation of Indians across the border. It has the potential to become a movement for cultural understanding.

In regional terms, this trend represents a movement towards peace between the two countries in terms of laying out the turf for an exchange of ideas and positions about issues and developments in and around Pakistan and India. This process is running parallel to the emergence of regional networking of the media across South Asia. It is difficult to predict whether programmes of the electronic media from the eastern neighbour of Pakistan represent the building blocs of an emerging civil society in the region. What looks more probable is a higher level of regional exchange of ideas and thoughts about a variety of subjects ranging from NGO operations, cultural shows and intellectual debates.

At home, the private TV channels have set a new trend in the field of news coverage. As opposed to the PTV channels, which continue to broadcast views as news relating to domestic politics, the private channels typically prefer to go by the newsworthiness of events and policies. The former generally project the speeches and statements of President Musharraf or Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz or government representatives in general, their forceful denial of certain views emanating from the public platform and warnings to the opposition, most recently to the Baloch nationalists.

However, one can notice change along with continuity in PTV. Competition with private channels has prompted it to go for professional and technological innovations. In the context of TV plays, one sees a change of attire and idiom of characters corresponding to modernisation of certain sections of the population. There is a visible movement from unilinear to multi-linear themes of plays, reflecting a greater awareness about complex issues of public and private life than before. However, this liberalism is confined to entertainment programmes. It is not expected to be the leading characteristic of PTVs coverage of news and views any time soon.

Even as the TV has made long strides forward in terms of engaging the public, the print media in Pakistan continues to cast its shadow on the way the government and opposition as well as the larger society are engaged in discourse about issues and policies. The English press reproduces editorials, op-ed pieces, and political columns of the western newspapers. The electronic media, in tandem with the print media, often criticise the government for going against the spirit of the constitution, violating democratic traditions and being unaccountable to the public at large for inflation, unemployment, poverty, deterioration of the law and order situation and highhandedness against opposition.

The electronic media, along with its strong influence, has come to stay. It seems to have overtaken the press in terms of impact on the target population inasmuch as it reproduces events and characters on the screen directly and promptly. Pakistan has moved to a fuller awareness about the working of international forces, global currents of war and diplomacy and trans-cultural patterns of interaction between states and non-state actors. Whether the electronic media will finally bring about a change in the direction of democracy by strengthening of the nascent civil society remains an open question.

[Waseemtabish]

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