Hassan Nisar HATES Jamat-e-Islami - Part 2

Shrinking space for debate www.jang.com.pk By Adnan Rehmat Mass media is making an eager lurch towards the right, riding the crest of an ideological battle that is giving disproportionate coverage to forces in the country that are extra-parliamentary and have no mandate and accountability The script was not supposed to go like this. When the airwaves were opened up for private ownership in Pakistan in 2002, the general expectation was that the country would become more pluralistic, more tolerant. The hope was that from a national narrative scripted by a security state that has traditionally promoted paranoia for its own benefit through a tightly controlled information regime, Pakistan would make a shift from information darkness to information openness. This, it was expected, would bring people and their welfare, as articulated by themselves rather than by the self-appointed establishment, at the centre of national policy and daily business of politics. But a confounding thing has happened: in the last eight years, a discernible shift of the mainstream broadcast media, particularly TV channels, has gone to firmly right of centre. The events of recent weeks, leading up to the ghastly murder of a progressive public figure — Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer — in the backdrop of a media debate that has promoted extremist views, seem to indicate Pakistan's mass media is making an eager lurch even further to the right, riding on the crest of an ideological battle that is giving ...
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