Where’s the news?
Nadeem F Paracha October 16, 2007
Tags: media , TV , news , lawyer movement , protests , Chief Justice , Musharraf , Pakistan
Saturday, October 7, 2007: I am watching Imran Khan in a talk show on TV. He is looking sullen, tired and not quite in his element in spite of the fact that he is on a channel that has given him the most exposure in the last couple of years. He looks disappointed and perhaps, even betrayed. He indirectlybemoans the way most of his new-found comrades in the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) have been lethargic and untrustworthy, especially in the face of General Musharraf’s two judicial “victories” and then, of course, the way he swept the presidential elections.
What’s more, Imran sat there slipping into further brooding, as the news of the fizzling out of APDM’s strike call that day started making its way through the equally disappointed-looking talk-show host’s lips. The most interesting thing in this respect is the way Imran behaves. Not as a hardened politician, but as an easily excitable modern Pakistani anchorman. In other words, a man (or a woman) of limited knowledge and experience in realpolitik, but one who gets carried away by his own hype. After all, Imran remains the electronic media’s most obvious construct.
The same Saturday, I also watched a group of lawyers informally chat with a couple of TV talk-show hosts from various news channels at the Karachi Press Club. Interestingly though, both the parties looked bemused and somewhat surprised as they saw in front of them (on a TV set), Musharraf gliding towards victory and no sign of “the hundreds and thousands of lawyers, traders and common people” that were being predicted to come pouring out into the streets in protest.
I found all the bemusement rather strange. Because isn’t it obvious that this “lawyers movement” is turning out to be an illusionary (and at times somewhat deluded), construct? Let me put it this way: What would be the result if one were to minus the role of the electronic media and the way it has covered this “movement”? It would surely have been an event, but the sort that is in the news one day, and out the next.
Thus, it seems even more far-fetched on the part of the many TV anchormen and the lawyers when they actually start equating this “movement” with the one led by left-wing student groups and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the late 1960s against the Ayub dictatorship, or with the 1976 Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) movement led by Asghar Khan and the Jamaat-i-Islami against the Z A Bhutto regime.
Those were genuine movements participated wholeheartedly by large sections of the civil society. But where exactly are these important sections in this “movement” I ask, even though the bulk of TV anchormen and talk-show hosts across the many channels will have you believe that some sort of a democratic revolution is afoot in this Land of the Pure.
Of course, cynically speaking, airing such sentiments by the channels and their analytical commentaries are good for ratings, but something a lot more striking can also happen. And it has. As is apparent with the apathetically and lukewarm manner the majority of Pakistanis have responded to the strike calls given by the opposition parties and the lawyers, it seems the so-called democratic revolution is unfolding only on our TV screens!
Isn’t it now evident that the general political and civil support that the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) got was like a one-off outpouring, and of whose victorious judicial conclusion was satisfying enough for most participants to return to their more mundane, day-to-day activities? But one should also remember, for the news channels it made great television, and good television means more viewer ship which in turn guarantees bigger advertising revenues.
Again, on a cynical level, this makes obvious business sense. However, what all the obsessive, no-holds-barred and somewhat wild 24/7 coverage of matters like the CJP’s ouster and comeback, the so-called “lawyers movement” and the Lal Masjid disaster also did was to surrealistically turn news channels into new entertainment avenues!
In other words, at the moment it is the local news channels which are posing the purely entertainment channels the biggest challenge. So much so that some “mixed channels” which deal in both entertainment and news programs are now investing and allocating more money, resources and time to news shows rather than on entertainment programming.
This not only suggests that news shows and coverage are bagging the biggest audiences, but also that this is exactly why many of these news shows and wall-to-wall coverage of political events are being liberally punctuated with highly animated and exaggerated theatrics and language fit for an over-the-top soap opera. And this is how they are being seen by the larger sections of the audience as well; as a soap opera – a fascinating, loud drama of sorts whose script is being written by anchormen, hosts and their favourite political guests.
But what happens when the soap opera starts to lose steam? What happens to all the “stars” it had shaped and created, as in this case the lawyers, the anchormen, the talk-show hosts and a few repetitive opposition politicians? The answer to this can be found in the news channels’ latest coverage of the “ongoing lawyers’ movement”. It was rather odd watching journalists and the lawyers battling it out with raving and drooling cops outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad. I mean, where were the masses?
Thus, was it a case of desperation, to make dramatic news when none was available in the shape of action and participation of the common people?
Of course, millions across the country saw the bloody drama unfold outside the Supreme Court and on Constitution Avenue, but only a handful were ready to come out in the street to protest this “state brutality” against the media and the lawyers.
If logic be allowed to prevail instead of desperate game play, the conclusion to this is simple: The so-called masses have started treating news channels and their stars like they would any entertainer. It is also apparent that many feel that the lawyers and the electronic media have started to seem rather irrational and dangerously desperate.
As the so-called “movement against Musharraf” and the unfolding “democratic revolution” start seeming like a shrinking reality no bigger than a 26-inch TV screen, the soap opera that it has become across various news channels now seems to be devolving into a vigilante thriller, such is its tone. It seems it has now all come down to the volatile sentiment of pure and simple revenge. This is what happens when a revolution is televised live. It first makes marketable caricatures out of the revolutionaries and then eventually turns them into Sultan Rahees!
Very entertaining, indeed, but where’s the news?
This article was first published in Dawn Images on 13 Oct. 2007
