Pakistani media’s policy of obfuscation

Ernest Dempsey — Revealing, not veiling, the threats to life, peace, and safety – that is what media would undertake, speaking ideally. 

Most media sources in the west do follow this policy and you’ll see exact details of offenders – name, age, and other necessary details of criminals included in news reports and stories. Not so with many media outlets in some third world countries, like Pakistan.

Take today’s news post in the famous English daily The News, for example. It informs of a terror plot involving explosive material being caught by police in Hangu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, thus foiling the allegedly intended attack on the province’s Chief Minister who visited the town yesterday. The news post, like countless others of similar kind, is practically useless in helping the public against terrorism, though it does qualify for the kind of sensationalism that has become the pivot on which Pakistan media rotates about popularity. The post in question tells about the claim of the police that they caught “terrorists” carrying a large quantity of explosives intended for the minister’s assassination; but it does not give a single name of the “terrorists” caught red-handed. Why would one not suspect such reports to be either false claims by the law enforcement authorities or just half-heartedly written fill-ups for a paper’s page?

Since the onslaught of terrorism related to Al-Qaeda and Taliban within its territory, over a decade ago, Pakistani media have held firmly on to the policy of obfuscation in matters where people arrested for terror plots are involved. In incidents like the one pointed to above, names of the accused caught with solid evidence speaking against them are withheld; all their identifying details kept confidential as if sacred, and the same line “shifted to an undisclosed place for investigation” makes fun of people’s fears and confusion – the victims of these terror groups, the target of their atrocities.

A terror plot is a direct attack on people’s lives. So the authorities are meant to protect people, not the names of those who operate above the law. Yet, the secrecy continues indefinitely and inexplicably. Are Pakistani media afraid of the terrorists, or do they like to adhere to policies that work toward the relief of anti-state, anti-humanity elements; for in the US news sources, audience usually finds the basic information about offenders charged for even petty offenses – a terror suspect will hardly ever be kept veiled.

In democratic states, it is the government of the people and for the people. The enemies of the people should not be allowed the privilege of privacy and protection of identity. This “hush” policy of Pakistani media may well be working toward encouragement of the elements destructive of life in and out of the state boundaries. Who would be afraid after all when they know their identities will not be made public; that their names won’t be looked for in future by people and authorities as to where they went or whether they were ever brought to justice. It is one thing to report 200 “km” of explosives, as in the above report, but entirely another to keep safe the names of the “terrorists” when you catch them red-handed. Media dealing with such cases, therefore, need serious policy revisions.

US Soldier’s Sacrifice in Afghanistan, and Pakistani media’s silence

Ernest Dempsey — Two days ago, the news of a US soldier saving the life of an Afghan child at the cost of his own made news in all major media sources. The soldier named Dennis Weichel was 29 and stationed in Laghman province. Over a week ago, he rushed to pick a girl and move her out of the way of an army vehicle that could have crushed her to death. In this attempt at saving the child’s life, Weichel was hit by the vehicle while the girl was saved by his heroic move. Weichel succumbed to the wounds sustained in the line of duty as a true soldier – one who saves innocent lives.

After the recent incident of a US soldier’s shocking killings of Afghan civilians in the war-torn country, the public outrage was given voice in an equally spirited fashion in most media sources, including Pakistani media. Hardly any newspaper or channel missed presenting the news, often repeatedly with comments. Yet, the heart-winning altruistic act of Dennis Weichel has been so shamelessly ignored in Pakistani media that its absence seems to tell more about the selectivity of reporting by these sources. But then we know how very selective they have been in the past about what to give voice and why. Ignoring the confession of a Muslim man in the Koran desecration case that resulted in a horrific incident of violence against Christians, ignoring the Muslim fundamentalists’ call to ban bible, and misrepresenting the case of dismissal of Muslim drivers in the US—all these cases, and many more, tell what a biased media does in making opinions, or strengthening prejudices and fueling hatred—to be more precise.

Electronic media in Pakistan is ravenously vocal when it comes to slamming any action of the American or NATO forces hurting a civilian in Afghanistan. However, for all heroic actions of the American or western forces in the same area, this is just the opposite—complete silence. Of course, a very meaningful silence here, for the self-interested media sources do ‘good’ job in filling colors in the pictures the fundamentalist networks drawn for the masses. And this has been so for decades. How then can they dare contradict their own agenda by showing the flip side of the coin? This tells a lot about what scale of attraction the media is on toward positive, factual reporting.

From a humanist viewpoint, Dennis Weichel truly is a martyr; for if he isn’t called that, then there never was a martyr in human history. We have heard calls for apologies on the highest political level on incidents of killings of civilians by US troops. Now is the time when Dennis Weichel should be honored as a martyr by these very heads of state and fundamentalist drama queens who pose as defenders of humanity. Likewise, now is the time for all bigoted media to open their eyes (if there are any left) and take the professional demand and moral courage to tell the stories of real heroes—heroes like Dennis Weichel. He is not one who makes a nation or a family proud, but the universal human spirit in its pure and uncorrupted state.

‘Access’ secures freedom of access to online information in Pakistan

Ernest Dempsey — Unlike many NGOs that have been doing nominal/paper work in Pakistan, the international NGO Access has achieved something of national and international importance in a very short duration, i.e. driving people locally and internationally to protect the freedom of access to information online. In its email notification to supporters who signed its petition, Access thanked all to have their voice heard and stopping Pakistani authorities from the planned installation of a national firewall that would have limited the public’s access to online information the state disliked.

Last month, the news of Pakistani government’s plans to block its citizens from free access to online information created concerns among advocates of human rights within and outside the country. The government had placed an ad in papers inviting technical expertise for filtering and blocking Internet site addresses. Access took notice and started efforts on more than one front to nip the draconian plan before it could swallow the freedom of millions of Pakistani internet users.

The organization urged software companies and local technical service providers not to step up to the government’s plans for assistance. In matter of weeks, the petition launched by the organization received about 20, 000 signatures of people supporting freedom of access to information. Access then delivered letters to many surveillance companies across the globe to stand up for the rights of Pakistani people. All along, the organization also kept the issue alive in media, drawing international attention.  All these efforts proved fruitful as the Pakistani government dropped its plans of firewall construction.

Pakistan is a country where human rights violations and violence against women and children have been on a rise for years. The voice of its people, albeit a handful in number in proportion to its huge population, found a major outlet of expression via the worldwide web. Social media and blogs made the voice of its people heard. This is particularly true of Balochistan where the cry for independence has become a slogan synchronous with life itself, leading to violent and torturous suppression of people active in the independence movement. Since the independence of both state and private media in the country has been subject to question, Internet has been a source of information about grave national issues, which otherwise would never have been explored in sufficient detail, if at all.

The kind of activism Access illustrated in moving people against an oppressive plan shows that organizations staying true to their motto can and do bring about the change we need. The only sad part of this story is that no notable protest came from the people of Pakistan who were gifted this freedom by Access, though many must have signed the petition launched by Access. At the end of the day, freedom bagged the victory-one well-deserved.

Support for socialist revolution growing in Pakistan

Ernest Dempsey — The 31^st Congress on Post-Socialist Revolution Pakistan was held at the Aiwan-e-Iqbal in Lahore (Punjab) in Pakistan on March 10-11, 2012. People supporting socialist ideals and those interested in or inspired by the same gathered at the hall and listened to the speakers on how a socialist revolution would solve the critical issues faced by the working class the numbers of whose numbers run in hundreds of millions.

As against the only 12 people who attended the first such congress in the late 1980s in the country, over 4000 people from all walks of life attended this event – including many international appearances. These included the famous Trotskyist political theorist Alan Woods who, along with Lal Khan (also a keynote speaker at the Congress), leads the International Marxist Tendency. Amjad Shahsawar, Rehana Butt, and Adam Paul were other lead speakers at the congress.

Sources who attended the congress tell that beside the participation of a fairly large number of people of different ages, genders, and social backgrounds, the notable feature of the event was its formlessness – breaking up with formalities and protocol, such that the young and old, rich and poor, erudite and illiterate would sit next to each other and leave the traditional structured society’s gradations outside. This in essence was democracy, where people participated as people, not as representatives of a class. In this sense, the congress was an example for all gatherings – social, educational, and political.

In the late 1970s, the conflict between socialist and capitalist was approaching a climax as the Pak-Afghan region had practically become a battlefield for the territorial occupation between the two arch rival socio-economic and political models. For holding a socialist view of Pakistan in prospect, then Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto paid the price with his life. Religious bodies and the military stood first-line defenders of the US-led capitalist black – and the hope for radical reformation of the system as conceived by Bhutto was throttled.

Today, the ever-increasing labor class and those in better financial circumstances but with compassion and concern for the misery of the masses are again on a rise, albeit more gradual one, in the country. The socialist leaders promise basic necessities and fundamental human rights to all Pakistanis with elimination of social injustice and economic exploitation that are the trademarks of a capitalist model running in developing countries like Pakistan.

One observation worth noting here is the absence of any media here. In a country like Pakistan where a news-hungry media will cover a gathering of a couple dozen people about any issue, missing the event en masse despite getting invites in advance sounds a little strange – though not so inconceivable.

On schizophrenia in Pakistan

Ernest Dempsey — Some interesting news for all those who have serious interest in psychology, or broadly in mental health: political anarchy can cause schizophrenia. This claim, mind-boggling as it sounds, was made earlier this month, as reported in a news post on Express Tribune. Difficult to deal with, this revelation has not only put psychology research in Pakistan to question but also the seriousness of media in knowing what they are publishing. The claim in question was made in some workshop in Peshawar, the same city that has been in headlines for a major plagiarism issue this year, and it says political anarchy, terrorism, and social and economic disorders have resulted in an increased number of schizophrenia patients in the country. Very difficult to swallow indeed! Coming to the main claim later, it’s a pain to see words flung around without verifying their very existence. We know about ‘social circumstances’ and ‘economic crisis’, and of course ‘psychological disorders’ or ‘personality disorders’ etc; but social and/or economic disorders? A disorder is, in terms of health, a disease or problematic health condition. What possibly can ‘social and economic disorders’ mean? Maybe these terms will become meaningful in future unforeseen, but not as we know language today. Now to the cause of schizophrenia, well, before the appearance of this bombastic ‘finding’, political anarchy/terrorism and socio-economic were never scientifically related to schizophrenia in causal context. Schizophrenia is a neurobiological condition affecting the thinking faculty of patients, who gradually lose sensing reality as it appears to what are considered ‘normal’ people. Such conditions as schizophrenia fall in the category of ‘psychosis’. Depression commonly accompanies schizophrenia, but not always. And the two are different by nature as professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks notes in her book The Center Cannot Hold, “Depression, even psychotic depression, was primarily a disorder of feelings… schizophrenia was a thought disorder, a disorder that was psychotic at its core.” (p. 221.) With genes involved in causing schizophrenia, the disorder is one of neurobiological deterioration, frequently marked biochemically by overly active dopamine transmission/reception in the nervous system. Political anarchy or trauma (e.g. terrorism) may cause stress, in response to which existing mental health conditions may aggravate (symptoms get more frequent or pronounced); but these factors don’t cause schizophrenia. At worst, they can aggravate it. In her recent interview, published in Recovering the Self (Vol. 3, No 4), author Susie Dunham, who wrote the book Beyond Schizophrenia about her son’s battle with the disease, said, “There are professionals with many ‘letters’ following their names as credentials, who actually believe that a traumatic event triggers the disease! I happen to espouse the teachings of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey who wrote the book entitled Surviving Schizophrenia and has studied the disease for decades. Dr. Torrey suggests that traumatic incidents are simply concomitant in young people’s lives and have little or nothing to do with the disease’s onset.” Indeed, living in Pakistan, an average person isn’t traumatized by terror events to cause a serious psychological disorder, let alone a neurobiological one. Terrorism appears in news and is received like other bad news. A decade of violent frenzy has made terror news kind of routine, something you can watch on TV while having your supper. The exception will be those who personally suffer from or witness an act of terror. But even in that case, the resulting problem will likely be PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), as happens with some soldiers and security personnel who have been in the war zone. Then the fact the statistics given in the post in question are also of dubious authenticity, i.e. 1.4 million patients in Pakistan, reflects in the comment of a well-read psychology graduate Asadullah, “This simply isn’t an academic claim. In a country where we haven’t conducted a population census for over a decade, claiming that 1.4 million people are suffering from schizophrenia is akin to a deliberate attempt to sound ridiculous.” In a 2008 paper, researchers from Agha Khan University wrote: “The correct prevalence of schizophrenia in Pakistan cannot be known and thus the seriousness of the condition will always be masked.” How the mental health experts in the said workshop found out in just three years the prevalence of schizophrenia in Pakistan is a question this media post at least didn’t bother to answer. The problem thus also seems to be with media, even some well-reputed sources, which is far too lame when it comes to science and research. Not many in Pakistan would be able to catch the definition of schizophrenia, let alone its nature, causes, and risk factors, which are rarely described in media posts such as the one discussed here. Science, health, and research are treated in the same manner as political propaganda whereby anybody can say anything and everything regardless of any care of consequence. Someday perhaps, Pakistani media will take the pains to get writers and editors having actual knowledge of the essentials of science and health—including mental health.

Hertz's suspension of Muslim drivers in Pakistan’s fundamentalist media

Ernest Dempsey — Those concerned with saving the world from fanaticism would most probably have reflected on the role of media in fueling emotions of deprived classes. If not, some of Pakistani media sources present a good place to start with, albeit the ones most prominent are in Urdu language, which entertains a larger audience than English papers in the country. Just this morning, a widely circulated Urdu paper in Pakistan reported the incident of the suspension of several Muslim drivers in the US as an attack on Islam.

The paper, which is the same that has been presenting late Governor Salman Taseer’s convicted murderer Mumtaz Qadri as a hero of Islam, has titled its post Anti-Islamism: 34 Muslims suspended in US for praying during office hours. The opening sentence translates as, “America’s anti-Islamic activities are becoming conspicuous.” This is followed by the statement that a US company ‘fired’ 34 employees for praying during office hours (later in the post, the correct word ‘suspended’ is used). Later in the post, the paper writes that the company has accused the employees of not following office timings of the company. The opening statement has been included directly without any source quoted or reference included—making it sound like the fact of the matter.

A number of credible media sources, internationally, have reported the details of the same incident, telling that according to new rules of the company, workers have to clock in and out when they take time out for prayers. Now this makes all the good sense since a number of issues can implicate the company if workers would leave for prayers while still shown as working in official record. Any offense committed by any worker out of duty without recording so can be an official alibi and the company can face serious consequences if eye witnesses spot the accused committing the act. Just an example! Now why would one not agree to clock in and out for accuracy of record?

But the bigger question before us here is: are some media sources, as the aforementioned Urdu paper, intentionally leaving out some details to make the incident look like an attack on Islam? If it is so, and I personally believe it is, it won’t be going far if we ask that such hatred-spreading media be monitored carefully because the scores of readers being misled this way are being brainwashed openly to be ready to fight against the ‘enemies of Islam’.

We penholders believe in freedom of the press, but not unbridled freedom that is provocative and destructive to peace. It’s understandable that opinion-makers do goad commentary on issues in the direction of their personal values and biases. The immediate concern for the liberal-minded, and particularly for the US-led warriors on terror, is whether they can counter fundamentalist propaganda masked as news. They certainly need to, and for this, they must assess their sources and formulate a strategy that would go beyond the English language.