 Caretaker Prime Minister Muhammadmian Soomro said on Saturday that challenges of misperception within and outside the country needed to be addressed at the earliest and the media focus should be turned to improving the political atmosphere leading up to the forthcoming general elections.
| It's my contention, and it always will be, that no country with a Minister of Information actually has a free press. |
Chairing a high-level meeting to review the media-related issues and the role of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Soomro said the government believed in the freedom of a responsible media and would take all necessary measures to ensure conditions conducive for the smooth functioning of the media. “Media has an important role to play in dissemination of information and in educating the masses on issues of national importance,” he added. “The role of media will be significant during the forthcoming elections when it has to discharge its obligations with responsibilities,” he said.
| Once the media's role becomes "educating the masses" rather than informing people who're free to make their own decisions, you're not what we shorthandedly refer to as a "democracy." In the case of Pakistain, you're one of the least effective authoritarian states we can imagine. |
The PM stressed the need to increase community’s participation in media, particularly on issues pertaining to public concern. “The public views on the national issues, particularly the problem of terrorism, have to be shared through different means of communication,” he maintained.
 I think that statement's a semantic null. It means nothing, except possibly what Humpty Dumpty wants it to mean.
Nothing actually has to be shared through different means of communication. Governments do have legitimate secrets. And many means of communication aren't concerned with pressing national issues, but with frivolities like Britney's nether regions.
But the real problem with the sentence lies with the first part: What the hell are "the public views on the national issues" he's yapping about? Are these the (diverse) views of the public at large, spanning the spectrum from furrit to againit? Or are they maybe the officially expressed views of the government -- which can be quite different from the government's actual, but closely held, views on the same subject? I suspect it's the position Soomro wants to push onto the public, but I'm not at all sure. |
Commenting on the prevailing government-media relations, Soomro said the government sincerely desired to accommodate concerns of all stakeholders nevertheless it had to be realised that no institution in any state of the world was left un-regulated. “A balance has to be maintained in the best interest of the society,” he added.
| There's regulation, and then there's regulation. In free societies, we try to keep regulation of the press confined to the areas of libel and monopoly. In authoritarian and totalitarian states they spend a lot of time examining content and shaping the definition of "truth." I think Perv and Soomro have a definitiion of truth they'd like to see adhered to. I think Najam Sethi -- the publisher of Pak Daily Times and Friday Times -- is a bigger man than either of them will ever be, and I think he's got his own (empirical and predictive) definitions of "truth." |
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