Editorial: Is Balochistan a Test For Pakistani Editors?

The discriminatory attitude of the Pakistani national media toward the unfolding developments in Balochistan has now begun to be felt by the rest of the international media organizations. There is a growing realization and confession on the part of the objective media representatives that the national media is deliberately involved in a blackout of the coverage of issues pertaining to Balochistan. The media’s refusal to extensively cover the government’s “kill and dump policy” has startled everyone.

The BBC Urdu Service surprised its audience recently in a report by Sharjil Baloch about the level of knowledge an average person in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s most populated province, had about their own country’s largest province. Though people living in cities are expected to have a better knowledge of politics, history and geography, dozens of people confessed that they did not know the name of one city in the province. One girl, apparently educated, said Balochistan was a part of Pakistan.

While most of the people in Pakistan largely rely on the media to get information about many things, the knowledge of an average Pakistani about the Middle East, US foreign policy and the so-called “C.I.A conspiracies” is far better than what they know about the state of affairs in the rest of the country. It  is a great national tragedy orchestrated by the national media.

In another report, again on BBC Urdu Service, journalist Jaffar Rizvi, wrote that the top officers of Pakistani media houses confessed that Balochistan was not sufficiently covered as was supposed to be done given the seriousness of the conflict in the resource-rich province.

The BBC report quoted Mubashir Zaidi, the editor of a respected news channel, Dawn News, that what nationalists were demanding in Balochistan was seen by the Establishment as the quest for independence. Thus, the government officials would consider the publication of such reports as ‘rebellious’. Similarly, some journalists face threats from the armed groups if they criticize the movement.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan representative of the Human Rights Watch, complained in an interview with Raza Rumi in The News International that the media did not cover the “brutal realities of Balochistan.”

Declan Walsh, the Guardian foreign correspondent in Pakistan-Afghanistan, in a recent investigative piece Pakistan’s Secrete Dirty War also insisted that the people of Pakistan were as much blank about the violation of human rights inside Balochistan as were the people living overseas because of the media’s blackout.

“If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don’t worry: neither have most Pakistanis,” said the respected British journalist,”Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.”

The Pakistan media has adopted double standards while covering Balochistan. This attitude has not only left the people’s problems under-reported but it has also incensed the foreign journalists and investors who wanted to learn more about the ground situation in Balochistan.

One such article that highlighted the blackout of more important issues in the Pakistani media appeared in the US journal Foreign Policy on March 31st in which the author Ahmed Rafay Alam pointed out that the death of at least 43 miners in the outskirts of Quetta was not covered by the Pakistani media. Instead, the national media was engaged in covering relatively unimportant issues only to keep the whole country ignorant about the explosive situation in the country.

The author of the Foreign Policy article wrote: “The role of the media in bringing this incident  [of miners' death in Quetta]to public attention also deserves a look.  The near-total media blackout of this most recent incident has less to do with censorship of any form than with viewing dynamics.  Milk, soaps and mobile phones (rather than coal) are sold in Pakistani cities, and urbanites don’t care what going on in the districts. The media contents itself to whip up public emotion over issues related to “national honor” as in the cases of Raymond Davis and Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, ignoring serious but less sexy issues like mine safety. Yet working conditions in Baluchistan are unlikely to improve without the media reporting on them.”

In the midst of the media’s support for the official stance and submission to corporate influence, news from Balochistan is mostly reaching the rest of the world through mobile phone text messages, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online websites. Therefore, this is no longer possible for the government and traditional media houses to “kill” the news.

Thus, it is the responsibility of the Council of Pakistan Newspapers Editors (CPNE), All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) and Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA) to stay away from such pro-government tactics which will eventually destroy their professional image. The more the media inside Pakistan denies coverage to Balochistan, the more the media outlets and their editors will face embarrassment in the international media for their lack of professional commitment to truth and objective reporting.