Private Pak TV channels await Musharraf’s nod

Officials in the information ministry said the government is giving the final touches to a draft law for the establishment of the electronic media regulatory authority, which would serve as the official arm to deal with the private television channels.

Pakistan’s Information Secretary Khwaja Ejaz Sarwar in a recent interview with Karachi-based Dawn promised that a policy framework for private television would be finalised sometime this month.

The government is willing to give private newscasters a free hand, said veteran broadcaster, Aslam Azhar, a former chief of the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV), who is now the director, media projects, with Shaheen Foundation.

Shaheen Foundation, a welfare organisation for retired officers of the Pakistan Air Force, is awaiting the government’s nod to launch its own satellite television channel.

Also in the run is Pakistan’s largest newspaper group, the Jang group of publications, whose plans for Geo Television headed by another former PTV chief Agha Nasir are almost finalised.

Some other media houses including Dawn, Nawa-i-Waqt and Business Recorder have also told the government that they intend to enter the electronic media business.

Up against competition from the India-owned Zee TV network, with the rising popularity of its news broadcasts particularly, PTV is in the process of launching a news channel, Channel 3, which will beam to 38 countries.

“We are expected to go on air by March 23 — our test transmission is already on,” said a PTV official.

Since the emergence of satellite telecasting in the early nineties, television has become the most popular media in Pakistan with people all across the country watching foreign telecasts through through satellite receivers.

While the total circulation of newspapers in the country is a mere two million, the electronic media is widely watched by a population of more than 60 per cent illiterate people. PTV alone reaches 88 per cent of the country’s 138 million people, according to the national economic survey of 1999.

Private TV channels will be allowed to air entertainment programmes and news and current affairs, which have so far been the monopoly of PTV and the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.

“This activity (private broadcasting) is very important as it will encourage democratic norms in the country,” commented Azhar.

Rights organisations in Pakistan have for decades been seeking a free flow of information. The human rights commission of Pakistan says the government-controlled electronic media stifles the people’s right to information, and manipulates news to suit the government in power.

Ending state monopoly of news will be a historic event, comments Mohammad Najeeb, senior editor of the Pakistan’s largest private news agency, the News Network International.

However, Najeeb is a bit sceptical about the extent of independence the government will grant. “Our print media do not have any regulatory controls, but they are effectively controlled by the government.”

The clash between the Nawaz Sharif administration and the Jang group last year, with the government withholding supplies of newsprint, demonstrated how far the government would go to punish a publication that refuses to fall in line, he pointed out.

Successive governments have used their control on advertising and subsidised newsprint to subdue the press. Often the tax department is also let loose on critical publications, like the Jang and Najam Sethi’s The Friday Times which were tied up in numerous cases of tax evasion last year.

Since private TV will be looking to make profits, the government can use the same tactics to keep them under its thumb, commented Najum Mushtaq, a columnist with the Islamabad-based newspaper, The News.

Also a free flow of information should include the private sector, particularly the transnational corporations, he said. “But private media depends heavily on advertising proceeds. That becomes a stumbling block in the flow of information.”

“Eventually private televisions may evolve to be completely independent, but initially they will have to act and pose as friends of the state rather than foes,” asserts Mohammad Najeeb.

On its part the military-led government is prepared to issue TV licences to only Pakistani nationals, and the draft law proposes that majority shares remain in Pakistani hands, which could be challenged under World Trade Organisation rules which stipulate access to foreign media.