Media reforms– the litmus test for Pakistan’s democracy project

Pakistan has a new government. The first welcome policy change announced by it within a week of assuming office is a commitment to reverse the coercive media policies of its predecessor which over the past four years saw Pakistan plunge in global rankings on media freedoms and alarming levels of censorship that spawned extreme socio-political polarization and narratives of extremism.

If followed through, this commitment would certainly help restore Pakistan’s professed democratic credentials. What shape can the promised reversal take and what steps can free the media from the stifling confines of mostly officialese and little public interest perspectives and voices?

A good starting point, as announced by the new federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Marriyum Aurangzaib, would simply be not to emulate the previous government. Editors were jailed, TV programs taken off air, broadcast access restricted to large swathes of the population, and journalists by the dozen arrested, abducted, assaulted or slapped with legal cases against them through either law enforcement agencies, media regulators or the Federal Investigation Agency over the past three years. Dissent was all but silenced – mostly a narrow hostile narrative dominated.

Such was the scale of the crackdown and intimidation of the media in Pakistan until a few weeks ago, when the global media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) added erstwhile prime minister Imran Khan to its select list of global predators of press freedom last year. Pakistan also slipped down several notches to settle at 145th out of 180 countries ranked in 2021 on the RSF media freedom index.

To put things into perspective, media freedoms are not just an issue for the media. Media freedoms sit at the heart of the fundamental guarantee of the right to freedom of expression – the second most important human right after the right to life. Also, free speech is a right that belongs to every citizen, not just journalists. That is why coercive manipulation of the media is the preferred instrument of dictators and autocrats to censor public interest narratives, to prevent accountability of duty bearers by rights holders. It is, therefore, essentially a democracy issue.

And this is why the litmus test of the new government’s commitment to media freedoms lies in not merely a procedural reversal of its predecessor’s policies but to broaden it to something more substantial and sustainable. Pakistan’s democratic credentials need to be restored not just through a reversal of the policy of intimidation and adversarial litigation against media practitioners, but a broad set of media reforms to ensure the irreversibility of Pakistan as an open and plural society in line with constitutional guarantees.

And what could be the broad contours of an ideal media reforms agenda? To begin with, in line with a ruling earlier this month by the Islamabad High Court, dissent must be decriminalized not just from the controversial Prevention of Cybercrimes Act 2016 (which has seen dozens of journalists facing litigation for expressing their opinions online over the past two years), but also from all other statutes. Opinions are not a crime, hate speech is. And hate speech, which incites violence, should be criminalized, not freedom of expression or media freedoms.

In an age of the dizzying pace of technology convergence, where digital lives mirror offline lives, the lines between a formal media profession and the process of journalism that finds ordinary citizens blending into the ranks of journalistic functions, the legal framework needs to accommodate progressive interpretations of what constitutes journalism, free speech and public dissent.

This means freeing up the 20th century shackles that Article 19 (freedom of expression) and Article 19-A (right to information) of the Pakistani constitution find themselves in. They have no place in the 21st century. These articles need to be reformed to prevent the growing numbers of citizens and journalists dissenting for their rights being accused of crimes against the state and religion. Pluralism in opinions that diverge from seemingly unaccountable state narratives at odds with people's aspirations are rights not crimes.

While, for now, the new government cannot be faulted for its commitment to media policy changes, it should resist the temptation of its own perceived wisdom to undertake reforms on its own. The agenda of media reforms should be drafted and fleshed out in transparent, broad-based consultations with all key stakeholders including citizens, especially women, journalists, media houses, political parties, rights groups, digital rights activists and media regulators, plus other democracy actors, to chart consensus reforms rooted in fundamental rights.

These reforms should not just ensure protections to free speech and media freedoms but also further civil liberties and Pakistan’s democracy project.

— Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.

Twitter: @adnanrehmat1