Peshawar Tragedy: representation in the media and fear of expanding Trauma

The life changing tragedy happening on December 16th has changed the very life perceptions of people living in this city. The show of solidarity from all segments of Pakistani society and the rest of the world is very comforting. The local and mainstream media’s response to the tragedy is laudable. People in the city of Peshawar felt to be part of the larger human habitat after a very long break. Media persons went through a personal trauma while covering the horrible event. This really showed the human side of journalists and journalism, which showed how this professional group owns the audience and how much they are part of it. At this point of our national history it is important to look at the way this incident is being presented and how it will affect the audience as well as the working journalists. The spot coverage of the event has exposed the very weakness of the media to deal with certain incidents. In an era of break neck competition and breaking news, it is difficult to manage live coverage. This has remained a long-standing ethical question, yet to be dealt with by the national media as an intuition. Asking critical questions form the victims, who were waiting to see whether their loved ones were alive or not, added to the grief of the parents and relatives on the spot. It has but also affected viewers across the globe. Then came the next day when media persons asked questions from relatives, mostly parents, in their homes or hospitals. Here again, most of the time, the limits of professionalism were extended beyond the ethical conscience of the journalists themselves. In hindsight, even the journalists covering the unfortunate incident and its aftermath will see that they pushed the interviewees too far. This brings the ethical question of making a clear policy on covering such gory incidences and capacity building of journalists on issues of trauma on a personal level as well as an understanding of the effects of their work on the audience. The second issue that is very important in media representations is “the follow up”. Follow-ups are mostly the repetition of the same day’s images and audio-visual presentations on the media. There is no question about the fact that the media and media professionals mean well and do their best to keep the audience up-to-date on the happening, and its aftermath. The audiences do need these follow ups to know about and deal with the tragedy. But the repetition of graphic presentations has a traumatizing effect on the audience, especially children. In the present case the very victims of the incident were children. This makes it even worse for the audience. Children looking at children, endlessly, seeing their misery, and identifying themselves with them, makes the whole media exposure extremely traumatizing to the worst limits. The media needs to look into this issue. It is not easy to adjust to unending tragedies and the professional requirements, professional and market pressure, and many other seen and unseen pressures on the individual journalists as well as media organizations. But at the same time, it is important to have a serious check on presenting and following up on tragic incidents. An audience-focused media is the need of the hour. It is high time to look into the needs of the audience and see to the effects of the media representations on the audience. An audience-focused media will strive to safeguard the best interests of its audience. Spreading trauma through a well-intended, but faulty, product is not a service. The line should be drawn to avoid any such impact. A debate on trauma and how to avoid its spread through the media product is immediately needed. And immediacy means right now, not any debate in the near future. We don’t have the time for such drawing room decisions.

Peshawar Tragedy: Some basic fact checking, the Media Monolith tends to ignore

The whole world is busy explaining the events from yesterday in Peshawar. We all have our own ways of expression at individual and professional levels. In fact, individual expressions beamed on the media become collective images. I see an anchor arriving from Karachi and hovering at LRH, looking for interviewees. His prime target is to find a loved one who has lost a loved one and make him/her cry in public. He couldn’t find many and had to remain content with doctors and someone whose loved one escaped death with minor physical injuries. There were others who did follow their prey to homes (these were the local guys) and had a good rating by making the viewers cry. Well, this is media. And this is what most of people in this business call a human touch. Let me tell you guys, its NOT! I think breaking a few stereotypes/misconceptions would be great for a beginning. Images that we just built last night with the help of the global media enterprise in our effort to be “global”. First, Army Public School was a school where kids, like any other school going kids, studied. It was not a military school. It was a school where kids of military men went along with other civilian kids. And again all the kids did not belong to military officers. In the services there are also lower ranks where parents have similar problems as any of the lower middle class, poor ones with little incomes. Fees were lower for the forces’ kids, while civilian kids used to pay more. But the fees were affordable enough and the education was at a par with other private schools, at times better than many. And last but not least, the parents’ preference to get their children educated at this school was not due to any misplaced notion of hobnobbing with the brass. It was just good quality education. So much for the simple fact of defining the school. Now where is it located? It is not simply about military area, which is highly secure. This is not a solely military inhabited area. Warsak road leads to Peshawar’s suburbs, a number of villages. This road also has the largest number of private schools where most of the kids of the same age as the ones died on Tuesday go for leaning. And the talk about adjacency to the tribal areas is another misconception the Pakistani mainstream creates in collusion with the global media industry. Peshawar University and Hayatabad are nearer to Khyber agency than the area where this school is located could be to Mohmand Agency. Adding spice to demography to make it sellable at the cost of basic facts is extremely unethical by any standards. And the majority of the private schools being here and parents being satisfied with their children studying there is a testament to the fact that it was not situated in the middle of the wild west of Pakistan. Checking basic demographic facts is always good. Google mapping amidst drumming is no journalism. Its not even good story telling. The next question is whether people would be feeling safe to send their kids to any school at all, or to the ones in this area, let alone Army Public School? It is the future of education in this city that is at stake. The narrative of “we are united” is not worth. The politicians gathering in Peshawar won’t be there forever. And even if they are, it will merely add to the city’s security load at a time when its security apparatus should be least bothered with VIP security. The way ahead should be the immediate topic, not the rotten word juggling with the same sordid faces who change mantles like stage performers to earn their “dishonest buck”. And last but not least, the city is in shock and this is not symbolic. The rotten narrative of Pashtoon bravery should be kept aside and the real fact of everyone feeling afraid for today and tomorrow of their children should be the discourse. Getting images from schools from Punjab and Sindh with slogan chanting kids won’t change the reality on the ground. The false hope this city has developed during the last few months is no more. The fear of uneasy calm being the harbinger of a huge storm has proven right and now we are all right in its eye. By “we” I mean people of Peshawar and KPK (FATA included). The rest can surely praise us for our bravery and we appreciate it. But we know that in reality we are all alone amidst all this. This is the sad reality we need to understand and others, to acknowledge. Pakistan has yet to grow beyond provincial boundaries of ethnic divide. Until then, every unit stands alone amid the empty rhetoric of unity.

Peshawar in Grief: A Cynical View of its Represntation in the Media

It is a field day for writers, journalists, experts, mediapersons, media managers, and all who sell news and views. The diversity of the genre has been expanded beyond recognition with the social media and every status upload we all make. Amongst us are those who produce for different media, having different perspectives, and at times different agendas. They have this space in different media and also enjoy the luxury of using the social media, amongst so-called friends. Thus, comments, likes, ego inflation as “servers of truth and saviors of humanity”. We all have a day. And what a day! I am just looking at all that is being said on individual, national, and international levels. It is amazing how concerned the whole world is. How people are gathering to show their sympathies and showing solidarity with the innocent victims of yesterday's massacre. But when we carefully look at all this, we don't see the children. We see agendas: local, national, international, global, just name it and there is an angle; except the human one. Those who are talking about the grief of the parents don't really know what such a loss could be. A personal loss is a personal loss. Its very important we stay with the people in pain, but are we? We always have a statement, an agenda. We are using the incident as a peg to hang our prejudice on. We shouldn't do it. Sharing someone's loss isn't conditional, it doesn't need a slogan. I know all those sharing the grief mean well, but we are so mediatized that we have got into a habit of "marketing our love", proving it "fits into a format, a frame". We need to unlearn this habit to remain human. Now lets look at the media, the grief selling industry, the rating machine, and the interest-marketing monster. Since yesterday I am looking at the national and international media. The national one is analyzing first and reporting later. The typical exercise of using our tears as bait to lure us into an analysis where fixed agendas could be served on the table. The benefit of such a scheme is that no matter how bitter these seem to a sane person, these sell good in moments of indecision. To a careful eye the whole action seems premeditated. It is not premeditated in the sense of the media having the knowledge of the event. It’s rather the frame it has for its own audience. It is furthering the existing prejudices. One of the great myths of "what is positive in the tragedy"? "We got united." We didn't. And this is the unity we always have on the media scene. But did it ever help in the long run? It never. So, please don't beat the beaten path. And most importantly, if this leadership is united at such a cost, I think it is not worth. And what would be the outcome of all this unity and meetings we are pinning our hopes onto. Lets wait and see. We all know the results. Do the media managers know? Yes they do. Then why are they doing it? Either they are incapable to doing a sound analysis, or they just don't have it on their agenda. Now lets have a look at the international media. Shameless, as it is all the time. Fitting Pakistan into the frame of the terror haven is what they are doing. Well, many would argue this is what it is! Well, lets buy this for a moment. But would they do it to their own people if such a tragedy happens? They won't! It’s for us. Cobbling an image through naming all acts of terror that have taken place in the region and using the image of innocent children to prove the point is criminal. Be human for a moment. Think about the innocent loss of lives in this Godforsaken part of the earth. When a guy kills dozens in Norway, the country is not painted as racist. It is just a lone guy gone mad. And Pakistan bashing is not difficult. You get more than one chance every day. Just close the shop for one single day. You don't want to accept us as human beings, just leave us alone for a day, at least. Just let your frames rest and keep your hands off.

Ethics for Collaborative Journalism in Zones of Conflict: a Thematic Precept

The Gutenberg Galaxy has really caught up, the medium really became the message, and the world got retribalised. The Global Village is true, but at the same time we shouldn't be losing sight of retribalisation. People are so well connected through the advancement of technology, a fact which proves McLuhan right in his ideas of Media Determinism. But the results we are getting are far from reassuring. The idea of The Spring all over the Developing, in fact, Muslim, world are increasingly becoming obsolete in the light of evidence and research. But even if these were right, it the probable impact of this Integrated World develops a negative equation. The role of social media as a tool of resistance is being propagated around the globe. But the anomaly in the whole concept is that if the social media is a threat to status quo and it is inherent in its constitution, why would it be only true for the Muslim world, while it will remain supportive of the same equation in the West. Taking it as a liberating force in the Muslim countries, while supportive, or inactive, of whatever goes on in the West, or even non-Muslim developing world, doesn't make sense. The winds of change can't blow differently on different sections of the same global village. These should have the same pattern. This rejects the premise of change agent in the Muslim world. But the retribalisation is there. The world is now divided, entrenched in different hostile camps, and national identities are unmistakably ideologies against the other, a belligerent other. Here again we are confronted with an anomaly. On the one hand media is the agent of division, while on the other we are looking at it as a solution to the problem of division and hatred. Most of the world forgets this problem and sees the media and media professionals as agents of global integration, carriers of the ideals of universal democracy. Another aspect of the problem is that media, as systems of information, are considered to be biased, while journalists and their representative organizations, as systems of journalism, are considered as unbiased, or at least humane enough to understand the human side of the problem, universally. The problem in this premise is that there might be a difference between both the above mentioned structures, while, presumably, the former represents ownership, marketing, advertisements, and financial support; the mechanical, more industrial/capitalistic side of the business of journalism. While the latter, namely journalists, is taken as directly connected with the happenings on the ground, in touch with the human problems, and having a feeling of responsibility towards the users of the finished product. There is a modicum of plausibility in the supportive argument in favor of intra-system differences. But this can't be stretched too far. Differences within the same system can't be seen as two separate systems, one considered evil while the other striving for good. It is not logically acceptable that the parent body, the paymasters, support their own nemesis in the form of their workforce. The working journalists, thus, know the owners' agenda and do their "job" by working within that frame. Their personal views about issues might be diagonally apposed to those of the ones expressed on the media, yet their professional performances are not forced labor at all. There are no prisoners of conscience in the modern media business. They all are well aware of what they are doing and also knowing the consequences of their actions. Thus the whole hue and cry about the innocent saviors of humanity trapped in the cobweb of capitalistic enterprise is nothing more than a myth. Journalists get 'oriented' in the day to day business of news making and do accept the ideologies of their respective networks. The very word 'professionalism' means parting with personal belief systems and adhering to those of the profession. The biggest challenge at hand in our present day media business is "how to look at a universal ethics of journalism in a globalized world?". The very need for such an ethics is not based on lofty, abstract ideas of humanism and morality. The reasons are practical. How would a journalist professional in Pakistan and his/her counterpart in the US work together, while keeping a bias against each other at the same time? What would be the quality of the product, how would they synchronize their respective ideals for a single job? Would it be possible to develop a dual professional self, the one dealing with international, professional interaction, an intercultural/international enterprise, while, on the other hand, sticking somehow to the parent national/local ideologies of the profession, both in Pakistan and the US? The questions are easily placed but are very difficult to answer. First and foremost the whole global structure of journalism has to get out of the hypocritical notions of the global journalistic fraternity. The whole structure of global networks for rights of journalists is there to help after the damage is done. There is no preemption, no ethical structure of understanding, in place that could hinder the happenings. The problem should be faced head on, the acceptance of the devil within. There are biases and working together on the same issue with two antagonistic ideals and an image of the belligerent other for the coworker is destined to place one of the two into a blind alley. And this victim, most of the times, is the Muslim/local counterpart. The solution of the problem lies in an enlightened debate on the issue at the academic level. Students and budding journalists brought together to discuss the nature of media systems, media, media activity, laws, and socio-cultural contexts of both the systems in a free debate. This debate can't take in real world traveling packages. Journalists going to the West, mostly US, getting impressed with the routines and advancements and coming back with a malice towards their own parent organizations. This is no dialogue. Dialogue is based on respect for the other and accepting the other and her/his contexts as right. Seeing the differences as milestones in need of synergies, instead of molding one in favor of the other. The idea of a virtual class room is one of the many ways of doing this exercise in real time. A virtual discussion forum would bring the real affective matrices into play. This will help seeing the roots of preconceptions, misconceptions, and stereotyping. It will also ensure the continuity of the debate to a logical end. The short term shuttles into one or the other culture are nothing but confusing. This, naturally, will lead us towards a syllabus (or at least a working ethical understanding, initially) for a universal working ethics for journalists in zones of conflict where collaborative work is needed by professionals representing the warring parties into conflict in their personal as well as professional lives. The time is ripe and the clock is ticking. The sooner we begin with it, the better it would be for the present and future of international, collaborative journalism in zones of conflict.

Pakistani Media: Problems and Potentials

Journalism in Pakistan has developed into a huge industry during the last decade or more. The freedom of electronic media, especially private television, has given it the position of a political player in Pakistan. Media conglomerates are becoming more and more powerful and individual journalists are earning more and more money and power. This has but also given rise to some old and new questions. On the media level it is largely the question of ethics in the age of television. This question directly comes down to the capacity of the individual journalists to deal with the questions of ethics of responsibility in challenging times. Closely related to this question is the one of journalists working conditions. The questions have two main dimensions: 1) media system, 2) and system of journalism. A media system deals with the whole of media, while system of journalism revolves around the activity of newsgathering and the gatherers and presenters. Have the working conditions and the professional skills to gather, package, and deliver information become better along with the rise in the media industry in Pakistan? The answer to the question, unfortunately, is negative. Why is it so? Are the journalists ill equipped to deal with the new freedom and power? Is the media ownership a hurdle in the face of objective journalism? Is the individual journalist partisan by default? Are the challenges too great to fathom and deal with? The answer to all these questions is yes. The present day free media in Pakistan developed out of the state controlled broadcast media and a very vocal free press, the newspaper. The history of newspaper in Pakistan is rooted in the tradition of an anti-Colonial press, which remained a political adversary to the British colonialists. After Independence in 1947 the press transformed this role into that of a social and political responsibility for the betterment of the newly independent Pakistan. While the government controlled the electronic media, the press maintained its freedom against all odds. It was only after the information explosion assisted by the rise of information technology that Pakistani electronic media got the freedom to enter the domain of private television and radio. Besides the technical and legal handicaps this abrupt entry left the journalists grappling with a whole new form of journalism, namely, the transition from the written word and the still picture to the audio-visual, 24/7 business of unending deadlines. The newspaper owners entered into the television news business and even those from outside the journalistic business had nothing but the print workforce at hand. The new journalistic workforce had the new influence tool in their hands, which made them literally visible in front of an audience whom they already saw as dependent with their role as guide and educators for the masses. The inclusion of presenters, anchors, in the business was decided mostly on face value and not journalistic skills. This new genre has replaced the traditional editors, who were supposed to be more skilled in giving final shape to the information given by the reporter. In the new equation the positions were reversed. The presenters were the ones with very little knowledge of the happenings and their backgrounds. There, naturally, were producers to give the final touch to the reporters' information, but the storm of breaking news has made it extremely difficult to sift the information properly before dishing it to an information hungry audience. Pakistan has become the center of world attention in the wake of the events after 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, and more so terrorism in Pakistan. Terrorism not only caught the Pakistani media unaware, it challenged their already feeble capacities to adapt to the changing landscape of everyday journalism. Even the political and social fabric of the country collapsed, bringing in a new, but unwanted, cultural order. This new media system and system of journalism gave more power to the owners and also more exposure to the journalists. But does all this change the working conditions and the working environment. It did and it didn't! It did transform a small number of urban journalists into celebrities, earning in millions a month. But this didn't happen for most of the working journalists. In fact, their influence and chances lessened by the gatekeepers, the anchors. On screen appearance became more important than the quality of information. Salaries didn't increase according to the workload that was now round the clock. Ironically, journalism became a very dangerous profession in Pakistan after 9/11. Terrorism has become the new beat, a beat nobody understood and none could cover without risking personal life and that of loved ones. In a country where regular salaries are a novelty, getting health and hazard coverage is nothing but a mirage. Fear of a lurking large death and the inability to deal with the new challenges of covering news traumatized the working journalists. They did get a lot of foreign visits, though, which added to their exposure to the Western world, but this didn't add up to their capacity to do justice to their profession. Corruption among the journalists and lack of capacity to do justice to the news and the medium of transmitting news (TV and web) are the biggest issues of Pakistani journalism right at present. The power of the media is being abused by most of the workforce, since media in Pakistan has never developed as an institution. It is more a conglomeration of media houses. These were earlier restricted to daily newspapers, but have now taken shape of a print, audio-visual, and at times, radio package. The owners have become part of the power structure and wield enormous influence in political decision-making. The individual journalists are making good use of this power share by exploiting the weaknesses of a corrupt political system, which gives more leverage by taking sides than remaining objective. The present media frenzy and partisanship over political issues is a glaring example of the unprofessional bias, showing the lack of ethical conscience among individuals as well as institutions. The inner strife in the media where media houses and their working journalists launch personal attacks on other media institutions and professionals show how shallow the whole structure is and how easily it could be manipulated. Despite the weak and vulnerable ethical base, Pakistani journalists could not be blamed of unprofessional practices to the extent of claiming the whole of the fraternity being corrupt or simply being opportunist. The reason for this is that the working environment is by no means comparable to the Western media system and the security, both financial and physical, offered to work within a Western media system. Thus, the difference of yardsticks to measure objectivity. The media needs capacity building and also needs to develop a code of ethics for self regulation. The former needs national and international support and expertise, while the latter could only be achieved through a process of internal dialogue as well as a dialogue with the audience. It also needs an audience-centered agenda by the media. Since Pakistani media is getting a lot of international support, it is not caring much about its audience or their interests. This need to be thoroughly reconsidered. True, media is a commercial venture and big money is needed to run the big enterprise. But at the same time it should be kept in mind that the whole business revolves around the audience. If there is no audience trust, the interest of the advertiser/donor will also vanish. Here the role of the audience in shaping media agenda is also vital. Audiences have to give their opinion and form forums where media analysis and instant responses to media presentations are given. A free and objective media is the cornerstone of democracy. Pakistani media has all the necessary capacities available. What is needed is the journalists’ commitment to objectivity and social responsibility. A media system based on ethics of responsibility will ensure capacity building that would bring objective journalism to the fore. This, in turn, will engender public trust that guarantees media freedom in the true sense of the word.