Young men and women who aspire to be journalists in today’s
Pakistan, do so for two reasons. One, they studied mass communication because
they couldn’t make the merit for more structured disciplines at university, and
have figured, honestly, they are not good enough at anything in particular. And
two, they have an overwhelming urge to save and serve the world.
The former is a straight forward and understandable reason.
You pick a newspaper or watch a television news bulletin, and you see
mediocrity reigning supreme. Senior reporters can’t fit their five Ws and an H in
a feature-length news report; those who do, more often than not get their facts
wrong and their figures fudged; hardly anyone knows the language they report in
or edit; and when they become seasoned enough, they either start wheeling
dealing as media managers or take to writing and talking complete nonsense,
with a lot more panache, authority, and freedom than they could muster as
reporters.
Surely I can do better than these jokers, the young job
seeker enthuses. Today’s ‘well known journalists’ took the same route, didn’t
they? One day they were just a cute face or a sexy figure, or the son/daughter
of a showbiz person, or a misfit civil servant, or rude and belligerent angry-old-man,
or a smooth and slippery charlatan … and the next day they are presenting news,
hosting a current affairs programme or analysing a complex event or situation. That
makes me qualified too – I can talk the talk and walk the walk. In fact if I
don’t stand a chance in journalism, I don’t stand a chance anywhere.
This line of thinking smacks of opportunism but is in fact
as realistic as it gets. And the proof of its being real is in the fact that
young people who don’t know any better do keep joining the circus, becoming the
jokers, and in turn, attracting more wannabes to follow them. It’s the natural
circle of life in Pakistani journalism. Those who are lucky and crafty enough, get
a fat salary and fringe benefits that are restricted only by their own imagination,
while the rest slog off on pittance, or no salary at all, waiting for their
chance to strike gold.
The latter reason is more devious and therefore should be
alarming for media consumers and media managers alike. Those who enter
journalism to ‘reform’ the society in the image of this philosophy or that, are
like the young lad who joins the army so that he can become a general, take
over the government, and fix all the ills of his beloved homeland. They have
the sincerity of purpose of a 16 years old, and an intelligence level to match.
These juvenile do-gooders come in handy as fodder for various ideologies
grazing the landscape of this nation.
There are right-wing ideologues who see God and Satan in
every conflict, left-wing whiners who are always on the side of the oppressed
but are never quite sure who the oppressed are, nationalists who insist on
reinventing the wheel as a Pakistani invention for it to roll in Pakistan, and
liberals who reject everything without putting forward anything new. These
journalists too attract their own kind and form the other circle of
journalistic life.
Between the intellectually challenged and ideologically
motivated journalists – who together define the Pakistani brand of journalism –
there exist a few meticulous reporters who write for people, write well, make
fewer factual mistakes and are very cautious in their editorial judgment; brilliant
copy editors who turn a rag tag compilation of information into a juicy story;
creative photo journalists who tell a complicated story simply through the
selection of their angle, and sharp editors who guide their teams into doing
stories others can’t see. They are a part of every news media organisation but
they are few and they remain faceless. Their names will not come up even once
when you ask a thousand, or ten thousand newspaper readers and news TV viewers,
who in their opinion are professionally competent journalists. And therefore no
one aspires to be them.
Pakistani journalism, as unleashed by a military ruler, repackaged
by semi literate media owners, and meekly accepted by senior editors, is no
more about informing, educating and entertaining the audience. It’s all about
acquiring and expanding a power base and selling a particular point of view, which
incidentally, are the two defining traits of politicians as well. And it’s no
coincidence. Media owners and senior editors have always been a part of
partisan politics and senior journalists who speak and write non-stop on
political developments have little or no understanding of the issues that
really matter for all Pakistanis, clean drinking water for instance. Every
senior journalist is by default a political analyst and the more ambitious of
them do turn into full time politicians. Hussain Haqqani, Maleeha Lodhi,
Mushahid Hussain, Ayaz Amir, Nafeesa Shah, Shafqat Mahmood … stand out in the
present crop of journalists-turned-politicians.
So mixed up is journalism with politics, especially in the
mind of old school vernacular journalists, that a senior, presidential award
winning columnist recently counted his professional achievements in these
words: ‘I was writing columns for (dailies) Shahab and Musawat. Bhutto sahib
deputed me to the election campaign of PPP candidates in and around Lyalpur. I
used to attend all the public meetings, and people from those days may remember
that nature used me as a speaker (at election rallies) too’. Any student of
journalism today will be stunned by the fact that the admission is made with
pride, not shame. That’s how twisted things are.
Are they getting better? No chance, not at least in near
future. Because there is no economic incentive for media owners to purge
journalism of unprofessional and unethical practices. And not even the senior
most editors have the capacity to train and mentor juniors, if they were asked
to. The top layer of our contemporary journalists spent their working life,
alternately accommodating and fighting the draconian provisions of censorship
laws. And when this generation did get the freedom – ironically at the hands of
a serving army general – they did not know what to do with freedom. They’d only
fought for principles and ethics; they never got to practice them.
That confusion and inaction on part of senior editors at the
turn of the millennium, spelled death for the powerful office of the editor –
practically in electronic media and theoretically in print. It is this
powerless, directionless editor who became the role model of my generation
which is now passing on professional mediocrity to the next generation.
You still want to break into journalism? By all
means. But do get your preferences right. If your motivation is one or both
mentioned above, you know the drill. If you want to do for-people and ethical
journalism, learn the ropes in a professional environment before sending your
resume to a mainstream Pakistani media house, because you’ll get a job, a
salary if you are lucky, but you won’t get any learning.
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