The “World Press Freedom Day” is being observed across the world, with emphasis on defeating censorship and journalists resolving to keep pursuing their mission without compromising their ideals.
As we commemorate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the state of the media in Pakistan once again comes up for discussion. Let’s take an in-depth review of World Press Freedom Day and the problems journalists face during their career.
Press Freedom Days’ Theme 2021
According to UNESCO, the theme for this year’s World Press Freedom Day is ‘Information as a Public Good’. “It serves as a call to affirm the importance of cherishing information as a public good, and exploring what can be done in the production, distribution and reception of content to strengthen journalism,” read a post on UNESCO’s website.
Three main points will be highlighted on this World Press Freedom Day and these include: Steps to ensure the economic viability of news media; Mechanisms for ensuring transparency of Internet companies;
Enhanced Media and Information Literacy (MIL) capacities that enable people to recognize and value, as well as defend and demand, journalism as a vital part of information as a public good.
Press Freedom Report on Pakistan
In its latest report, the International Federation of Journalists has ranked Pakistan the fifth most dangerous country in the world for media persons. During the period between 1990 and 2020, no less than 138 journalists lost their lives here for reasons connected to their work.
Freedom Network Pakistan documented at least 148 attacks or violations against journalists across the country from May 3, 2020, till April 20, 2021. These include six murders, seven attempted assassinations, five kidnappings, 25 arrests or detentions, 15 assaults and 27 legal cases registered against journalists.
State authorities, responsible for protecting constitutional rights, emerged as the biggest threat to media practitioners — perceived as the perpetrators in a whopping 46pc of the documented cases.
Govt’s failure?
Certainly, journalists’ safety appears to be very low on the government’s list of priorities. The human rights ministry had drafted the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Bill over a year ago.
Needless to say, this alarming escalation in the climate of intimidation and harassment of the media and its practitioners is adversely affecting freedom of expression and access to information.
When attacks on journalism and journalists increase, they reflect a collective failure of government and state institutions anywhere in the world. In Pakistan too it presents a dismal failure on the part of the state to honour its commitments to uphold people’s rights to speak in a fearless environment.
Are journalists free in Pakistan?
Pakistan’s journalists are no strangers to intimidation and harassment. The relationship between the state and the media in Pakistan has always been a tense one. Threats from known and ‘unknown’ state elements continue to be hurled at journalists.
News editors are coerced into censoring ‘undesirable’ information or giving stories a certain slant; media outlets are threatened with financial ruin if they refuse to toe the line. In the midst of this, for government functionaries to insist that the press in Pakistan is free, as they are wont to do sometimes, is no less than a bald-faced lie.
