Pakistan’s media wars

When the first private television news channel in Pakistan was given a license to operate in 2002, no one imagined that 12 years down the road it would find itself pitted against one of the country's most powerful and feared security agencies, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This fight between a media group and one of the strongest apparatuses of the state can be seen as representing the ongoing conflict in Pakistan today, between those who uphold the traditional security paradigm (which sees groups such as the Taliban as heroic Islamic warriors, India as the enemy and Islam as the ideology of Pakistan) and those who seek to question it.

No one could have predicted that the channel in question would be suspended from broadcast – not once, but twice – long after the military dictator against whom Pakistani journalists had rallied so heroically against, was dead and gone. The channel was first shut down, along with other television channels, in 2007 by the military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, who is ironically credited with opening up the airwaves in 2002. The second time is now, in 2014, under an elected civilian government. 'Blasphemy' charges have been filed against the owner and the host of a morning show in various police stations, at the instigation of a rival television channel.