• May 3, 2010
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By Sabir Shah

LAHORE: As the government continues to block the media industry’s outstanding bills amounting to over Rs 900 million in an era otherwise characterised by a grave recession and an ever-shrinking advertisement basket in this part of the world, this policy of the incumbent Pakistani regime to financially suppress the press bears striking resemblance with the repressive methods used by Spanish King Phillip II, while he was ruling the Latin American nation of Peru in 1568.

A remorseful glance through the annals of history exposes the fact that media’s monetary exploitation, which started in Peru about 442 years ago, was designed to control the import of books, which was a flourishing business for publishers in those days in absence of any laws governing the intellectual piracy phenomenon.

Since books were deemed more credible than newsletters or newspapers of the time, publishers had carved a booming business niche for themselves by reprinting or selling imported manuscripts.

Under King Phillip’s orders, the Peruvian investigative officials used to periodically examine the ships and luggage at sea ports, besides keeping a strict vigil on libraries, bookstores and printing houses in a bid to deal with the political and ideological crisis in this nation which was enjoying the status of viceroyalty in those days.

Media was also subjected to financial exploitation by the German rulers during the 17th Century.

In order to bring a ‘rebelliousÂ’ press to its knees during the 30-year German War (1618-48), one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, the rulers not only harnessed newsmen through censorship, but also through imposition of trade restrictions so that a dearth of printing paper could be engineered.

Since the 19th Century, media inhibition is something that is attributed to the Communist leaders of the former Soviet Union and over 100 dictators who have ruled or are still calling shots in Africa, South America, Central America and the continent of Asia.

A department known as Glavlit was established in the former USSR in the early 20th Century with an absolute authority to subject all the publications to preventive censorship and suppress political dissidence by shutting down “hostile” newspapers.

During the reign of Joseph Stalin, the Glavlit censorship personnel were present in every large Soviet publishing house or newspaper and the agency employed some 70,000 censors to review information before it was disseminated by publishing houses, editorial offices and broadcasting studios.

The news censorship system hence became all the more elaborate and the methods of the eradication of unwanted elements in the Press became increasingly sinister. During Stalin’s time, the printing and publishing business came under immense financial pressure, as not only were dozens of publications banned, but import of foreign books was also prohibited.

Financial pressures consequently crippled the newspaper industry and most publishers had to succumb to the pressures exerted by the Communist leaders.

Since a hostile political and business environment discouraged the influx of advertisements from the private sector, the entrepreneurs were left with no other option but to save their skins from their brutal rulers.

The press was also effectively inhibited in the Nazi Germany (1933-1945) during the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, who largely curtailed freedom of the press through his Information Minister Dr Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

As the Ministry’s name implies, it acted as a central control-point for all media, issuing orders as to what stories could be run and what stories would be suppressed and journalists who crossed the Propaganda Ministry over any issue, were routinely imprisoned or shot as traitors.

Around 20,000 volumes of offensive books were set to fire in Germany in 1933 on orders of Dr Goebbels, also known as the Father of Modern Propaganda.

Some of the worst examples of rigid press suppression were also induced by military dictators in the 20th Century were those of Spain between 1936 and 1975, especially during the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, Greece 1967 -1974, Chile 1973-1990 and Nigeria 1966-1999.

Since the adventurism of King Phillip II in Peru against Press, innumerable Civil and Military dictators across the globe have been known to have exercised their powers to clamp down on media outlets so as to turn around a situation to their advantage, or at least as a way to reduce the public disapproval towards their wrong functioning and Pakistani rulers stand no exception to the rule.

Even though centuries and cultures apart, various Pakistani civil and military rulers including the likes of Ayub Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf and now the sitting President Asif Ali Zardari have all been at loggerheads with the Press during the last five decades or so.

They have either conveniently used the government advertisements as a lever to make the media bow to their whims or have been guilty of blocking the newspaper industry’s arrears outstanding towards them.

It is worth mentioning that while all these afore-mentioned Pakistani rulers have been good at slating the Press when they are seated on cozy thrones, they are heard vouching for the rights of the free media when they are not sitting on the Treasury benches.

Global media history shows that since the publication of “The Relation of Strasbourg,” the first regularly- printed newsletter of the world in 1609, there hardly has been a ruler on Earth who has enjoyed cordial terms with the Press.

Though President Asif Zardari and his Information Minister Qamaruz Zaman Kaira, the PPP’s Jospeh Goebbels, can surely seek solace in the fact that rulers traditionally have bitter relationships with the media, they might have been ignoring the fact that their false promises on nearly every vital issue are fast-eroding their credibility.

Be it the assurance to end the power loadshedding or a pledge to pay the newspaper industry’s pending advertisement bills, the current Pakistani regime is known to have fallen way short of living up to its promises.
Source: The News
Date:5/3/2010