Why We Hate Pakistani Media? | PKKH.tv
PKKH Exclusive | by Atiq Durrani
A tug of War between Pakistan Mainstream Media and Alternative Media is heating up by the day because of Ideological differences between these two. The alternative media criticizes mainstream media for its corrupt Anchors/Analysts, its vulgarity in different programs and its tilt towards India and Indian culture. conversely social media is criticized by the mainstream media and they accuse it of being made of not professional journalists or reporters; that social media is promoting religious extremism; that social media is narrow minded and that it promotes hatred for India/UK/US/Israel, Hindu/Jews/Christians.
In a recent post titled How much do you hate Pakistans media? in The Express Tribune Blog, alternative media especially Facebook pages were targeted. The closing line of this post was But what else could we expect? The media as an institution is after all, a mirror of the society it is operating in. This is perfectly true and thats what Alternative Media and the viewers are crying about. That is also the answer for why we hate Pakistani Media? Mainstream Media should be the mirror of society it is operating in but our media became the mirror of India and Turkey. Its projecting their images, their plays, their stories, their views, their social values into our society. This reaction can also be found in the comments on this post. 75-80% agreed to the contents of alternative media. Question is not How much we hate Pakistans media the question is Why we hate Pakistani Media.
Ideologies of MM (Mainstream Media) and AM (Alternative Media)
To get a clear view of Ideologies of MM and AM it is important to refer to the ideology of Pakistan. Pakistans Ideology was based on the vision of its Founding Fathers, every nation crafts its National Purpose and vision on the basis of the vision given to them by their founding fathers, For Pakistan, it is without a doubt, the Two Nation Theory which meant being a separate nation. Muslims have their own religion, their own civilization, their own customs, their own culture and a totally different way of life from other religions, cultures, customs and traditions. Like any other distinct nation, Muslims also cannot be merged or sub-merged in or under any other nation because their philosophy of life is based on the principles of Islam, their religion, to which they refer as the complete code of life.
Social media is mainly an instrument not used by Mass Media outlets, who are busy in perception management through their instruments, it is crowded and owned by the same public, that Mainstream media claims to mirror itself. This domain of the public, strictly follows the Ideology and identity of Pakistan given to them by their founding fathers, and when this same public feels that Mainstream Media is not doing due justice, they jump in to do the job themselves.
On the other side the two nation theory itself is criticized by SAFMA journalists by saying that the two nation theory is not valid after the separation of East Pakistan, though, despite of rifts in between SAFMA journalists, we see that they are quite consistent on this one point agenda, Change the Identity of Pakistan. Unfortunately, in the name of enlightment and progressive approach, these media outlets are promoting, things that our society is not accepting. Hence, a clash of interest is visible between the two entities.
Religion/Islam
MM and AH have huge differences on the teachings of Islam. I myself belong to the PTV generation and in most cases I compare private channels with PTV. PTV had few but great programs on Islam that helped us to understand the teachings of this great religion. Iqra, Tafheem-e-Elahi and other such programs were the trade mark of PTV. With the emergence of private channels, we hoped for betterment and some innovative ideas in this domain, along with other entertainments perspectives, and guess what they actually did it. This religious responsibility was initially given to some so called and controversial figures like Amir Liaqat and Javed Ahmed Ghamdi. But as we know, sky is the limit, so this Ramadan, same responsibility was given to Veena Malik and to hosts of Morning shows like Maya Khan, Nadia Khan Etc. They surely are not the lesser Muslims, but representing Islam as a teacher, itself needs some decency, eloquence and scholarly knowledge.
On the other hand, Alternative Media is not having any special programs on Islam. But there are many websites, pages, blogs and groups that are providing religious information in the form of Qurani Ayaat and Ahadees. Daily Quran and Hadith is one of the prominent services of Alternative Media. Similarly there are many pages on Facebook that provide information related to Islam, share information related to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Sahabah (Friends of Muhammad (PBUH)). Now if Mainstream media would have been filling this gap, do we expect that such effort of Alternative Media could find a space in public domain?
Let me quote an example from the Mainstream media of another country. Recently in Ramadan MBC an Arab TV channel aired Arabic TV Serial by the name of OMAR. This TV serial not only covered the events that happened at the time of Muhammad (PBUH) but also thoroughly covered the life of Hazrat Umar Farooq, HazratAbubakarSiddique and Khalid bin Waleed. And in this age of false heroic figures like Superman, Batman and other men, this Serial emerged as one of the most hit TV show. This TV serial is available on YouTube with English transcript.
After watching this serial you will definitely ask your TV Channels having only one topic Love in their plays that why our TV channels dont come up with such TV shows? so that our young generation and coming generation learn about their true legends? Also why does it never occur to the MM to broadcast such programs from around the world in place of the foreign entertainment they are buying? And its not just Islam and Islamic teachings we are talking about, from general perspective, there is a severe lack of programs, which may spread knowledge related to new developments. There is no concept of Documentaries, no concept of a channel like National Geographic or Discovery. I never heard of any plan by any media outlet for buying some shares in such a knowledge based channel. Then why such promotion of distracting slogans of parhnaylikhnay k Siwa?
Alternative media is filling that gap with a variety of Facebook Pages , Blogs and Websites providing all the necessary information and knowledge. Here are some examples.
My Ideology Is Islam and My Identity is Pakistan is a page with almost 380,000 likes that is almost equal to the likes of GEO on face book, is not only spreading the teachings of Islam but also providing information related to the Ideology of Pakistan.
Explore the Beauty of Pakistan is a page of Facebook and Beautiful Pakistan a webpage are having tons of beautiful pictures of Pakistan. They are promoting tourism.
KachiGoliyan is a comic page that tell us about the social problems in Pakistan in a comic way. The team of KachiGoliyan was recently invited to Comic Con in India.
Propakitani a webpage with Telecom and IT news and Information related to the Telecom and Web Technologies.
With the help of images like these and thousands of other pictures and videos, Alternative media is educating the people of Pakistan about the problems in our society.
Patriotism
The AM has always objected on airing Indian content on Pakistani TV Channels and the MM is always promoting Indian and other foreign contents. Most of the channels have kept a segment of entertainment in their news bulletins just to promote Bollywood. In fact these segments should be named as Indiatainment instead of entertainment. It seems that MM wants to show that we dont have any entertainment left in Pakistan, for entertainment we are dependent on the enemies of Pakistan. Irony is, this same MM propagates the rule of law, the supremacy of democracy and also the unconditional loyalty to the constitution of Pakistan. But when it comes to their agendas, business and markets, they do not feel any shame in crossing any limit, thus confusing a large number of our public. The constitution clearly states that obscenity and illegal indian channels are not allowed. But who cares? When it comes to money minting, every principle is to be kept on the back burners of our luxurious offices. The case of Supreme court vs Cable Mafia and covertly banding together of the Main Stream Media owners, at the ranks of a Mafia against the rule of law and the will of this nation, is not very old event and we certainly dont want to waste our space here by repeating it.
Apart from the history of the MM, the most recent example of patriotism was showed by MM when our soldiers on the LoC border were martyred. We were informed in the news bulletins that our soldiers are martyred in attack on Pakistani posts at the LoC by Indian Army and these bulletins were immediately followed by Indiatainment and even on one channel with an Indian award show. But our Indian friends were totally busy in some other perspectives, they made our MM busy by outsourcing the marketing of their Bollywood productions and by themselves the started a massive campaign through their channels, press and famous anchors. We can present all the timelines, facebook status and statements from the accounts of our Mainstream media gurus and journalists, apart from a few, none of them talked about this issue. None of the Aman Ki Asha people dare to come up with a statement of national sentiments. So its natural, the AM had to do the job instead and trust me, they did it very well.
This is what Main Stream Media was showing when Indian Army attacked our posts at LoC.
This is what Alternative Media was sharing on Social Network when Indian Army attacked our posts.
Kashmir
There was a time when we had TV serials like AngarWadi and Laag. Songs like Janykabhon gay KumesDunya k Ghum and many more but now our private TV channels seem to be forgetting Kashmir. In 10 years of our Independent Media they are not able to produce a single drama serial / play related to Kashmir. But what they are doing, can be find in this picture on the front page of Daily Express News saying Beautiful Night view of Gulmarg Occupied Kashmir.
This is what alternative media shows about Kashmir and this is the reality that our Main Stream Media is ignoring from many years. Recently Ali Tahir came up with a TV Serial Samjhota Express based on the tragedy of the Samjhota Express.
This TV serial was scheduled to be aired on PTV Home and Express Entertainment but just few days before the launch of the serial Express Entertainment backed out of the agreement. This is the real face of our TV channels. They will play foreign dramas on their channels but if someone comes up with a project of patriotism he is rejected by these channels.
Vulgarity and Social Values
Now observe the following, these images are not from any European Channels. These images are from channels in Pakistan. Let me again remind my readers that same channels propagate loyalty with the constitution of Pakistan and supremacy of law, but when it comes to obscenity and vulgarity, they will simply show the actual face of back stage darkness. These images are from well-known morning shows of two different channels. Other than foreign TV Drama Serials these morning shows are playing a vital role in promote vulgarity.
These TV channels are supposed to promote Pakistani Culture but can somebody help me here and identify that which area of Pakistans dress-code is this except our Media stages and their studios. A few years back social media used to complaint about the Indian vulgar movies and their cultural invasion, but now our own TV channels in the name of competition, following the same pattern, deliberately or not, but poisoning the very roots of our identity. Should I as a commoner, observe silence here? I have heard from many families that they revert to PTV because they are unable to watch the TV Serials that are aired on private TV channels.
This is what Alternative Media think about these Images and this is what bothers Mainstream Media.
Here are just 11 complaints from the total of 57 complaints of December 2012, against one channel GEO Ent. and most of them are about vulgarity.
In complaint No 1397 Mr. Shuja said that The morning show of Shaista on 24 December 2012 was showing something such degraded and shameless which one cannot express in words. It was a shameless, unethical and characterless show where two adults (male and female) were hugging each other. This practice is being done on Pakistani private channels for quite some time now which must be stopped. This TV show must be banned to save Pakistani culture and society. I hope that authorities will take up this issue else I would knock the doors of the honourable courts along with this very complaint to save our society which has already got many challenges.
Another complainer said that Geo Ent. TV serials are very bad there is no policy for dressing and this channel is promoting vulgarity. The dresses of girls on this channel are getting shorter day by day. Please stop the foreign TV serials on this channel as these TV serials are damaging our social values.
Just in 2012 we saw two scandals related to MM, one of Maya Khans morning show and other of MubasharLuqman/MeherBukharis Malik Riaz show. Before that Amir Liaqat also gave us chunks of his personality as Alim online. Its not that we just hate MM and its journalists/ Anchor persons without any reason. There are journalists and Analysts likeTalatHussain, AnsarAbbassi, Oriya Maqbool Jan that are respected and idealized by Alternative Media because they are honest and their ideologies about Pakistan and Islam are clear and not confusing, there are morning talk shows like hosted by Farah Hussain, there are programs which can give us a clearer view about our National purpose and National interests. But if MM thinks that they can subdue the ideological identity through this massive platform, they should think again.
These are a few examples why we hate our media and there are many more including corruption of anchors/channels but both ideologies are compared here, it will help you to decide which one is correct and which one need to be modified so that it complies with the Ideologies, basis and vision of our Founding Fathers and not with the founding fathers of Main Stream but immature media of Pakistan.
The writer is an IT professional and student of Mass Communication. He be reached at atiq.pkkh@gmail.com and tweets at @sunnyDurrani738
Source
PKKH Exclusive | by Atiq Durrani
A tug of War between Pakistan Mainstream Media and Alternative Media is heating up by the day because of Ideological differences between these two. The alternative media criticizes mainstream media for its corrupt Anchors/Analysts, its vulgarity in different programs and its tilt towards India and Indian culture. conversely social media is criticized by the mainstream media and they accuse it of being made of not professional journalists or reporters; that social media is promoting religious extremism; that social media is narrow minded and that it promotes hatred for India/UK/US/Israel, Hindu/Jews/Christians.
In a recent post titled How much do you hate Pakistans media? in The Express Tribune Blog, alternative media especially Facebook pages were targeted. The closing line of this post was But what else could we expect? The media as an institution is after all, a mirror of the society it is operating in. This is perfectly true and thats what Alternative Media and the viewers are crying about. That is also the answer for why we hate Pakistani Media? Mainstream Media should be the mirror of society it is operating in but our media became the mirror of India and Turkey. Its projecting their images, their plays, their stories, their views, their social values into our society. This reaction can also be found in the comments on this post. 75-80% agreed to the contents of alternative media. Question is not How much we hate Pakistans media the question is Why we hate Pakistani Media.
Ideologies of MM (Mainstream Media) and AM (Alternative Media)
To get a clear view of Ideologies of MM and AM it is important to refer to the ideology of Pakistan. Pakistans Ideology was based on the vision of its Founding Fathers, every nation crafts its National Purpose and vision on the basis of the vision given to them by their founding fathers, For Pakistan, it is without a doubt, the Two Nation Theory which meant being a separate nation. Muslims have their own religion, their own civilization, their own customs, their own culture and a totally different way of life from other religions, cultures, customs and traditions. Like any other distinct nation, Muslims also cannot be merged or sub-merged in or under any other nation because their philosophy of life is based on the principles of Islam, their religion, to which they refer as the complete code of life.
Social media is mainly an instrument not used by Mass Media outlets, who are busy in perception management through their instruments, it is crowded and owned by the same public, that Mainstream media claims to mirror itself. This domain of the public, strictly follows the Ideology and identity of Pakistan given to them by their founding fathers, and when this same public feels that Mainstream Media is not doing due justice, they jump in to do the job themselves.
On the other side the two nation theory itself is criticized by SAFMA journalists by saying that the two nation theory is not valid after the separation of East Pakistan, though, despite of rifts in between SAFMA journalists, we see that they are quite consistent on this one point agenda, Change the Identity of Pakistan. Unfortunately, in the name of enlightment and progressive approach, these media outlets are promoting, things that our society is not accepting. Hence, a clash of interest is visible between the two entities.
Religion/Islam
MM and AH have huge differences on the teachings of Islam. I myself belong to the PTV generation and in most cases I compare private channels with PTV. PTV had few but great programs on Islam that helped us to understand the teachings of this great religion. Iqra, Tafheem-e-Elahi and other such programs were the trade mark of PTV. With the emergence of private channels, we hoped for betterment and some innovative ideas in this domain, along with other entertainments perspectives, and guess what they actually did it. This religious responsibility was initially given to some so called and controversial figures like Amir Liaqat and Javed Ahmed Ghamdi. But as we know, sky is the limit, so this Ramadan, same responsibility was given to Veena Malik and to hosts of Morning shows like Maya Khan, Nadia Khan Etc. They surely are not the lesser Muslims, but representing Islam as a teacher, itself needs some decency, eloquence and scholarly knowledge.
On the other hand, Alternative Media is not having any special programs on Islam. But there are many websites, pages, blogs and groups that are providing religious information in the form of Qurani Ayaat and Ahadees. Daily Quran and Hadith is one of the prominent services of Alternative Media. Similarly there are many pages on Facebook that provide information related to Islam, share information related to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Sahabah (Friends of Muhammad (PBUH)). Now if Mainstream media would have been filling this gap, do we expect that such effort of Alternative Media could find a space in public domain?
Let me quote an example from the Mainstream media of another country. Recently in Ramadan MBC an Arab TV channel aired Arabic TV Serial by the name of OMAR. This TV serial not only covered the events that happened at the time of Muhammad (PBUH) but also thoroughly covered the life of Hazrat Umar Farooq, HazratAbubakarSiddique and Khalid bin Waleed. And in this age of false heroic figures like Superman, Batman and other men, this Serial emerged as one of the most hit TV show. This TV serial is available on YouTube with English transcript.
After watching this serial you will definitely ask your TV Channels having only one topic Love in their plays that why our TV channels dont come up with such TV shows? so that our young generation and coming generation learn about their true legends? Also why does it never occur to the MM to broadcast such programs from around the world in place of the foreign entertainment they are buying? And its not just Islam and Islamic teachings we are talking about, from general perspective, there is a severe lack of programs, which may spread knowledge related to new developments. There is no concept of Documentaries, no concept of a channel like National Geographic or Discovery. I never heard of any plan by any media outlet for buying some shares in such a knowledge based channel. Then why such promotion of distracting slogans of parhnaylikhnay k Siwa?
Alternative media is filling that gap with a variety of Facebook Pages , Blogs and Websites providing all the necessary information and knowledge. Here are some examples.
My Ideology Is Islam and My Identity is Pakistan is a page with almost 380,000 likes that is almost equal to the likes of GEO on face book, is not only spreading the teachings of Islam but also providing information related to the Ideology of Pakistan.
Explore the Beauty of Pakistan is a page of Facebook and Beautiful Pakistan a webpage are having tons of beautiful pictures of Pakistan. They are promoting tourism.
KachiGoliyan is a comic page that tell us about the social problems in Pakistan in a comic way. The team of KachiGoliyan was recently invited to Comic Con in India.
Propakitani a webpage with Telecom and IT news and Information related to the Telecom and Web Technologies.
With the help of images like these and thousands of other pictures and videos, Alternative media is educating the people of Pakistan about the problems in our society.
Patriotism
The AM has always objected on airing Indian content on Pakistani TV Channels and the MM is always promoting Indian and other foreign contents. Most of the channels have kept a segment of entertainment in their news bulletins just to promote Bollywood. In fact these segments should be named as Indiatainment instead of entertainment. It seems that MM wants to show that we dont have any entertainment left in Pakistan, for entertainment we are dependent on the enemies of Pakistan. Irony is, this same MM propagates the rule of law, the supremacy of democracy and also the unconditional loyalty to the constitution of Pakistan. But when it comes to their agendas, business and markets, they do not feel any shame in crossing any limit, thus confusing a large number of our public. The constitution clearly states that obscenity and illegal indian channels are not allowed. But who cares? When it comes to money minting, every principle is to be kept on the back burners of our luxurious offices. The case of Supreme court vs Cable Mafia and covertly banding together of the Main Stream Media owners, at the ranks of a Mafia against the rule of law and the will of this nation, is not very old event and we certainly dont want to waste our space here by repeating it.
Apart from the history of the MM, the most recent example of patriotism was showed by MM when our soldiers on the LoC border were martyred. We were informed in the news bulletins that our soldiers are martyred in attack on Pakistani posts at the LoC by Indian Army and these bulletins were immediately followed by Indiatainment and even on one channel with an Indian award show. But our Indian friends were totally busy in some other perspectives, they made our MM busy by outsourcing the marketing of their Bollywood productions and by themselves the started a massive campaign through their channels, press and famous anchors. We can present all the timelines, facebook status and statements from the accounts of our Mainstream media gurus and journalists, apart from a few, none of them talked about this issue. None of the Aman Ki Asha people dare to come up with a statement of national sentiments. So its natural, the AM had to do the job instead and trust me, they did it very well.
This is what Main Stream Media was showing when Indian Army attacked our posts at LoC.
This is what Alternative Media was sharing on Social Network when Indian Army attacked our posts.
Kashmir
There was a time when we had TV serials like AngarWadi and Laag. Songs like Janykabhon gay KumesDunya k Ghum and many more but now our private TV channels seem to be forgetting Kashmir. In 10 years of our Independent Media they are not able to produce a single drama serial / play related to Kashmir. But what they are doing, can be find in this picture on the front page of Daily Express News saying Beautiful Night view of Gulmarg Occupied Kashmir.
This is what alternative media shows about Kashmir and this is the reality that our Main Stream Media is ignoring from many years. Recently Ali Tahir came up with a TV Serial Samjhota Express based on the tragedy of the Samjhota Express.
This TV serial was scheduled to be aired on PTV Home and Express Entertainment but just few days before the launch of the serial Express Entertainment backed out of the agreement. This is the real face of our TV channels. They will play foreign dramas on their channels but if someone comes up with a project of patriotism he is rejected by these channels.
Vulgarity and Social Values
Now observe the following, these images are not from any European Channels. These images are from channels in Pakistan. Let me again remind my readers that same channels propagate loyalty with the constitution of Pakistan and supremacy of law, but when it comes to obscenity and vulgarity, they will simply show the actual face of back stage darkness. These images are from well-known morning shows of two different channels. Other than foreign TV Drama Serials these morning shows are playing a vital role in promote vulgarity.
These TV channels are supposed to promote Pakistani Culture but can somebody help me here and identify that which area of Pakistans dress-code is this except our Media stages and their studios. A few years back social media used to complaint about the Indian vulgar movies and their cultural invasion, but now our own TV channels in the name of competition, following the same pattern, deliberately or not, but poisoning the very roots of our identity. Should I as a commoner, observe silence here? I have heard from many families that they revert to PTV because they are unable to watch the TV Serials that are aired on private TV channels.
This is what Alternative Media think about these Images and this is what bothers Mainstream Media.
Here are just 11 complaints from the total of 57 complaints of December 2012, against one channel GEO Ent. and most of them are about vulgarity.
In complaint No 1397 Mr. Shuja said that The morning show of Shaista on 24 December 2012 was showing something such degraded and shameless which one cannot express in words. It was a shameless, unethical and characterless show where two adults (male and female) were hugging each other. This practice is being done on Pakistani private channels for quite some time now which must be stopped. This TV show must be banned to save Pakistani culture and society. I hope that authorities will take up this issue else I would knock the doors of the honourable courts along with this very complaint to save our society which has already got many challenges.
Another complainer said that Geo Ent. TV serials are very bad there is no policy for dressing and this channel is promoting vulgarity. The dresses of girls on this channel are getting shorter day by day. Please stop the foreign TV serials on this channel as these TV serials are damaging our social values.
Just in 2012 we saw two scandals related to MM, one of Maya Khans morning show and other of MubasharLuqman/MeherBukharis Malik Riaz show. Before that Amir Liaqat also gave us chunks of his personality as Alim online. Its not that we just hate MM and its journalists/ Anchor persons without any reason. There are journalists and Analysts likeTalatHussain, AnsarAbbassi, Oriya Maqbool Jan that are respected and idealized by Alternative Media because they are honest and their ideologies about Pakistan and Islam are clear and not confusing, there are morning talk shows like hosted by Farah Hussain, there are programs which can give us a clearer view about our National purpose and National interests. But if MM thinks that they can subdue the ideological identity through this massive platform, they should think again.
These are a few examples why we hate our media and there are many more including corruption of anchors/channels but both ideologies are compared here, it will help you to decide which one is correct and which one need to be modified so that it complies with the Ideologies, basis and vision of our Founding Fathers and not with the founding fathers of Main Stream but immature media of Pakistan.
The writer is an IT professional and student of Mass Communication. He be reached at atiq.pkkh@gmail.com and tweets at @sunnyDurrani738
Source
Last edited by a moderator:
