New York Times, published: January 25, 2004

Pakistan TV: A New Look at the News

By AMY WALDMAN
 
 
 

KARACHI, Pakistan — When Seema Mustafa, an Indian journalist, challenged Qazi Hussein Ahmed, one of Pakistan's staunchest Islamists, on television, telling him that his mind-set was harming future generations, she was not expecting the Geo effect.

"It was amazing," said Ms. Mustafa, the New Delhi correspondent for the Indian newspaper The Asian Age, and one of hundreds of Indian journalists who came to Pakistan to cover the summit meeting. "You felt like you turned into a celebrity overnight. I had women walking up and hugging me on the street."
 
The vehicle for her sudden fame was Geo TV, an upstart private Pakistani channel that made its debut in the fall of 2002. Geo has changed Pakistan's media landscape, consistently challenging the monopoly — and monotony — of state-run Pakistan Television, or PTV.

Along with live debates between Indians and Pakistanis, Geo has offered live news coverage unprecedented for Pakistan. It provides a wide variety of political viewpoints, and explores cultural and religious questions rarely discussed publicly here. For the first time, analysts say, television in Pakistan is reflecting this predominantly Muslim country's diverse society and offering an independent source of news.

"The significance of what is happening cannot be overemphasized," said Adnan Rehmat, the Pakistan director for Internews, an international nonprofit organization that supports open media. "In a very short time, this will be a very different Pakistan. And history will say Geo changed it all."

Private television channels are changing much of southern Asia, where for decades often dreary state-run television was the only option. India now has at least nine national 24-hour news channels that feature everything from heated political debates to live coverage of encounters between soldiers and militants in Kashmir.

In Nepal, five or six private channels born in the past two years are magnifying the effect of student protests against the monarchy.

But the change in Pakistan is perhaps most surprising, since it has occurred under a military ruler who took power in a coup, in a country ruled by the military for much of its existence. Two years ago, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, decided to liberalize the broadcast media, creating the first access for millions of Pakistanis to homegrown, independent information.

State-controlled radio and television here have always reflected the ruling power. Features have tended toward bland fare about agricultural production, and news has come late, if at all.

The print media, where private ownership has long been allowed, has been freer, but its reach is limited. Only about three million newspapers are sold daily in a country of 150 million people. The English-language press, with the most open news and debate, sells less than a million.

So the government's announcement that it would allow private FM radio and private television channels was radical. Geo had tried to start broadcasting in the late 1990's, but the effort was crushed by an elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, said the president of Geo, Imran Aslam.

Mr. Rehmat and others say General Musharraf's media decision was prompted by the popularity of Indian channels, which Pakistanis were watching via satellite or cable. During the fighting between the nations in Kashmir in 1999, many Pakistanis turned to Indian channels for news rather than PTV.

The government has banned Indian channels, but with tens of thousands of cable operators, enforcement is impossible.

Mian Muhammad Javed, the chairman of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, said the reason for liberalization was straightforward.

"Media creates awareness, ensures transparency and accountability," he said. "I am a great believer in the benefits of competition."

That competition is not exactly open yet. The FM radio stations have faced a protracted and bureaucratic application process for licenses and frequencies, so that only four are operating. They are constrained by a "code of ethics" that prohibits anti-national reporting, and bans playing Indian music.

The four private television channels have not been given permission to uplink from within Pakistan, so they are accessible only to cable viewers. Geo transmits from Dubai, where its studio and anchors are. PTV reaches every television set.

But every indication is that, at least in urban areas, the reach increasingly belongs to Geo. It is so popular that a host of products have illegitimately borrowed its vibrant logo. There are Geo Estates, Geo hair color, Geo Gym, Geo chicken, Geo washing powder, even Geo baby suits — in short, Geo mania.
 
Private channels like Geo "are following the modern trends — they cater for the new generation," said Wajiha Shahid, a 28-year-old homemaker in Rawalpindi. PTV is "monotonous," she said. "Everything seems so restricted."

When Pakistan held parliamentary elections in October 2002, Geo not only ran debates between candidates, giving — unlike PTV — ample time to the opposition parties, but also beat state television by hours on the voting results. "The country had never seen the likes of this," Mr. Rehmat said.

Faced with competition, even PTV is slowly changing. It now has a news tickler, and offers live updates every few hours. But it cannot compete with Geo's network of more than 600 news stringers, or the cameras it has placed in many of the country's remote corners. Even government officials now seek out Geo to get their ideas, and names, to the public.

"No government in the past had the experience of dealing with such a fast media," Azhar Abbas, Geo's news director, said, pointing to the quick coverage of events like the assassination attempts on General Musharraf. "Now they have to give answers."

Geo has run political satires mocking General Musharraf. Its most popular show has Shiite and Sunni clerics calmly debating religious questions from callers, a far cry from the murderous sectarian conflict on the streets here, especially in Karachi. It features Indian actors in some of its productions. It even showed two Indian films — for the first time in decades here — during the regional meeting.

With the new détente between India and Pakistan, the question is whether Pakistan will lift the ban on Indian channels. So far, Pakistan says no.

"The Indian media is a lot more liberal than Pakistan's, and that is a matter of great concern," said Mr. Javed. "We want to encourage media that is independent and unbiased."

The regulatory authority's guidelines note: "Foreign channels depict their own cultures, and on the pretext of providing entertainment, seek to confuse, subvert and change the social values of the younger generations in foreign lands. Pakistan, barely 56 years old, is itself in an impressionable age as a nation."

But even if the ban is lifted, Geo seems likely to hold its own. The owners, a consortium of private investors, raised more than $1 million to hire professionals from CNN, the BBC and elsewhere to train Geo's staff, which is young, energetic and modern. Among the other firsts for television coverage in Pakistan, Geo uses women as reporters on camera.

Geo does not directly confront powerful interests like the military, prompting some to say it is doing too little to push the boundaries of free expression. But it is opening up the cultural conversation.

One of its programs, Shadhi Online, is a Pakistani version of "The Dating Game," in which prospective spouses ask each other blunt questions — from salary to how they would handle a domineering mother-in-law.

Some worry that Geo is opening up a generation gap. Ms. Shahid said her elders preferred PTV because they see it as "the guardian of old values and norms for society." The new channels, she said, with their Western drift, could alienate children from what she called "our social norms."

"Things that were strictly banned are going to be accepted," she said.