Mercenary Journalism

Pakistani journalism was under an assault under General Zia. Journalists back then protested and fought back with reasonable success. Journalists back then were not rich people. They did not drive BMWs and did not own big houses in expensive neighborhoods of Islamabad. Then came General Musharraf. He triggered the advent of private TV channels in Pakistan. And with that came private wealth paying top rupee for the privately hired journalists in Pakistan. It wasn’t sinister per se, but there was a tendency for spin because of the money involved and aggressive rating hunt.

Private channels not only opened doors for many talented people to find work in the Breaking-News Industrial Complex and Talk-Show Industrial Complex, if you will, it also created a culture of spending more time watching news and talk shows in the country. Journalists became as famous as Cricket stars. Some today make more money than Cricket stars. That private wealth also brought some very public problems.

The fame of the journalists put them in a position where they were able to shape public opinion with tremendous success. Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar can convince fewer people to buy Pepsi than the number of people that certain journalists can convince to buy the notion that Imran Khan is corrupt. Journalism’s power of persuasion and its ability to manufacture consent in Pakistan was not lost on the inhabitants…