This habit of attacking easy targets and ignoring more powerful ones does not go unnoticed. A BBC report on the Aalu Anday sensation pointed squarely at the media’s lack of attention to serious issues as a driving cause of the video’s popularity.

Ordinarily, satire on Pakistani television is tolerably amusing but not very daring.

It only really targets the harmless figures on the political landscape – the politicians. They are easy prey, veteran comedians argue, because they do not truly hold the reins of power.

There are more than a dozen comedy shows that Pakistani channels broadcast weekly. They include skits, rants and Indian film songs adapted to the political situation.

But the more insidious presence of Pakistan’s intelligence services and also the army – which many believe are the true power-brokers in the country – are conspicuously absent from comedy fare…

Although politician-bashing is the rage, many feel that truly free intellectual debate and parody are lacking as far as TV goes.

And so a group of three young people have shown the courage to speak out about the powers that be while so-called journalists continue peddling the same worn out conspiracy theories and safely throwing punches at the politicians who they know will not hit back.

In fact, if a politician or government official dares to respond to their rumours and conspiracies, our friends in the journalism community are quick to scream about free speech and oppression. But their silence on the issues that really matter, while a group of kids boldly calls things as they are, exposes the weakness of their claims of being fearless defenders of media freedom.

None of the perpetrators of these attacks have been caught, but in each case suspicion has fallen on members of national agencies. In the latest incident involving Saleem Shahzad, Senior Researcher Human Rights Watch Ali Dayan Hasan again suspects the invisible hand of security agencies.

Human Rights Watch says it was able to establish that Shahzad was being held by the ISI. “We were informed through reliable interlocutors that he was detained by the ISI,” says Hasan. Those interlocutors, he adds, had received direct confirmation from the agency that it was detaining Shahzad. In any case, Hasan says, “in a high-security zone like Islamabad, it is only the ISI that can effect the disappearance of man and his car without a trace.”

Human Rights Watch was also told that Shahzad was supposed to return home on Monday night. “The relevant people were informed that his telephone would be switched on first, enabling him to communicate with his family,” says Hasan. “They were told that he would return home soon after.” But by 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Shahzad had still not been heard from. At that point, Hasan recalled that Shahzad had sent him an e-mail on Oct. 18, 2010, that was to be released in the event of his disappearance. At the time, says Hasan, he was “fairly sure that sooner or later something was going to happen.” Human Rights Watch says it has made repeated attempts to contact Pakistan’s government and establish Shahzad’s whereabouts, but has received no response.

Nor can this suspicion be considered as part of a political agenda of one media group against the government since each of these journalists worked for different media groups. The only thing linking them was their willingness to investigate and report on the workings of the agencies.

Intelligence agencies have long been considered to use media as puppets in internal battles and for shaping public opinion about national issues, and suspicions about involvement in vote rigging and supporting political parties to influence the national direction have also been long held. Like the case of abduction and torture of Umar Cheema, though, investigations into these suspicions always result in a dead end.

As the nation has begun to demand answers related to issues of national importance including the Abbottabad case and the attack on our naval base in Karachi, confusion has been reigning supreme in the media. From bizarre and condradictory headlines on the front page of major newspapers, to the spread of conspiracy theories from propaganda rings associated with ex-officials.

Now that Saleem Shahzad has had his life stolen, the question has moved to the forefront of people’s minds, and the eyes of the world are focused on the national intelligence agencies. However, it should be noted that as yet other than anecdotal evidence and suspicions, there has not been proof made of the intelligence agencies being responsible.

But whether or not agencies are responsible, the current sentiments point to an important quesiton – Can the media be truly free if there is a fear that journalists live under threat for reporting on sensitive topics?

An independent investigation must be carried out not only to obtain justice for Salmaan Shahzad which is of course the first priority, but also to lift the weight of uncertainty about safety for journalists in the country. If national agencies are not involved, that needs to be shown by more than only the word of the agencies themselves. If the agencies are not responsible, they need to be cleared so that journalists can continue their work without being silenced by the “chilling effect” of living under the fear of harm.

On the other hand, if some member of a national agency acting either under orders or as a rogue element has been harassing and threatening journalists, these should be exposed and removed from their positions so that the agencies can no longer be considered a threat to media freedom.

Whoever was responsible for the death of Saleem Shahzad, the abduction of Umar Cheema, the shooting at Kamran Shafi house – these individuals cannot continue to go unknown if we are to truly have a free and independent media. Media freedom requires more than spreading sensational rumours and slandering politicians. If certain holy cows remain off limits to honest and objective reporting, then media freedom is nothing but a cruel hoax.

With this in mind, I was encouraged by Minister of Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira’s column in today’s Daily Times. The Minister does a good job of describing the importance of access to information as well as noting several actions that the present government has taken to try to improve access to important information, particularly among IDPs and other vulnerable communities.

I thought the Minister’s column was particularly good reading for media companies who at times have trouble separating facts from political agendas. Take this statement by the Minister:

By choosing information warfare during the Afghan jihad, the involved actors, in fact, produced their own gravediggers. Short-term gains were made at the expense of long-term ones for governments, societies and peoples, which resulted in a huge loss of credibility and legitimacy.

When media outlets like newspapers and TV anchors report wild conspiracy theories that are perhaps more sensational and thus get bigger ratings, they undermine their own credibility and sow confusion among the people, ultimately playing into the hands of the people who are attacking Pakistan.

Talibani militants don’t care about Zaid Hamid or Ahmed Quraishi or any of the other conspiracy wallahs except that they’re probably pretty happy that they’re on the air. During the Cold War, USSR called people like that “useful idiots.” Talibans know that if the people are confused and distracted with fantastic tales of complicated global conspiracies, it will be that much easier to indoctrinate them into the militant ideology.

Suicidal mindsets are driven by ideology and not by mere information packaging. Hence, ideology has to be defeated by ideology. Instead of information warfare, we need democratic, argumentative and critical discourses, which are firmly located in the socio-economic, cultural and political issues of Pakistan, guided by our heritage of ideologies of peace, pluralism, and co-existence.

This is where the Minister hits the nail on the head, as they say.

Who is our real enemy? Our enemy is extremist ideology. How do we dismantle it? By discrediting it and providing alternatives for our audiences. What are our alternatives? They are democratic dialogue, access to information, freedom of expression and opportunity of peaceful political representation.

This is the best explanation of why a free and independent media is so important. The Minister seems to understand this well, and concludes with an excellent offer to the media that again makes the point that a successful democracy requires a healthy media.

Pakistan’s democratic government is committed to promote freedom of expression and access to information in the greater public interest. But democracy, like communication, is a two-way street. To deliver on its promise, the democratic government needs the support of an informed citizenry that can not only identify problems but can also offer solutions for good governance. Our efforts must become collaborative.

Obviously, the media must retain its independence and be able to criticize the government, which governments never like. But it is a good sign that the government extends this hand of friendship to the media. Certainly the Interior Minister’s call for an inquiry into the harassment of Dawn journalist Azaz Syed is also a good sign.

If the conspiracy wallahs used their platform to provide “information welfare” that helps the people rather than confuses them, imagine the potential for positive change that could come.

Dawn reporter M.H. Khan following attack

The recent attack on Dawn reporter M.H. Khan is shocking. Threats and intimidation against journalists has become too commonplace, but usually we expect these attacks to be carried out by Taliban and other militants. The fact is, attacks on journalists is simply uncivilized. That this attack was allegedly carried out by political supporters of SNF makes it all the more shocking. We should expect more civilized behavior from legitimate political parties.

TRAGICALLY, journalists in Pakistan are under fire not only from shadowy security agencies and religious extremists. They must also contend with local hooligans, often supporters of one or the other political party or belonging to a particular group.

This observation is underscored by Thursday’s horrendous incident in Hyderabad in which Dawn’s correspondent M.H. Khan was attacked, allegedly by activists of Mumtaz Bhutto’s Sindh National Front.

According to our badly injured correspondent, his assailants, who used iron rods in the attack, abused him for daring to question the SNF chief, whose statement, and a subsequent clarification, on the NFC award had been carried in Dawn recently. If investigations – and we hope that a thorough, unbiased enquiry is carried out soon and the perpetrators brought to justice – prove the SNF’s involvement then it would not be the first time that the party has indulged in such lawless behaviour.

Last year, the SNF, taking umbrage at another report, had set fire to Dawn offices in Hyderabad and other places in Sindh. Besides, its activists have been held responsible for beating up reporters of Sindhi-language papers and ransacking the latter’s offices.

Surely there are more civilised ways of refuting a report or putting across a point of view.

With the Pakistani media freer than it has ever been before, the SNF, or any other group or party that indulges in such strong-arm tactics, can hardly hope to muzzle it. True, the media should be held responsible for biased or factually incorrect reporting. But violence serves no purpose, and the government must step in to actively discourage those who display a propensity for it. This is needed not only to prevent disgruntled elements from taking the law into their own hands, it is also important for promoting a culture of tolerance.

A proper democracy allows people of different minds to disagree respectfully. While we on this blog regularly criticize many media personalities, we would never encourage anyone to attack these people, nor threaten them, nor intimidate them. Actually, it is not necessary to do this because if you have a disagreement with a journalist or commentator in the media, you can easily correct their errors in public. Not only is there freedom of press, but there is also freedom to criticize the press.

A properly functioning media must be open to public dialogue and criticism in order to correct misinformation or propaganda. But the media must also be free to report information that you do not like to hear and possibly you do not agree with. It is through this civilized debate and discussion that we will find common ground and the best possible course for our nation.