This Assault on Free Press

Dr. M. Ashraf Adeel

Within one week the Musharraf Government has mounted assaults on two basic institutions of constitutional and transparent governance, judiciary and free press. On 9th of March, General Musharraf made the chief justice of Pakistan non-functional. On March 16th , brute police force was let loose on the office of the largest media network of the country to make Geo TV and the News International office in Islamabad “non-functional”. On 13th March, the chief Justice of Pakistan and his courageous wife were roughed up when they just wanted to walk to the Supreme Court. (Who can dare walk against the will of the mighty and the powerful in our country!?) On 16th March, the police roughed up the valiant journalists of Geo TV and the News International simply for doing their professional duty. The higher-ups of police and administration watched over the manhandling of the chief justice and his family as well as that of the GEO staff. On both occasions, many of the higher-ups were reported to be on the scene and messages were being sent out on walkie-talkies. There is not a shred of doubt, therefore, that both times the government planned to intimidate. The idea obviously is to suppress freedom---both of the judiciary and the press. The powers-that-be know that an independent judiciary is the only genuine threat to the tyrannical powers of their establishment, and, they also know, that a free press is the most powerful ally of a judiciary for protecting the civil and human rights of the masses. Assault on the freedom of press through attacking GEO TV Offices, therefore, is fraught with deep implications for the civil society and its rights in Pakistan.

The struggle for civil rights in all societies has been historically linked with freedom of expression and its institutional embodiment, i.e., free press. The simple reason for this linkage has been that free press is the instrument of public conscience inasmuch as it brings violations of civil rights of citizens to the notice of the citizenry. A society without free press cannot actually develop an effective public conscience. It is not for nothing that the freedom of expression is considered by many as the first right of a citizen. It is through the exercise of this first right that other rights of the citizens can be protected and ensured. The free press stands on the foundation of this first right. A tyrannical and ignorant government, therefore, tends to target free press in order to achieve two objectives: stopping the emergence of a public conscience and dehumanizing the citizen through snatching his/her first or foundational right. Let us all be reminded, therefore, that the assault on the freedom of press is an assault on our humanity.
It must be added that those who ordered this assault on the freedom of press must have acted out of ignorance alone. Otherwise, they would have seen that, in the process of dehumanizing members of society, the instruments of tyrannical power themselves get dehumanized by losing their moral conscience. Men without moral conscience are probably worse off compared to citizens without civil rights. Therefore, people at the helm of affairs need to grasp the fundamental truths of civilized life. Power and wealth are not the only things that matter in a person’s life. A person, as Plato would say, must do his/her utmost to leave an honorable legacy or name for his progeny. To be sure you cannot do so by destroying your own moral conscience. This is a way of dishonoring yourself whose consequences can never escape the notice of history and society. Let us all, therefore, know our limits and not transgress into areas where we can get our fingers burnt. Let us not try to snatch people’s right to humanity, that is, their right to free speech.

Another implication of this attack on the freedom of press is that powers-that-be have not yet grasped the true meaning of the national outrage over the assault on the office of the chief justice. The nation is outraged because they want their self-respect restored. That basically means restoration of the civil and human rights of all citizens through a judiciary that cannot be coerced by the executive branch of the government. The free press in the country only highlights this deep-seated desire of the people behind their current outrage. Now, as history has shown time and again, there is no power on earth which can take away this deep-seated desire from a people. It is human nature. Our people are not any different in this regard. Trying to suppress their natural instinct for freedoms and rights can, perhaps, delay democratic and constitutional governance but it can never stop it. The costs for trying to cause such a delay, however, are generally enormous for those who are on the side of oppression. One of the greatest modern philosophers---Hegel---said that the march of history is in fact an inexorable movement towards greater and greater liberty for man. Therefore, the ‘powerful’ in the country need to stop trying to choke the national outrage by choking the free press. Their’s is a self-destructive approach.

The crux of the right to free expression actually lies in seeing that disagreements are a natural part of human societies. People can come to form different perceptions and opinions on the same issues. When that happens, it does not serve the cause of truth to suppress differences. Indeed, it is through sharp but civilized differences of opinion that progress in scientific thinking becomes possible in all areas of knowledge and concern. Politics is particularly amenable to such progress through civilized pursuit of difference of opinion. Socio-political institutions and social thought itself progress only in an atmosphere of free disagreement between different stake holders. Societies which try to suppress such free disagreement (in the name of either religion or liberalism) end up stultifying their own growth. Free press in a country, therefore, provides the critical space that a society needs for such disagreements to exist for social growth.

Being able to handle and allow difference of opinion is also related with the level of a nation's or an individual's moral and psychological maturity. A society which cannot allow and tolerate multiple perspectives on important issues in its life, ends up being socially and intellectually starved. Such a society slowly yields to violence and its ability to sustain itself in competition to other societies gets severely damaged. A free press is what some political scientists have called a marketplace of ideas; and multiple ideas in the marketplace create intellectual and spiritual sustenance for a society. It is not surprising, therefore, that all efforts to suppress freedom of press in modern history have been squarely condemned by intellectuals as well as the masses and have generally done more harm than good to their perpetrators.

The ongoing struggle in the country for the protection of judicial independence is of critical significance for guaranteeing civil rights to our current and future generations. It is a struggle which will either ensure intergenerational dignity and rights for us or, in case of failure, we’ll be forced to crawl in dust by many more tyrants. A free press is a natural ally in such a struggle. However, the press cannot be blamed for inciting people insofar as it brings the truth to them. An oppressive regime tends to shift the blame of its oppressive policies to the free working of the press. Their thinking is that it is the press which is responsible for inciting the struggle for civil and human rights. That thinking is completely fallacious, however. If people were not already suppressed and if their civil rights were already in place, no free press would ever succeed in inciting them. The collective conscience in Pakistan has revolted against the marginalization of the rights of the people by the powerful in the country. People want their rights to be restored through an independent judiciary. The press has not created the conditions which have systematically marginalized the rights of the people or the people themselves from the power equation in the country. Some ‘forces’ have been violating the constitutional rights of the people over and over again and they are the ones responsible for creating the conditions for people to start this struggle. At this stage of the game, and in this age of information revolution, there is nothing the government can do, through intimidating the press, to undo the conditions that have led to the start of the ongoing struggle. Free press should not be consciously or unconsciously made into a scapegoat. They are simply doing their professional duty in reporting the facts, and, the current information revolution has ensured that facts would be reported by one mean or another, no matter what. Therefore, the government should realize its limitations and stop trying to send free press on “forced leave”. They have done enough damage by sending the honorable chief justice of Pakistan on “forced leave”. Nobody believes them any longer when they claim to exercise objectivity in the matter.


Dr. M. Ashraf Adeel
Department of Philosophy
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
USA