WATCHING the cacophony that is telecast on television every day, it is easy to condemn Pakistan`s electronic media for being too boisterous.

That may be the case, but it really is quite remarkable how far the country`s media industry has come in a little over a decade.

Most people think of the Ziaul Haq era as the days when public discourse was the most tightly controlled, when journalists were flogged and the impunity with which they continue to be targeted even today became entrenched. And this is largely true.

Two days after the imposition of the Zia martial law, on July 7, 1977, press guidelines were issued that included `no criticism of the armed forces; no item to be published that is likely to bring the armed forces into disrepute; no publication of unauthorised news about the armed forces, only Inter-Services Public Relations and information ministry press releases to be used`.

Zia used to boast of his control over the media. At one time, several journalists were dismissed for signing a petition for the restoration of democracy. Chronicler Zamir Niazi quotes Zia in Web of Censorship as saying that `You say that the punishment to the 10 NPT [National Press Trust] journalists is too much.

It is too little. They should have been hung upside down.

They must learn a lesson`.

And on another occasion, `I could close down all newspapers, say, for a period of fiveyears, and nobody would be in a position to raise any voice against it. If they try to organise a meeting or a procession, I will send them to jail`.

This was a time when Pakistan`s journalists truly suffered trial by fire.

Anything that was to be published had to be submitted to being `pre-censored`, and entire items were often axed by the censors. Newspapers tried to resist by leaving a blank space where the article should have gone; the government reacted by banning blank spaces altogether.

Finally, the truth itself was declared illegal: amendments to the 1860 Law of Libel (Sections 499 and 500 of the Pakistan Penal Code) banned the publication of material `against any person, even if it is true and even if it is in the public interest` [emphasis added], as recorded by Zamir Niazi.

In 1978, a military summary court sentenced four journalists to be flogged, the sentence on three of them being executed just 70 minutes after the judgement was passed. A picture of that shameful page in history hangs in Dawn`s Karachi offices, and offers some perspective when, on moments such as Mohammad Sikandar`s siege in Islamabad a couple of weeks ago, newsmen decried state highhandedness.

But the history of press censorship in Pakistan goes far beyond that. There was a day in 1958, Dec 25 the birthday of the Mohammad Ali Jinnah when the then editor of this newspaper, Altaf Husain, obviously came under tremendous pressure to toe the government`s line.The editorial used to be printed on the front page then, and this space for that day is blank with a handwritten note at the bottom: `When the truth cannot be freely spoken, and patriotism is held almost a crime, this editorial space is left blank on the Quaid-i-Azam`s birthday to speak more eloquently than words.` The rest of the page is devoted exclusively to Jinnah.

Press freedoms in Pakistan have been hard won. And freedom, we do have. There are few sacred cows left in these terms anymore, with even the army, the ISI and the military`s role in helping Pakistan reach the current juncture coming, in recent years, under fierce debate.

What has been openly discussed in the wake of Osama bin Laden being discovered in Abbottabad, for example, was unthinkable earlier. For a while it seemed that practically the only `no-no` left was the judiciary, but that too seems to be changing.

(One could argue that there is still no meaningful debate in the media about many issues but I feel that this is less because of censorship and more because of media persons` growing limitations of imagination and clearthinking.) Part of the credit for this general atmosphere of openness, it must be said, goes to the earlier PPP-led government, which on the whole did not try to clamp down on the press too much (For the record, though, voices continue to be raised in parliament and elsewhere that the press must be controlled, and journalists docontinue to be targeted with impunity.) Which course the PML-N government will adopt remains to be seen.

The Pakistan press`s freedom becomes all the more remarkable when compared to several other developing countries. In Sri Lanka, for example, there is extremely tight governmental control over what journalists can say about its suppression of the Tamils.

And in India, for all the vociferousness apparent in the media, there seems to be a limit to how far the media (in general, barring a few exceptions) goes in its criticism of the state, an example being the case of the Naxalite movement.

It is in this context that the media industry`s not infrequent acts of irresponsibility become all the more saddening, a glaring recent example being the Mohammad Sikandar af fair.

There are constantly elements within state and society that try to censor discourse, as was seen only last week when the Balochistan government tried to bring charges against a television channel for having set the record straight about how the attack on the Ziarat Residency played out.

Conversely, irresponsible behaviour on part of the media will only lend credence to the argument for tighter control. At every step, journalists must ask themselves, are they doing anything that might lead to them being the architects of their own industry`s destruction? m The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com