A free and independent media system, with a plethora of private channels, is definitely a characteristic of the present powers that be. However, one must ask, is this really the kind of freedom the press wants ?
As far as the media is concerned, its misery has certainly not ceased, but it is still not free to report in an objective and unbiased way. Inter News is one website which bears ample evidence to reveal the sorry state of affairs.
The Inter News website has different sections. To start off with, the media monitor of Inter News is an amazing collection of stories pertaining to the mass media appearing in the major newspapers of the country on a particular day. Of course you may have followed the story in the newspaper itself, but here with all the stories on one page along with the web links to the online version, you can judge for yourself how the story has been covered in various newspapers along with discovering the state of the media as reported by the media itself – all from one source.
Inter News has many different projects as well. The website details some of the projects that are currently going on, along with whatever has been achieved so far. These projects mainly involve training of journalists in various fields, along with educating them about legal issues. One of the objectives of these projects, interestingly funded by the US State Department, is to improve legal and political reporting, raise the profile of women in the media and promote an active debate on issues at the grass-roots level through FM radio channels.
The section on “Media Resources” will give you access to different publications of Inter News which include a law bulletin and a newsletter. The media monitor is also part of the media resources available as is a media directory. From this directory, one can find out the contact details for various mass media outlets in the country, along with the details of their PEMRA licenses and when they started functioning etc.
The media law bulletin is one online publication which will give you a fairly clear idea of the problems journalists have to face despite all the ‘supposed’ freedom given to them. Each bulletin carries stories of journalists kidnapped, tortured or killed, simply for doing their job. There are also details on the different ways television channels are pressurised or threatened. But of course one shouldn’t see the negative part of the story at all times. Positive developments in the mass media along with the details of how Inter News projects are functioning also comprise the content of the newsletters and bulletins.
Although it’s a comprehensive website, one should exercise caution against using it as an end-all and be-all of the state of affairs of the media. The underlying purpose of the website is to support the current openness of the mass media while at the same time revealing the problems faced by journalists behind the façade of the freedom so graciously given to them by the government.
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