The Regulator Regulated: A Genealogy of the Pakistani Broadcast Media and its State of ‘Double Capture’ in the Post-Musharraf Era

Extralegal Repression of the Unregulated Press in Colonial Bengal (1780–1799)

‘It does not appear that previously to 1799 there were any informed and considered rules established at the three Presidencies [of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay], for guiding the conduct of the Editors of Newspapers or for restraining and punishing their excesses,’ wrote Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn during a British Parliament debate in 1834 (IOR/H/535, p. 6). Eighteenth-century colonial print products included calendars, gospels and almanacs. However, colonial print only became regulated after it was politicised by the launch in 1780 of Hicky’s Bengal Gazette or the Original Calcutta General Advertiser. Somewhat ironically, Irishman James Augustus Hicky began his printing career after a stint in prison, in an attempt to repay his debts (Shaw, 1981, p. 1). Launching in an unregulated printing environment, Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, the first colonial broadsheet, quickly rose in popularity among Europeans settled in the colonial town of Calcutta, thereby also placing Hicky in the Company’s crosshairs.

Hicky politicised the press by criticising powerful colonial administrators and publishing satirical lampoons of Governor-General Warren Hastings and Chief Justice Elijah Impey (Barns, 1940, p. 49). As English libel laws favoured Hicky, Company administrators adopted a range of extralegal manoeuvres to financially strangulate the Bengal Gazette. The first move came in November 1780 when ‘it [was] no longer permitted to be circulated through the channel of the General Post Office’ (p. 47). This measure caused Hicky considerable financial distress, as it was designed to do. The Company also created difficulties for Hicky through legal suits, as well as introducing competition and therefore commercial pressure. In 1779, the Company had ordered Hicky to print a voluminous set of Military Regulations (p. 46) but now refused to pay him in full, thereby driving Hicky yet again into a cycle of irreparable debt (p. 51–55). Eventually, extralegal tactics combined with the brutality of colonial force wrought down upon Hicky:

In June, 1781, an armed band, including several Europeans, some sepoys and between three to four hundred peons, went to arrest Hicky under an order from the Chief Justice [Elijah Impey], acting under the Governor-General’s instructions. He met force with force and on refusing to be taken away, undertook to attend the judge in court on being shown a legal authority for his arrest…He was unable to pay the ₹80,000 bail and was accordingly remanded in jail. Hicky’s imprisonment did not mean the extinction of his paper for he continued to edit the Gazette while in prison and even maintained the same tone. (p. 49)

This remarkable image of a condemned man operating a printing press inside an eighteenth-century prison sums up the argument about the colonial media system: the confluence of human and machine to mechanically re-produce political newsprint in the colonies was never a free pursuit of the enlightened mind. Rather, the entire process was always already bound within the punitive architecture of colonial regulations. This earliest case demonstrates that even when these regulations did not bear law-like force, the modality of control nonetheless functioned extralegally to restrict and delimit Hicky’s output according to different political calculations.

Censorship via Quasi-legal Subterfuge: Deportation without Trial (1790–1818)

Hicky’s suppression was a one-off case and the press remained unregulated. A decade later, a whole colonial newsprint industry arose in the three presidency towns. The colonial market for news was described by Watkins-Wynn:

The increase of private printing presses in India, unlicensed, however controlled, is an evil of the first magnitude in its consequences: of this sufficient proof is to be found in their scandalous outrages from the year 1793 to 1798. Useless to Literature and to the Public, and dubiously profitable to the spectators, they serve only to maintain, in needy indolence, a few European adventurers, who are unfit to engage in any established method of subsistence. (IOR/H/535, p. 26)

The Company considered ‘obnoxious’ and ‘dangerous’ several paragraphs penned by correspondents – many of whom were the Company’s own servants – and printed by editors of newspapers. When Governor-General Cornwallis passed quasi-legal press regulations in 1799, it marked the dawn of the period referred to as the ‘Censorship’ regime (1799–1818) in the Bengal, Madras, and Bombay presidencies (Barns, 1940; Ghose, 1930).

The Company had recorded the first printing infraction in 1790 in The Indian World, a newspaper published by Irish-American William Duane. An erroneous report about the death of Governor-General Cornwallis had caused alarm. This was so significant that Cornwallis inquired from the advocate general in London about what capacity the Company had for dealing with a publisher like Duane:

In the instance…what means authorised by Law will be most effectual for the exercise of this power… [to seize and send such person to England?]…Whether…the Governor General is legally authorised to restrain him…and keep him in confinement…[and] whether the authority to send to Europe [also] implies an authority to use force? (IOR/H/537, pp. 15–16)

The subterfuge of cancelling Duane’s license to reside in the colony, and hence deporting him as illegal, availed this shadowy power. Between 1791 and 1794, however, Duane encountered the Company’s brute extralegal force.

Duane temporarily regained his freedom by filing a writ petition of habeas corpus through the intervention of a French political agent. Three years later, Company forces assaulted Duane again:

At noon day in March 1794, a posse of people, peons and other domistics of one of your Civil Servants, forced their way with clubs into my House, beat my clerks, printers, and servants while another party entered my private apartments, and without any sort of provocation beat me senseless to my own floor, dragged me by the legs down my own stairs and along the avenue…[the band of ferocious ruffians then] heaped upon me all the grossness of Asiatic insult spitting upon my face and clothes, and beating me upon the face and head with iron bound heels of shoes! The violence…was openly authorised by a [Government] civil servant…I applied to Government, praying their interference…but to my astonishment found…that your advocate…had been already instructed to maintain the offender against me, at the Company’s expense! (pp. 203–205)

Taken into custody, Duane was deported to England. ⁴ This established the colonial precedent of ‘deportation without trial’, extralegally sending European publishers back to Europe. Formally institutionalising this subterfuge in 1799, the first press regulations in South Asia comprised a disciplinary censorship code of only five points:

Every Printer of a Newspaper to print his name at the bottom of the Paper.

These regulations were originally supplemented by more detailed guidelines for the Censor: ‘To prohibit publication of…finances of the Company… [Details of] Troops, Stores, or Specie … All observations with respect to the conduct of Government or any of its officers, Civil or Military, Marine, Commercial, or Judicial.’ Notably these also barred ‘republication of such passages from the European Newspapers, as may tend to affect the influence and credit of the British power with the Native States’ (quoted in Barns, 1940, p. 75).

This censorship code was originally drafted under Governor-General Wellesley in relation to ‘a state of war’ (IOR/H/536a, p. 743a). As its only means of implementation – applicable only to British subjects – was revoking the publisher’s license to reside in Company territories, followed by deportation to Europe, this regulatory technique was actually designed to sidestep England’s own liberal publishing laws. The restrictive colonial rules ‘var[ied] in no material particular from the ordinances promulgated by the Star Chamber in A.D. 1585’ (Barns, 1940, p. 75). Transplanted to the colonies centuries later, this autocratic code served to preserve British power in a foreign land. ⁵

This Censorship regime remained intact for two decades (1799–1818). Essentially, editors of newspapers were monitored by the Censor who reviewed proofs of broadsheets prior to publication. During this period, several Europeans were subjected to this regime of ‘deportation without trial’ due to improper or ‘offensive paragraphs’ appearing in their publications (IOR/H/533).

Self-Regulation or ‘Rules for the Conduct of Editors of Newspapers’ (1818–1823)

The 1799 censorship regime was abruptly rescinded on 28 August 1818, under the aegis of Governor-General Marquis Francis Rawdon-Hastings. ⁶ Letters were dispatched to editors of newspapers in Calcutta stating that the Governor-General was pleased to ‘revise the existing Regulations regarding the control exercised by the Government over the Newspapers’ and would be ‘releasing the Editors of Newspapers from the obligation hitherto imposed on them of submitting their Papers to an Officer of Government previously to publication’ (IOR/H/532, p. 55). Instead, ‘they will be held personally accountable for whatever they may publish in contravention of the Rules prescribed for their observances’ (pp. 57–58, emphasis mine). Now the editors themselves were to make sure none of the following would appear in their broadsheets:

Animadversions on the measures and proceedings of the Honourable Court of Directors or other public authorities in England connected with the Government of India, or disquisitions on Political transactions of the local administration or offensive remarks levelled at the public conduct of the Members of the Council, of the Judges of the Supreme Court, or of the Lord Bishop of Calcutta.

This ‘Code of Conduct for Editors’ synthesised the 1799 guidelines for the Censor, ushering in a new regime, referred to as ‘Self-Regulation’. Proofs of broadsheets would no longer be reviewed by the Censor in advance; the editor and publisher would be held accountable for anything untoward appearing in print.

Marquis Hastings was briefly hailed as a liberator of the press. Though he had alluded to the ‘liberty of the press’ in an oft-quoted address to the inhabitants of Madras, the administration never elaborated on its reasons for the abrogation of Censorship. This historical detail, however, can be found in the Minutes of the Secretaries to the Governor-General recorded five years later. W.B. Bayly’s Minute from 1822 recounted ‘[t]he circumstance which in the year 1818 led to the change in the system of controul exercised by the Censor … A person by the name of Heatly born in Bengal whose father was a European British Subject and his Mother a Native of India became the sole proprietor and Editor of the Morning Post… [A]s a Native of India [he] was liable no legal penalty for refusing to comply with the injunctions of the Censor’, i.e. refusing to expunge some objectionable paragraphs from his paper as Bayly demanded (IOR/H/532, pp. 743A–744). Thus, the breakdown of the Censorship regime was caused by a challenge to the subterfuge of deportation without trial through the intervention of a non-European, ‘Native’ subject. With the regulations now rendered unenforceable, decisions would be left to the discretion of newspaper editors, ushering in the era of Self-Regulation.

At the very moment when the Censorship regime was being replaced by self-regulation, the adventurer James Silk Buckingham arrived at the port of Calcutta and applied to the Company for a free mariner’s license to reside in the colonial town (IOR/H/532, p. 39). Buckingham soon purchased a local printing press and set up his controversial Calcutta Journal (Barns, 1940, p. 93; Ghose, 1930 p. 7).

Buckingham’s firebrand style of political commentary often brought him into conflict with the Secretaries of the Governor-General, particularly the former Censor and Chief Secretary John Adam. Correspondence between them reveals that, although Adam was powerless, he still issued censure whenever Buckingham’s paper criticised the Company’s government (IOR/H/532); Buckingham responded in print by reiterating that Marquis Hastings had lifted the shackles of Censorship (Barns, p. 93). Ultimately, however, Buckingham became the nemesis of Hastings’ liberal self-regulatory regime. Blamed by Adam and other secretaries for weakening the government’s authority through his liberal policies, Hastings eventually had to resign.

In 1823, John Adam himself took charge as Acting Governor-General and wasted no time in deporting Buckingham back to London over a minor infraction (Adam, 1823). Buckingham fought a lengthy legal battle, taking his case to the Privy Council and Parliament; the Company records discussed in this article (IOR/H/532-539) resulted from this legal process. Adam drafted his new regulatory regime on the eve of Buckingham’s forced deportation, thereby inaugurating the ‘Licensing’ era (1823–1835) of colonial print regulation, a regulatory device still used to control broadcasting in postcolonial Pakistan.

Licensing Regulations and the Colonial Capture of the ‘Native Press’ 1823–1835

As we have seen, the Licensing regime resulted from two distinct challenges to the company’s regulatory ability to control the colonial press. First, the Anglo-Indian editor of the Morning Post could not be deported causing the censorship regime to lapse. Later, Buckingham’s refusal to self-regulate made the Rules for Editors irrelevant. The combination of the two meant that a native person publishing in Buckingham’s style would become the ultimate danger for Company policy. Ram Mohan Roy already represented this type of incendiary native publisher. Particularly his discussions of religious matters in his publications Mirat-ul-Akhbar in Persian and Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali alarmed Company secretaries like Bayly, despite their secular thrust (IOR/H/532, p. 770).

In order to control the political discourses of the ‘Native Press’, John Adam, when Chief Secretary of the Company, had written a Minute to the Court of Directors dated 1822 appealing to the British Parliament for an entirely new regulatory power to control the colonial press. Censorship, he explained, ‘is not efficient, except as regards Europeans, since there were no means of enforcing obedience but through the terror of removal from the Country’ (p. 562). ‘The only effectual control,’ of native publishers, Adam wrote, ‘is to require the proprietors of printing presses to take out a license revocable at the discretion of Government, and to render penal the exercise of any branch of printing, except under such license’ (p. 563). Adam concluded his minute by noting that he had

confined my view in the present Minute to the Europeans Press and to its effects on the European community alone. The subject of the Native periodical Press, a novelty which has grown out of the other and has undoubtedly its origin in the same feelings and under the same patronage, and its influence on the minds of our Native Subjects is one of no less moment. (p. 565, emphasis added)

Submitting a second minute, in concordance with Adam, to the Court of Directors on 17 October 1822, W. B. Bayly noted four newspapers in native languages had been recently established in Calcutta, two of which were published by Ram Mohan Roy. In light of these developments Bayly felt that ‘the [Native Press] may be converted into an Engine of the most serious mischief… I consider it essential that the Government should be vested with legal power to control the excesses of the Native as well as of the European Press’ (p. 741). As the shadows of colonial control encroached further, Ram Mohan Roy dramatically wrapped up his newsprint publications in 1823 after concerted protests (Barns, p. 123–126).

The Company’s concern was that native editors such as Roy had already begun emulating Buckingham’s critical style, making it acceptable to criticise the Government in native languages. While Company secretaries plotted the possible deportation of Buckingham to England, it became clear to them that ‘the removal of Mr. Buckingham…[would] be followed by the substitution in his room for one or more individuals, who not being British European Subjects could not be visited by a similar Penalty’ (IOR/H/532, p. 747). The emerging ‘danger’ to colonial power came from ‘Natives being the Editors and publishers of newspapers in the languages of the Country’ (p. 748). As ‘the Editors of the papers in the Native languages have already been…liable to the influence of their European friends and patrons’ (p. 777), they would reproduce the tone of ‘Mr. Buckingham [who they consider] an Akhbar Nuvees or news writer stationed by the King of England in Calcutta to report and deliver his opinions freely respecting the conduct of the local Government’ (p. 770, italics added).

Turning his gaze to the ‘natives subject to the British Government in India [who] do not amount to less than 80 millions’, Bayly dryly noted: ‘They have no voice or participation in forming or administering the Laws (which are enacted or rescinded at the mere discretion of the Government)…or in controlling the administration. The Government in its relation to them is in fact substantially and necessarily despotic’ (p. 752, emphasis mine). ‘In such a state of things,’ Bayly reasoned that

[any] discontented individual [could] have it in his power to publish and circulate strictures calculated to excite dissatisfaction…to canvass the propriety of orders issued…[and] to encourage and disseminate opinions adverse to subordination…[Through this medium, the Native population could] be made acquainted with their own powers of resistance; [and] be encouraged to appeal from the acts and proceedings of the local authorities of Government itself, to the tribunal of public opinion and seek that participation in framing the Laws [and] controlling the measures of the executive Government which is exercised by the representatives of the people in a free state. (p. 754)

Such an ‘engine’ of enlightenment would hence enable natives to liberate themselves. No doubt, the danger Bayly referenced was to the emergence of an entirely new political sphere of native publishing. Bayly essentially argued for ‘the necessity of a controlling power being lodged in the hands of the local Government’ (p. 756), rather than a colonial government being controlled by the opinions of its native subjects.

The Licensing regulations drafted by Adam in 1823 legally institutionalised a concerted control of print technologies and distribution of printed matter, whose hallmarks are also visible in broadcast regulations to this very day: ⁷

The magistrate and joint magistrates are further authorised and directed to seize and attach all printing presses and types, and other materials or articles for printing, which may be kept or used within their respective jurisdictions without the permission and license of Government, and to retain the same…to be confiscated…[If the joint magistrate has reason to believe that] the unlicensed printing presses or types, or other materials or articles kept for printing, are kept or used in any house, building, or other place, he is authorised to issue his warrant to the police officers to search for the same. (Quoted in Barns, p.120; Adam, pp. i–xx)

The earlier technique of media regulation through deportation of European subjects, by revoking their licenses to reside in the colony, evolved into a licensing mechanism whereby the media technology itself became the object of regulation. To control native printing, unlicensed use of presses became penalised overnight through security bonds, fees, fines, and threats of imprisonment. These minutes make clear that the Company introduced licensing regulations, as a strategy of colonial rule, in order to control the sphere of native printing, instead of being controlled by it. The deployment of licensing in 1818 to delimit native uses of the engine of a free press can be considered a ‘colonial capture’ of the ‘native press’.

John Adam’s Argument for Colonial Difference and Control of the ‘Native Press’

Why did company administrators consider it necessary to control the colonial press through draconian rules and procedures in the first place, despite the fact that British rule paradoxically offered liberalism, enlightenment and freedom to Indian subjects? John Adam’s argument for colonial difference proposed a different type of control. In order to understand the implications of this paradox, we must revisit Adam’s Minute dated August 14, 1822, informing the Court of Directors of the East India Company about the dangers of a free press. A closer reading of this document reveals that Adam’s strategy of employing exceptional control in the colony is linked to his understanding of the ‘the anomalous structure of our power in this country…a species of power which precludes the notion of a constitutional control’ (IOR/H/532, pp. 544–547). This argument, which asserts that European democracies are fundamentally distinct from autocratic forms of rule the same European democracies extended to their colonies, is significant for understanding the colonial inheritances borne by later postcolonial regulations.

The documents under review pertain to the early-nineteenth-century debate on freedom/control of the colonial press in India. On one side were the advocates of ‘Freedom’ of the press, on the other side the proponents of ‘Control’ of the press. The former argued it was unnatural for a British subject to exist under the scrutiny of the Censor. They claimed free debate and discussion through the medium of print would produce the kind of enlightenment in the colonies that print had already produced in Europe (Stanhope, 1823). On the other side, the proponents of control or restrictions claimed that while it is true that England is a free society, the nature of English rule in India is based on subjugating a massive population of natives by a handful of Europeans. They argued that it was ‘the part of prudence…[for] the stability of [British] dominion’ and that it would be ‘the part of insanity to teach and encourage [the Natives] the Agency of a Free Press to call into question…every measure of the governing authority’ (Edmonstone, 1823 in IOR/H/536a, p. 97–98).

Adam recommended ‘adopting measures with the view to your Government in India being enabled to exercise a more efficiently decided control over the Press in India than they at present have the power of exerting’. He linked the lifting of the Censorship regime, in place until 1818, to the ‘licentiousness’ in print circles, creating unprecedented hazards for colonial rule. He argued against the ‘right [of the European Advocates of a Free Press in India] to discuss, censure and control the measures of Government’ (IOR/H/532, p. 533). His objection was ‘to the claim of that class of persons to exercise in this country, the privilege they are allowed to assume at home, of writing in judgment on the acts of Government’. Adam lodged a ‘protest against the assumption of this right of control over the Indian Government and its officers, by a community constituted like the European Society of these Presidencies’ (pp. 542–543).

In the colonial realm, according to Adam’s view, the conduct of a controlling power being subjected to the scrutiny of a subject population would be absurd. Therefore, as the colonial constitution of power in India was fundamentally different from the constitution of England, for Adam it was ludicrous to imagine that printing could exist in the British colony free of control:

I cannot imagine a greater political absurdity than a Government controlled by…persons residing under its authority on sufferance, and liable to removal at its arbitrary will…On the one hand, the attempted control must be negatory as to the prevention of abuses; and on the other dangerous, [as it would] throw the assumed power into the hands of the ignorant, the discontented and the vindictive, and…open a wide door to the indulgence of factious opposition to Government…under the mask of patriotism and public spirit. [T]he results of [such] a system…[which] will in time make every public measure a point of contest between authority and resistance…must be…to relinquish that power which [the Government] holds. (pp. 544–555)

Hence, Adam considered controls on the colonial press to offer a fulcrum of political power, determining whether the public regulated the conduct of government or was controlled by the strictures of colonial rule. The former scenario would necessarily be ‘dangerous to the stability of our power in this country’ (p. 565). If the conduct of government became regulated, or captured, by this emerging sphere of newsprint, it would entail ‘an inversion of the just order of things’ because it would ‘lead to the confounding of all subordination and respect for [colonial] authority and generate a spirit of controversy and resistance’ (p. 550, emphasis mine).

The regulations leading to the Company’s control of the press can be understood as a ‘colonial capture’ of the emerging medium of mass publication and political newsprint. Adam’s argument about controlling the press or being controlled by it will be revisited in the concluding discussion in relation to the different nature of control under postcolonial media regulations. This first part has outlined the deployment of four distinct regulatory modalities of controlling the early-colonial press, which led to the ‘colonial capture’ of print technology by the East India Company between 1780 and 1823. In the next section, regulation of the ‘native press’ in colonial times will be considered in relation to the broadcast news media two centuries later in Pakistan – where licensing, self-regulation, censorship and extra-legal tactics are deployed concurrently to produce a different mode of control.

Electronic Licensing Phase and Regulatory Inoperativity, 2002–2006

Like the eighteenth-century press, satellite and cable television remained unregulated in Pakistan from their arrival in the early 1990s until the twenty-first century. In fact, private news broadcasting could only become a reality once the airwaves were opened up to private investment after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a military coup in October 1999. Appearing in uniform on state television PTV – the only medium for broadcast news – a few days later, Musharraf immediately announced his plan to liberalise the media: ‘The media forms an integral part of statehood in this era of information… I am a firm believer in the freedom of the press and am even considering to liberalise the policy on the establishment of private television and radio channels’ (Musharraf, 1999). PEMRA was formed under emergency powers by Musharraf through an executive decree titled Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance, 2002. The significant fact that liberalisation laws were enacted through extraordinary powers is clear from the ordinance’s preamble:

NOW, THEREFORE, in pursuance of Proclamation of Emergency of the fourteenth day of October, 1999 and the Provisional Constitution Order No.1 of 1999 read with the Provisional Constitution (Amendment) Order No. 9 of 1999, and in exercise of all powers enabling him in that behalf, the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is pleased to make and promulgate the [PEMRA] Ordinance. (PEMRA, 2002)

The purported objectives of this emergency ordinance included improving access to information, enlarging the range of media commodities, encouraging grassroots political processes, and ensuring ‘transparency and good governance by optimising the free flow of information’ (ibid.). Language such as: ‘No person shall engage in broadcasting or CTV operation except after obtaining a license issued under this Ordinance’ (ibid.), however, echoes the 1823 colonial licensing code drafted by John Adam. PEMRA had similar authority to revoke licenses, according to vague terms such as 20(a): ‘respect[ing] the sovereignty, security, and integrity of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ (ibid.).

Despite such powers, PEMRA acted more like a license issuer and less like an industry regulator in its early tenure (Rehmat, 2016). For the first few years, the authority had no chairman or advisory board in place as per its own regulations. The early days of the regulator were marked solely by a rapid drive to populate the airwave spectrum. Its watchdog role was confined to shutting down ‘illegal’ FM radio stations and curtailing unauthorised ‘foreign’ broadcasts – mostly Indian television content on cable (‘Ban on Indian News Channels’, 2003). Actual regulation of the news media was done largely on an informal basis by the Musharraf administration (Hashmi, 2014, p. 30).

Musharraf’s regime and the news media in their earliest configuration enjoyed a honeymoon period. The media celebrated Musharraf for granting them freedom, unwittingly also providing his regime with much needed legitimacy. As a bureau editor of a major English daily said of this early period, ‘in the beginning the media loved Musharraf, and Musharraf loved the media’ (Zaidi, 2016). However, this initial euphoria faded quickly. To capture viewership, and to speak truth to power, the surging news media led by the popular Geo TV soon became critical of Musharraf’s dictatorial status.

Launched in 2002 by the Jang group, owner of Pakistan’s most popular and long-established, Urdu-language Daily Jang, the satellite channel Geo TV represents an extension, in genealogical terms, of the ‘Native Press’. It is a further paradox of Musharraf’s incipient media system that Geo, a newspaper-based outlet, could broadcast from Dubai as a ‘foreign’ news channel despite the 2002 PEMRA regulations specifically barring cross-media ownership. Satellite downlinking operations were a regulatory loophole Geo exploited in an unregulated zone to corner the largest viewership early on. This inconsistency was allowed to persist, since Geo and Musharraf needed each other politically. Later, development and consolidation of Pakistani ‘cross-media’ operations around this very loophole would be significant for consolidating ‘media power’.

As early as 2002, Sheikh Rashid, the Information Minister, discussed dropping PEMRA’s antitrust provision on cross-media ownership: newspapers would be permitted to launch their own channels. In a 2003 news report, the federal secretary announced, ‘keeping in view the changes in other countries, we are eliminating the restriction of cross-media ownership’ (The News, 6 Aug 2003). This contradicts the fact that most countries do not allow cross-media ownership precisely due to anti-trust concerns of conglomeration (Rasul & McDowell, 2012). Observers have noted this arbitrary discrepancy in ‘Musharraf’s confused media policy’ (Hassan, 2017). By 2003, Musharraf himself had begun to avoid contact with news channels and journalists (The News, 6 August 2003).

The political rationale for proposing such a radical regulatory change appears to be two-fold: firstly, to bring Geo into the fold of existing regulations by allowing its incorporation as a Pakistani entity; secondly, to dilute the influence of Geo by populating the media spectrum with different journalistic voices. These moves would be justified by Musharraf’s doctrine of ‘Enlightened Moderation’ (Musharraf, 2004). However, these very changes would later undermine PEMRA’s regulatory capacity. Cross-media ownership would create capital concentration to consolidate a new type of ‘media power’, which would undercut and ‘capture’ an inoperative regulatory machine, as we will see.

Emergency—Media ‘Blackout’ / PEMRA (Amendment) Ordinance (2007–2008)

During the 2007 Emergency, the regime of ‘licensing without regulation’ broke down and yielded to direct censorship or ‘blackout’. Musharraf was already sensitive to media criticism. In 2005, further amendments were proposed to the 2002 PEMRA Ordinance. Regulatory expansion would ‘place serious curbs on press freedom by allowing the PEMRA to seize equipment, withdraw licenses and conduct investigations’ (Reporters Sans Frontieres, 2005). The amendments also increased appointed representatives on PEMRA ‘from four out of nine to seven out of 12, thereby giving the government an absolute majority’ (ibid.). The same year, the South Asian Free Media Association reported that critical media outlets in the country, purported to be free, were actually ‘entrapped in an elaborate system of self-censorship’ (Khan, 2006). In late 2006, BBC analyst Steve Metcalf observed that Musharraf’s government was ‘nervous of reporting by private TV channels’. As a result, PEMRA came to be selectively deployed as an ad-hoc instrument by other government agencies, placing arbitrary restrictions on coverage (Metcalf, 2006).

The crisis had deepened by March 2007 and security forces used coercive violence against Geo TV, as Shahn Mufti has vividly recounted:

The security forces broke into the GEO building, shattered windows with batons, fired tear gas, and roughed up the men and women inside, demanding that the coverage stop…Hamid Mir, GEO’s Islamabad bureau chief…waged his own live, on-air struggle against the police. Defying orders to stop transmission, Mir locked himself in the newsroom in the basement. From there, he broadcast a minute-by-minute narration of what was happening. ‘They’re attacking us with tear gas now,’ he yelled at one point, as the network beamed shaky, raw footage of the clash over its satellite feed. (Mufti, 2007)

The channel heroically continued its broadcast; later, an embarrassed Musharraf called Mir’s talk-show to apologise. In June 2007, however, the transmission of Geo was taken off-air altogether. ‘We had an interview with Imran Khan followed by a discussion about the military in politics. Suddenly it all went blank,’ said Geo’s president, Imran Aslam (Walsh, 2007).

Further demonstrating the political motives behind these regulatory enactments, Musharraf’s government, facing elections that year, rushed in a PEMRA (Amendment) Act, 2007. Yusuf (2009) notes that this was a result of the government’s failure to rein in Geo during a politically sensitive time (p. 8). In addition to providing for cross-media ownership, this law also enhanced PEMRA’s sweeping powers to seize broadcasting equipment:

(5) The Authority…after issuing show cause notice to broadcast media or distribution service may seize its broadcast or distribution service equipment, or seal the premises, which is being used in contravention of the provisions of this Ordinance or the rules made thereunder or any other law. (PEMRA, 2007, p. 25)

The shift of the regulatory procedure towards hardware echoes John Adam’s 1823 clause on the seizure of printing presses and type. ⁸ Conversely, the same amendment allowed further conglomeration within the industry through cross-media ownership, even while cable operators and distributors of media content came under increased scrutiny. Even with its expanded regulatory powers, however, PEMRA did not gain proper regulatory standing in the mediascape.

In November 2007, Musharraf declared a state of emergency. The agitation of the Lawyers’ Movement in response to Musharraf’s sudden sacking of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court began to spread over the airwaves. Vested yet again with emergency powers, Musharraf ordered a complete blackout of all private media, effectively reverting Pakistan to the days of state-controlled media (‘Threats to Bomb Media Offices,’ 2007). As Yusuf (2009) notes: ‘Ironically, the very media freedom that Musharraf stifled was one of the hallmarks of his rule until the emergency declaration’ (p. 7). The media blackout was an overt act of broadcast censorship orchestrated through a state of exception, which, as Yusuf suggests, was possibly even more formative for the country’s media than for its political history (ibid.). Musharraf’s state of emergency effectively re-booted the media after the blackout, following which new controls would be instituted.

The blackout was effectively the last salvo of Musharraf’s so-called enlightened moderation. In this exceptional moment, the use of extralegal force was accompanied by an expansion of coercive regulatory powers. Mirroring the Cornwallis Censorship code of 1799, which had been promulgated under a ‘state of war’, Musharraf’s PEMRA regulations were also ordained by exceptional powers derived from the ‘state of emergency’ of 1999; the 2007 Emergency closed the circle. In such exceptional moments of upheaval, media-political environments often become re-framed through legal/extralegal procedures. The media blackout of 2007 also changed the relation between extralegal force and regulation, not unlike what happened in 1799. But while extralegal force had been the precursor to colonial regulations, it was the breakdown of postcolonial regulation that led to extralegal controls. The subsequent backlash gave expanded regulatory capacities back to the state, with implications for how the regulatory relationship between the media and the post-Musharraf military establishment would develop.

Cross-Media Conglomeration Under Democratic Rule 2009–2013

In the aftermath of Musharraf’s downfall, the 2008 election brought a democratically elected government to power. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto resulted in her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) being elected by a wave of sympathy sweeping across the airwaves. In the run-up to the elections, PEMRA’s attempts to impose restrictions on the television channels’ political coverage came under attack. Portraying PEMRA as partisan, the media further undermined its credibility as an independent regulator (‘CPDI-Pak condemns new curbs’, 2008). A year after the elections, the PPP government had still not implemented its own media policy. While the 2007 coercive amendments to the regulations remained in place, they were not actively used. Taking a back seat, PEMRA briefly outsourced its monitoring to a private firm (‘PEMRA to Monitor’, 2009). In 2009, acting chairman Mushtaq Malik announced that ‘PEMRA has been converted into a facilitator and not a regulator for the electronic media’ (‘PEMRA Avoids Action’, 2009). Even in the new democratic setup, PEMRA’s role remained largely redundant or inoperative.

This, however, was a significant historical juncture: for the first time the liberalised, broadcast news media encountered a democratically elected civilian government. As the airwaves had been opened up under military rule, the media outlets and the discourses they disseminated had been established in relation to Musharraf-era politics. Between 2002 and 2007, the news channels had considered the Musharraf government and the ‘Establishment’ as one and the same entity. Following the downfall of Musharraf and the election of a PPP-led democratic government, there appeared an ever-widening split between the democratic ‘Government’ and the military ‘Establishment’. In the context of this splitting of the state, news outlets gradually reoriented themselves around the post-Musharraf ‘Establishment’, while the military also consolidated its control over the media in a bid to uplift its image after the Musharraf era. As the security situation deteriorated, with terrorist attacks in major cities and the Taliban taking hold of areas such as the Swat valley, the media’s output became strictly policed along national security lines, albeit through informal means. At this point, media practitioners drew up a Voluntary Code of Conduct largely geared towards barring hate speech, the glorification of terrorism, and displays of gore; enforcement was left up to the channels themselves, as a mode of self-regulation.

While the media remained careful not to criticise the armed forces, it was ‘given a free hand to demonise politicians and the government’, which manifested in bitter conflict between Geo TV and the Zardari-led PPP government (Mazzera & Sial, 2009). The conflict intensified in 2011, when PEMRA began selectively regulating Geo by exploiting loopholes within Musharraf-era regulations. Eventually, in an episode demonstrating its ‘media power’, Geo took PEMRA to court and even politicised the issue in parliament. These moves forced PEMRA to undo its original regulatory action (‘PEMRA Announces Aag Revival’, 2011). This was only one instance of many in which PEMRA issued notices to private channels; once the issue was heard in a law court, the channel received a stay order making PEMRA’s original order effectively redundant. Whenever PEMRA attempted regulatory action, the channel used its access to the airwaves, political clout and influence to cry foul.

In 2013, Pakistani news media covered the first democratic transition in the country’s history, when Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N replaced the PPP-led government. However, developments arising from the security situation, terrorism, and political instability caused further ruptures, which were reflected in the media-regulatory regime. At the end of that year General Raheel Sharif became the Army’s Chief of Staff – he would later be dubbed one of the most popular and influential men in Pakistan (Jamal, 2016). Under General Sharif, the military expanded its counter-terrorism role alongside an expanded role for the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR; Adeel, 2015), putting most news organisations under direct informal supervision by the military establishment.

Counterintuitively, the ineffectiveness of PEMRA should not be interpreted as the Pakistani media being free or unregulated. In fact, as PEMRA’s role remained suspended, the military’s ISPR, expanded under Major General Asim Bajwa, filled the regulatory vacuum through its oversight of the media on the pretext of security concerns. Removal of cross-media regulation marked the first moment of ‘media capture’ whereby the regulatory authority was rendered inoperative. This was followed by a subsequent ‘state capture’ of the post-Musharraf media system.

Crackdown on Geo and the Extension of Extralegal Controls on Media (2014–2016)

In early 2014, Geo’s top anchor-person, Hamid Mir, broadcast a special report on the insurgency in the restive Balochistan province, bringing up the issue of ‘missing persons’ and extralegal forced disappearances, a point that ruffled military feathers. As a result, Mir himself once again became targeted by extralegal violence, coming under attack by gunmen who shot and severely wounded him. As Dawn reported: The journalist was on his way to his office from the airport when he was attacked. ‘Four gunmen riding on motorbikes started firing at the car near Karsaz…when Mir’s car was passing through, he received three bullets in the lower parts of his body,’ said senior police official Peer Muhammad Shah. Shah said, ‘A single gunman first opened fire on Mir’s car, followed by others who chased him on motorcycles.’

According to a Geo report:

[After regaining consciousness] Hamid Mir said that a few days ago some members of intelligence agencies came to his house and informed him that along with some other journalists, his name appears in a hit-list. Despite insistence, these people did not provide any detail about those who had made the hit-list. (‘Mir Issues Statement,’ 2014)

Mir’s brother went on air to blame the attack on the spymaster of the country’s powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), while Geo began a full-fledged, unprecedented media attack on the ISI. Geo had overestimated its ‘media power’ in this episode, and in retaliation, the military ordered PEMRA to take Geo off the air. Three members of the PEMRA board held a press conference to cancel Geo’s license, although this was subsequently reversed by other board members. Geo however remained blocked extralegally (Boon, 2014): in this tense media environment, a cautionary example was made of Geo. Cable operators blocked broadcasts of Geo either through outright blockage or by placing the channel at the very end of the spectrum. Even after receiving notices from PEMRA reinstating Geo’s license, and in similar episodes more recently, the cable operators have remained silent about their motivations for subsequent blockages (Mir, Sirmed, Baig, & Siddiqa, 2018). Meanwhile, the military pursued other extra-regulatory actions, from setting up signal jammers to physically blocking the distribution of Geo’s affiliated Jang newspaper to heap financial pressure on the media house.

While Geo faced this extraordinary backlash, other media organisations were asked to refine their ‘voluntary’ code of conduct. Later that year, a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar killed 140 people. This tragedy – in addition to the launch of counterterrorism operation, Zarb-e-Azb, and the passage of the Protection of Pakistan Act – provided a further excuse to force media houses to reinforce the military’s narrative through strict, informal – and often extralegal – means (Yusafzai, 2015). The scope of extralegal techniques expanded significantly while legal regulations remained suspended. However, the extralegal sphere also ran in concert with other types of regulation, prompting self-regulation and self-censorship. Ultimately, while certain voices were blotted out, others were shored up.

After the cautionary disciplining of Geo, it became clear that the military – as a superior power – could not be criticised, while political parties including the elected government could be criticised to any degree whatsoever. Private broadcasters had to subscribe to a regime of ‘self-regulation’ informally conducted under ISPR supervision. Remaining ineffectual with respect to these dynamics, PEMRA confined its role to monitoring the content of channels for obscenity and curbing Indian content. It could neither negate military tactics, nor enforce its writ over the channels.

‘Double Capture’ and Establishment of Extralegal Regulation (2016–2019)

In mid-2016, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif became implicated in the Panama Papers leaks and came under fire by news media over his offshore holdings and foreign property. Coordinated high-frequency media attacks on him continued well into 2017, in an atmosphere where constantly criticising the government became the norm. That year, another series of leaks – about a top-secret meeting in which the elected government allegedly confronted the military establishment about their tacit support for banned militant outfits – appeared in Dawn newspaper (Almeida, 2016). The report went counter to the military’s security narrative. As the government had used the ‘leaks’ to shed light on civil-military tensions, the episode came to be known as ‘Dawn Leaks’. Extralegal repression was applied to Dawn this time. As its editor Zafar Abbas recently recounted:

Since the so-called Dawn Leaks three years ago, powerful state institutions have made every effort to destroy the newspaper and its credibility. There has been widespread disruption of its distribution network, all in the name of ‘national interest’ and patriotism. Our advertising, both government and private, has been targeted. (Abbas, 2019)

‘Dawn Leaks’ also proved embarrassing for the military establishment, as the ISPR was later forced to delete a tweet disapproving of the government’s investigation of the leaks (‘Army Withdraws Tweet’, 2017). Meanwhile, while the Panama Leaks investigation was under judicial review, a ‘trial by media’ was happening over Sharif’s corruption. In July 2017, at the climax of the media-hyped ‘Panamagate’, Prime Minister Sharif was disqualified in a controversial decision by the apex court. While the majority of channels reinforced the anti-government, pro-military lines, Dawn and Geo avoided towing the pro-military line, for which they suffered heavy financial and coercive retribution. Significantly, although PEMRA was unable to restrain channels from discussing sub-judice matters, it also came under attack by some channels that claimed the regulator was partisan in protecting the government (ARY News, 2017).

As a result of the disciplinary example made of Geo and Dawn, in conjunction with PEMRA’s ineffectuality in providing any regulatory oversight, the media houses’ willingness to attack the government, while refraining from critique of the military, can best be understood as ‘double capture’ in the Deleuzian sense described earlier. While PEMRA was attacked by the media for protecting the government, the channels were themselves beholden to a hidden power and unspoken rules. Revisiting John Adam’s argument about the colonial government either possessing a power to control the media or being controlled by it, we find reverberations in our history of the present, where conversely ‘media power’ destabilises governments and manipulates politics. Rather than a simple ‘media capture’, this situation represents a more complex ‘double capture’ precisely because that which is capturing itself becomes captured by other means. This latest scenario represents a different form of control, distinct even from the ‘colonial capture’: contemporary extralegal techniques undercut and envelop legal modes of regulation.

Commenting on PEMRA’s incapacity to regulate in late 2017, then chairman Absar Alam noted the regulator’s authority had been undercut and effectively handed to the higher courts. ‘Stay orders are being issued on show-cause notices,’ said Alam in a heated press conference. ‘PEMRA’s powers have been limited’ (Samaa Digital, 2017). Shortly after these remarks, Alam was himself disqualified by a controversial decision of the Lahore High Court. This left PEMRA once again without a designated Chairperson, and effectively inoperative. In the meantime, news outlets were given free rein to attack the dishevelled PML-N government. In the run-up to the controversial 2018 election, the dynamic produced through the ‘double capture’ normalised the constant criticism of government, while barring criticism of the military establishment or the judiciary.

In July 2018, Sharif’s political nemesis, former cricketer Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), buoyed by favourable media coverage of his anti-corruption rhetoric (Mulla, 2017), swept to power following controversial elections amidst a hostile climate for the incumbent PML-N. Since Imran Khan’s PTI, allegedly aided by the military establishment, came to power in the 2018 elections, the configuration of regulator, government, media, and politics has altered yet again, and remains outside the scope of the present analysis. To be sure, as the PTI government and military establishment are now ‘on the same page’ (Malik, 2019), the media’s criticism of the government is also under renewed scrutiny. While PEMRA has started to issue notices barring criticism of the government more frequently, media policy continues to be confused. ⁹ How the disjuncture between ‘media power’ and regulatory incapacity will play out in the future remains to be seen.