The Pakistani Spectator

President Zardari’s struggles against a ‘belligerent’ Geo News seems very strange,if seen in isolation. Supposedly Geo News is working for ‘freedom of expression’ previously against a dictator and now against a democratically elected president. Geo and its parent Jang group are well versed in judging the ‘trend of the time’.

Zardari is unpopular due his alleged corruption in previous life as the ‘first spouse’ of late prime minister Benazir.Geo understands that this populist propaganda war against Zardari will help win media rating battles against mature News channels like Dawn News.

The Army doesnot like Zardari and both MQM and Nawaz Sharif and their media channel supporters understand this,hence the NRO and Kerry Lugar fiasco that exploded in Zardari’s face.Zardari started peace with India but 26/11 killed any hope of peace and now Indian Army is angry against Pakistani establishment for terrorism of Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Geo’ s  reputation as a credible source and independent media entity are tarnished by the likes of clownish behaviour of one Mr 20% Meray Mutabiq Dr Shahid Masood,who despite a degree in medicine believes and propagates the Christian rightwing theory of ‘End of Time’ thru his talks and DVDs.

The only reason Geo News can allow such non sense to go on its TV schedule is that conspiracy theorists like unlearned Dr Masood are popular with mainly illiterate audience of lower middle and working class Pakistani poor.

The problem is not only restricted to Pakistan.The world over rightwing media gurus are busy in destablising their democratically elected government. Wikipedia articles below, show the tip of the Iceberg of this problem.

It’s war! War between Obama and Fox News! All that talk about Democrats being too weak to use American might was wrong: Obama will win Afghanistan and the afternoon!

See, the Obama administration just called out Fox as “an opponent” instead of a “legitimate news organization.” But Ailes and Axelrod had coffee last week! What’s up?

If the Obama White House treats Fox News as the research and propaganda arm of the opposition, Brian Stelter and the Times treat the cable channel more like a foreign nation that the current administration doesn’t officially recognize. With Roger Ailes as Foreign Minister and flacks acting as diplomats, Fox and MSNBC work toward detente, the Obama administration refuses to normalize relations without a reduction in arms, the network seeks high-profile defections from John Stossel and Lou Dobbs, and there are rumors of secret treaties between O’Reilly and Olbermann.

As always, Fox pretends to be a regular news station that broadcasts actual news, but, amusingly, they admit to keeping to that high standard only when the unemployed are watching Chávez and the media

Main article: Media representation of Hugo Chávez

Even before the April 2002 coup, many owners, managers, and commentators working for the five major private mainstream television networks and largest mainstream newspapers had stated their opposition to Chávez’s policies.[54] These media outlets have accused the Chávez administration of intimidating their journalists using specially dispatched gangs.[54] Chávez in turn alleges that the owners of these networks have primary allegiance not to Venezuela but to the United States, and that they seek the advancement of neoliberalism via corporate propaganda.

According to Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University, “[The Venezuelan] media is chronically obsessed with Chávez, and critical in a way that would be completely alien for most US observers.” After the media-backed 2002 coup attempt, Venezuela passed ’social responsibility’ legislation regulating the media but has largely declined to enforce it.[55]

Throughout his presidency, Chávez has hosted the live talk show known as Aló Presidente (”Hello, President!”).[56] The show broadcasts in varying formats on state owned Venezolana de Televisión (VTV—Venezuelan State Television) each Sunday at 11:00 AM. The show features Chávez addressing topics of the day, taking phone calls and live questions from both the studio and broadcast audience, and touring locations where government social welfare programs are active. Additionally, on 25 July 2005, Chávez inaugurated TeleSUR, a proposed Pan-American homologue of Al Jazeera that seeks to challenge the present domination of Latin American television news by Univision and the United States-based CNN en Español. Chávez’s media policies have contributed to elevated tensions between the United States and Venezuela.[57]

The Landlords of Bolivia and the Presiden.t of the Poor

Juan Evo Morales  popularly known as Evo has been the President of Bolivia since 2006. He has been declared the country’s first fully indigenous head of state in the 470 years since the Spanish Conquest.[2]

Morales was first elected President of Bolivia on December 18, 2005, with 53.7% of the popular vote (approximately 45% of the electorate) in an election that saw the participation of 84.5% of the national electorate.[3] Two and a half years later he substantially increased this majority; in a recall referendum on August 14, 2008, more than two thirds of voters (67.4%) voted to keep him in power (approximately 57% of the electorate).[4] Morales won presidential elections again in December 2009 by 63% and continued to his second term of presidency.[5]

Morales is the leader of a political party called the Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, with the Spanish acronym MAS, meaning “more”). MAS was involved in social protests such as the gas conflict and the Cochabamba protests of 2000, along with many other groups, that are collectively referred to as “social movements” in Bolivia. The MAS aims at giving more power to the country’s indigenous and poor communities by means of land reforms and redistribution of gas wealth.[6]

Morales is also titular president of Bolivia’s cocalero movement – a loose federation of coca growers’ unions, made up of campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the United States government to eradicate coca in the province of Chapare in central Bolivia. In October 2009, Morales was named “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the United Nations General Assembly.[

Deposed President Zelaya and the main media in Honduras

Zelaya complained that the main media outlets in Honduras are biased against him and did not provide coverage of what his government was doing: "No one publishes anything about me. . . . what prevails here is censorship of my government by the big media."[28] Inter Press Service says that the vast majority of radio and TV stations and print publications are owned by just six families.[29]

According to a paper written by Manuel Orozco and Rebecca Rouse for the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in the United States, the Honduran media operate as arms of political parties.[30][dead link] Honduran journalists say that most of the news media there are unabashedly partisan, allied with political parties and local power brokers.[31]

On May 24, 2007, Zelaya ordered ten two-hour cadenas (mandatory government broadcasts) on all television and radio stations, “to counteract the misinformation of the news media.”[32] The move, while legal, was fiercely criticized by the country’s main journalists’ union, and Zelaya was dubbed “authoritarian” by his opposition.[33] Ultimately, the broadcasts were scaled back to a one-hour program on the government’s plans to expand telephone service, a half hour on new electrical power plants and a half-hour about government revenues. According to the University of New Mexico’s electronic bulletin NotiCen, “Zelaya’s contention that the media distort his efforts is not without merit,” citing reports which gave the public the impression that murder rates were rising, when they actually fell by 3% in 2006.[32]

A journalist who often criticized Zelaya was murdered by unknown gunmen in 2007.[34] Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and the United Nations criticized the threat to journalists in Honduras.[24] Other critical journalists, such as Dagoberto Rodriguez and Hector Geovanny Garcia, fled into exile because of constant murder threats.[35]

In 2008, The Organization of American States (OAS) accused Zelaya of imposing “subtle censorship” in Honduras

The President of Argentina and Media War

Fernández and her husband have always had a tempestuous relationship with the national media. In April 2008, Kirchner received a stern public rebuke from the Argentine Journalists Association (ADEPA) for having publicly accused the popular cartoonist Hermenegildo Sábat of behaving like a “quasi mafioso”.[46] In addition, a government proposal to create a watchdog to monitor racism and discrimination was received with suspicion by ADEPA, who called it a “covert attempt to control the media”.[47] Nestor Kirchner, Cristina’s husband and predecessor in office, received a similar rebuke for publicly and falsely denouncing Joaquín Morales Solá, a journalist critical of the government, for having produced an inflammatory text published in 1978.[48]

Kirchner’s government has promoted a highly controversial Audiovisual Media Law. According to the government, the aim of the law is to break up monopolies in the media. The opposition, however, contends that its aim is to silence voices critical of the government, especially those in the Clarín media group (the country’s largest).

The law has aroused further controversy, given that in its passing through the chambers of the legislature, the mandatory 7 day period between debate and assent of the new legislation was ignored. The view among the opposition is that Mrs. Kirchner’s government is trying to rush the law through parliament before December 2009. when the government will lose its absolute majorities in Congress.[49]

Dr. Lauro Laíño, the president of ADEPA, in a speech given on the 24 September 2009, opposed the proposed law, and added that in Latin America, especially in Venezuela and Argentina, “press freedom was being undermined under the suspicious pretext of plurality” [50] Others, such as United Nations official Frank La Rue and press freedom advocacy group Reporters Sans Frontières, have expressed support for the measure, citing a need to repeal the 1980 Audiovisual Media Law. Enacted by Argentina’s last dictatorship, the law has contributed to a marked concentration in the country’s media ownership structure.[51][52]

The acrimony between Cristina Kirchner’s government and the national media was exacerbated by a series of lock-ins carried out by the truck drivers’ union lead by Pablo Moyano, son of Hugo Moyano, a close ally of the Kirchner government. During the lock in, the country’s most widely circulated newspapers (Clarín and La Nación) were prevented by force and threats of violence from distributing papers to newsstands.[53] On 7 November 2009, the Association of Newspaper Editors of Buenos Aires (AEDBA) issued a statement in which it claimed that the truck drivers’ unions’ actions had been the fiercest attack on the free circulation of newspapers the country had seen since its return to democratic rule in 1983.[54]

Source: Wikipedia