Boycott over

According to a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf press release, the Imran Khan-led party has formally ended the boycott of the Jang Group. Apparently, a dispute resolution and probe committee has been formed to resolve the pending issues and facilitate normal relations between the two sides.
This is welcome news. In fact, this should have happened earlier when well-meaning persons offered mediation between the two.
Now that the two sides are beginning a new phase of their hitherto uncertain relationship, it is time to talk about the 10-month old ban imposed by the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on provision of official advertisements to the dailies Jang and The News International. The Jang Group had refrained from discussing the issue in its newspapers, periodicals and TV channels until now. It had not protested to the PTI leadership and the provincial government about the arbitrary ban on the advertisements. It also made no request to them to lift the ban despite suffering financial losses.
The ban on issuing government advertisements to dailies Jang and The News was imposed on May 16, 2014. The orders came directly from the PTI chairman Imran Khan, who was said to be angry with the Jang Group. Chief Minister Pervez Khattak expressed his helplessness in the matter. His ministers and the provincial Information Department too were powerless to do anything except strictly implementing the orders that came from Bani Gala.
It so happened that an advertisement regarding the IDPs was once inadvertently released to The News by a provincial government department. The day it got published in the newspaper, there was pandemonium at the Civil Secretariat in Peshawar because Imran Khan was stated to be furious as to why and how the advertisement was given to The News. The senior bureaucracy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had to make every effort to calm down the PTI chief and give an assurance that such a mistake would not happen again. The party leadership made it clear that the policy of not giving any KP government advertisement to the Jang Group had to be strictly followed.
During the last 10 months, there was one occasion when the provincial government briefly lifted the ban on advertisements to Jang and The News, but it was abruptly clamped down again. It is still a mystery why the ban was removed for a week or so and on whose orders.
It is not new for government advertisements, which are paid out of taxpayers’ money, to be denied to a particular media organisation. It has happened in the past and will happen again. The ruling elite, whether civil or military, have used official advertisements to punish newspapers and radio and TV channels that refuse to toe the line and insist on pursuing an independent policy. Government advertisements have also been used to reward the print and electronic media that supported the rulers.
One cannot argue that media organisations should get government advertisements as a matter of right. However, one can argue that publications with a wider circulation and sales deserve to be given more advertisements than those that aren’t widely read. The public need to know about government contracts, tender notices, jobs, etc through advertisements and this task is best performed by newspapers with a wider circulation and TV channels that are watched more. Government advertisements are a significant source of revenue for the media organisations even though the private sector now provides more ads and money to the media.
One thought Imran Khan and the PTI were different from the rest of the politicians and political parties. This impression was reinforced by the repeated claims of the PTI that it wanted to bring real change based on good governance and merit. The PTI slogan was ‘insaf’ and one expected it to deliver justice instead of using taxpayers’ money to settle scores or pursue a political agenda.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar.
Email: rahimyusufzai@yahoo.com