Yesterday, today and tomorrow of Pakistani media

Karachi
The Jinnah University for Women, Karachi hosted a seminar on Saturday with a very sentimental appeal - a nostalgic trip into the good old days of the media in Pakistan when the modern digital technology was unthinkable and the only electronic medium was the good old radio.
Well-known free lance journalist Shahnaz Ramzi recalled that era and lauded the way it rendered the yeoman’s service to the people in informing them and not just that but entertaining them too.
She recalled the dedication and sincerity of purpose of the journalists of that era resulting in a highly-informed public.
She said another reason for that was that there was no pre-censorship of newspapers. Censorship, she said, was introduced during the Ayub era and described how very pernicious it was. However, she added that then prime minister Junejo’s regime had done away with that crippling hindrance to information.
She recalled the advent of the television with the PTV being the only channel for over 30 years with limited running time.
“While the media today, both electronic and print, are a mind-boggling revolution over their predecessors, they have brought up new challenges which we have to face astutely,” she noted.
Tahir Siddiqui, a senior reporter affiliated with Dawn, dwelt on the financial and advertising aspect of the media and narrated how the gathering of revenue had begun to take precedence.
Besides, he discussed the way TV channels were taking away the advertising revenue that otherwise went exclusively to the print media, thus posing a threat to the long-term functioning of the media.
He dwelt mostly on the advertising revenue of the media and the challenges it had brought up.
This scribe, who is a senior reporter with The News, International, recalled the time when radio was the only electronic medium and the Yeoman’s service it did the masses in both education and entertainment.
Later in 1964, he added, came the TV and while the transmission was very limited it beamed highly educative and informative programmes and augmented the process of education in the country.
He regretted that the global changes that rocked the world in the beginning of the 90s decade had brought up lots of challenges, one of them being that with capitalism taking the world over with a vengeance, all spheres of activity had become corporatised. He said as a result, today, the media were becoming revenue-oriented rather than information-oriented.
Shahida Kazi, the dean of social sciences and chairperson of the mass communications department at the Jinnah University, nostalgically recalled the days of the radio, to be followed at a much later juncture by the TV, and how the journalist in those days were a very committed lot, especially those from the print media.
While hailing the amazing advances in the media, both print and electronic, she said while journalists had improved materially, there were challenges posed by the revolution and we all had to put our heads together to grapple with them.
At the end of the seminar, Wajihuddin, the chancellor of the university, gave away prizes to the students who had excelled in various aspects of its courses and in film-making, and exhorted them to put their hearts and souls into the profession.