Abstract
This study explores threats to journalists in Sindh, searching the journalist’s community, allocating its existence through a premeditated survey with directional questionnaire. Consulting 150 journalists to find out the essence, magnitude and targeting aspects of the threats they are facing in wake of their line of duty. Journalists and threats are both enter-linked since the birth of journalism, a journalist is a Watch-Dog or Gate-Keeper, who guards the boundaries of transparency, freedom of expression, sphere of laws and protects and promotes the social values and norms and facilitates political communication to educate and update the citizens. Doing all this in a part of the state where the situation of law and order is deteriorated, the population is heterogeneous in its nature, is a big challenge. Attacks on journalists have been searched from the history of media landscape for last 17 years in Sindh to weigh up the threats to Watch-Dogs. The study generalizes, whether working journalists are serving under pressure in an environment governed by threats or they feel safe and free to perform their journalistic duties. It also calculates the responses of the affected journalists in the outward appearance of complaints they file in connection with the threats faced for their professional work.
Highlights
The vernacular press entered into a new phase with new dimensions in the new state of Pakistan in 1947 but the colonial legacy remained unchanged
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Mutaheda Qaumi Movement (MQM) coalition politics tried to keep the press under pressure and to use it for vested interests
The press and journalists remains under pressure and are exposed to threats in Sindh and the working environment is not favorable for an institutionalized journalism
Summary
The vernacular press entered into a new phase with new dimensions in the new state of Pakistan in 1947 but the colonial legacy remained unchanged. Undeclared censorship on the Press in the province prevailed during the Musharraf’s backed rule and journalists remained under direct threats given by political parties[7]. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Mutaheda Qaumi Movement (MQM) coalition politics tried to keep the press under pressure and to use it for vested interests. Michael Lavarch in his research article notes that the owners of media enterprises and journalists have a range of motivations including economical self-interest and political ideology. These types of motives invariably influence the exercise of media power[16] and decline the freedom of press. The report further says that the parties pressurizing individual cable operators or physically cutting the cable for vested interests to gain[18 ]
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