I must confess that writing three pieces of The Side Mirror a week is as tough as going to school (five/six days a week) for a five-year-old. But as countless children brave cold or stuffy and oppressive mornings to reach the school, I keep doing this assignment in the same spirit.
I missed the Sunday deadline due to some unavoidable circumstances on Saturday. And the experience has left a lesson for me that I need to prepare the piece a day before the deadline. So, this piece is being strung late on Sunday. Normally, I would be writing this Tuesday piece on Monday afternoon.
While clearing up mails, I come across people’s concerns about the abysmal state of affairs being witnessed in Pakistan currently. Although mob violence and violence against women is nothing new in the country, it does shake one up every time it occurs. The blame of blasphemy has taken many lives, such as those of Mashaal Khan and now Priyantha Diyawadana and yet the state does not address the situation as it should have. Some people demand crushing the mentality which makes it totally fine to take someone’s life because they do not believe in the same ideology as most people. Moreover, women have always been treated as second-class citizens by the state and society (read: men) of the country which is why incidents such as the motorway rape incident and now the Faisalabad incident occur. Along with all these factors is the vigilantism that is deeply rooted in the dominant male population of the country which allows for such heinous acts to take place.
What should be the media’s role?
The media has a great role to play in this fiasco as well. As the body which spreads the news across the country and worldwide, it has a responsibility to remain ethical in this endeavour. However, just like many other bodies, the media has also strayed away from its purpose, instead, most news channels are out on the hunt for more and more views and money-earning methods with the extremely disturbing and sensitive news they receive.
In the previous column, I cited a mail by a reader that “every time such vigilantism occurs in the country, and sadly enough, it does often, the media, instead of holding the perpetrators accountable for their heinous crimes, starts plowing for irrelevant details. Most journalists and TV channels are more interested in what the poor victim said or did which led to their gruesome murder”. True. When the motorway rape incident occurred, the media was more interested in why the woman who was raped was traveling late at night.
When Mashaal Khan was murdered, the media fished for the reason due to which the mob that murdered him was angered. Similarly, when Priyantha Diyawadana was brutally murdered his last comments were of more interest to news channels. Now news channels and journalists have been on the lookout for reasons due to which women in Faisalabad were stripped and beaten by people and they have found that they were robbing the store. I have explained the reasons in ‘Dear Readers: It’s time to empty the mailbox’ (December 12, 2021). That is why victims are more highlighted.
What the media should work on is the language and structure in which news is broadcasted, which makes a lot of difference, and which is why when more focus is put on why the women were beaten or why a man was murdered, the real problem is shoved under the rug and that is why such incidents keep happening.
