Journalists have always faced restrictions on their freedom of speech and threats to their security in Pakistan. During Pakistan's 2018 general elections, the country's media was also managed and controlled to create a maligned pubic-sphere to misguide the Pakistani voters. Public sphere was maligned through misinformation, political propaganda and distortion of facts and maneuvering of journalism. This created ill effects for public discourses on democracy. Findings obtained through in-depth interviews of twenty journalists, who covered elections 2018, revealed that strategic media maneuvering was witnessed during the country's 2018 elections. Media freedom was largely constrained and journalists faced physical, psychological and financial threats in the line of their duty and for their efforts to foster democracy in the country. This study revealed Pakistan's long history of dictatorship, weak political system, and national psyche of control as the major reasons for such happenings.
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Journalism becomes a lighthouse in authoritarian societies - where citizens' struggle for true democracy seems never ending. An urge to grab political power for those present in political arena is ever increasing in authoritarian societies. This gives birth to a variety of situations where-in establishing a true democratic set-up is compromised. These situations range from dictatorship to numerous shades of controlled democracy. All these create challenges for media freedom and safety of journalists (Cottle, Sambrook & Mosdell, 2016; McNair, 2000; Muhlmann, 2010).
Safety of journalists cannot be separated from media freedom. Journalists' struggle for media freedom gives a challenge to those who want to control political and social order. This gives birth to the threats to journalists' safety. Journalists are intimidated, threatened, subjected to violence and in extreme cases killed. Therefore, the freedom of media and journalists’ safety are interconnected, rather complement each other (UNESCO, 2018; and Cottle, Sambrook, & Mosdell, 2016).
A fair democratic process depends on free flow of information to citizens. This free flow of information should be based on principles of objectivity, truth, impartiality, balance and fairness (McQuail, 1992). Nevertheless, the free flow of information and the public’s right to know are suffered, when security to journalists is threatened and media freedom is restricted. This information gap and a lack of access to information create serious consequences for public sphere (McNair, 2000). In today's world, public sphere depends on information disseminated through media (Dahlgren, 1995). The author believes that the role of public sphere becomes more important during the election period in any country. The author believes so because any misleading flow of information within public sphere can result into a democratic set-up that is not a true representative of aspirations of voters.
History of Pakistan’s journalism is filled with many examples, which explains how journalists face security threats, when they make efforts to establish democracy in the country through their objective reporting (Niazi, 1992). Consequently, Pakistan is considered as one of the most unsecured countries for the journalists to perform their duties (Jamil, 2018). Situation for freedom of speech is also very dismal in Pakistan. Threats to freedom of speech and security of journalists in the country are caused by intolerance, terrorism, religious and ethnic rifts, weak state institutions, dictatorship and fragile democracy. Interestingly, threats to journalists always become potent, whenever powerful circles in the Pakistani politics and military/or civil establishment try to bring their favorites into government in Pakistan (Mahmood, 2017; Shahid & Butt, 2017; Niazi, 1992). These threats reach to a peak level during the transitions of political set ups from one government to the next. Democratic regimes, in Pakistan, have always found it difficult to proceed with success because of mistrust on the system, corruption and manipulation of facts and election process. Therefore, the majority of democratic setups have resulted in ending up their journey half way or before, and many times the country’s army took over the power and established dictatorship.
In Pakistan, there have been accusations of engineered and controlled election process from opposition parties for almost all general elections in the past (Niazi, 1992; Jabbar, 2010). For the country’s 2018 elections, concerns regarding the fairness of election process were raised and news media was substantially managed and controlled by the political parties for their political goals. Reporting of manipulated facts and political propaganda also raised concerns over the free flow of accurate information, effectiveness and freedom of political discourse and strength of public’s decision-making within the public sphere (Khan, 2017). Not only this, reports by international organization highlighted that the reporting of Pakistan’s 2018 elections was not safe for the working journalists and many of them faced life threats (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2018; International Federation of Journalists, 2018).