ISLAMABAD, Apr 02 (APP):Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Saturday said concerted efforts were made by the present government to bring its digital media wing on par with that of the other countries.
In fact, it was the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government which set up the official digital media wing and started the digitalization of the state-owned media organizations, he said while addressing to the participants of Islamabad Security Dialogue here.
He said the state news agency—Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) had been digitalized and would soon be transformed on the pattern of the Reuters and AFP.
As regards the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV), he said the organization had generated record revenue of Rs 4 billion in this year. “We have digitalized two channels of the PTV and this year, the revenue of PTV sports was Rs 2.5 billion which is one of the biggest revenue in the history of PTV,” he added.
Highlighting the problems confronted by the country in presenting its story to the world and countering the others, he underlined the need for strengthening the film and music industry.
In 1970s, the minister said Pakistan was the third largest film-maker country in the world with a large number of cinemas and screens. In 2005, the film industry faced a massive decline and not a single film was produced.
A massive drop in the numbers of cinemas and screens was also witnessed in the past, he added. Regretting the past governments’ least attention to the national narrative, he said the modern wars were fought in the media and the new technologies, thus, gained sheer importance.
He also pointed out the limited budget of the External Publicity Wing and mentioned different incidents including Noor Muqadam case on which Indians pushed an extensive anti-Pakistan narrative on the social media networking sites.
Fawad said the Indian state media was also involved in such smear campaigns against Pakistan. Disinformation lab was also set up by India to propagate false news against Pakistan, he added.
Despite presence of huge media in the country, he said a false propaganda was launched against Pakistan just to propagate that the media was not free there. Currently, there had been 150 channels in the country, including 43 foreign ones, he said adding that the media was more free in Pakistan than other countries.
He regretted the absence of the defamation laws in the country and highlighted the campaign launched against a law drafted by the government for effective regulation of the media. Citing example of the Viking—member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who used to raid different areas in Europe from the 9th to the 11th century, Fawad said the morality of war in the past was nothing more than attacking and plundering a territory.
The minister said the concept of war had been changed now as after 1949 there was no annexation in the world except of Kuwait when it was invaded by Iraq.
He said in traditional sense, the United States won war Afghanistan in three hours when their Air Force entered Kabul and defeated the Taliban [in 2001], but a notion was developed later that it could not win the war for its failure to give a stable political system.
Now, the foreign powers devised different modes to change a regime in a country, he said referring to the foreign plot in Pakistan against a democratically elected government.
He said PM Imran Khan was the only leader who said that he would respect other countries only if his nation was respected. “It is my belief that our national security will remain in danger until we don’t know how to tell our story and counter the story of others,” he concluded.
On the occasion, he also praised the National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf for performing his duties in a remarkable way and holding the Security Dialogue.
