ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 21 — A week after television news programs aired footage of the severed head of a suicide bomber, the Pakistani government has asked private television newsstations not to air gruesome images of suicide bombings, accidents and terrorist attacks, according to officials and media outlets.
Saying that such broadcasts glorify these acts, frighten the public and lead to more violence, the government asked the media to regulate itself. But it also threatened to take legal action if the practices do not change.
“The government is keen to continue its liberal media policy,” Iftikhar Rasheed, chairman of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, was quoted as saying by Reuters on Thursday. “But we can’t have channels broadcasting pictures of mutilated bodies and severed heads that have a shock effect on women and children.”
He said that television stations “need to self-regulate and give balanced coverage,” according to Reuters. “If the contents don’t change,” he added, “then we have the instruments under the law to take action against such channels.”
Last week, local news programs broadcast graphic images of a suicide attack that killed a prominent Shiite leader in the southern port city of Karachi. In the footage, the charred head of the bomber was shown lying at the site of the attack.
Pakistan has suffered a spate of attacks since President Pervez Musharraf decided to ally his country with the United States in its campaign against terrorism. Al Qaeda and local militants have tried to assassinate General Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Sectarian tit-for-tat killings between Sunni and Shiite militants continue to rattle the country.
Simultaneously, private media outlets in Pakistan have mushroomed and flourished. General Musharraf’s media liberalization policy has allowed about three dozen national and regional television channels to go on the air in the past five years. Before that, Pakistan had only one broadcaster, which was state run and heavily censored.
Entertainment programs particularly have broken new ground. In one program, “Late Night Show with Begum Nawazish Ali,” a cross-dresser openly flirts with guests, often politicians and film stars, and blurts out tongue-in-cheek jokes and sexual innuendoes about the state of affairs in the country.
Anotherprogram questioned the country’s rape laws, which make rape victims liable for arrest for fornication and which rights activists say have blighted the lives of thousands of women in the country in the name of Islam.
The news channels, on the other hand,have relentlessly pursued news, even when doing so offends the public sensibility, critics have said.
When one station recently aired coverage of a recent suicide attack in Karachi, Bushra Hafeez, 40, a mother of three from Islamabad, said she was horrified. “I had to change the channel,” she said. “I did not want my children to see those scenes. It is sickening.”
She said she hoped the media would be more considerate of public sensitivity.
Mansoor Ahmed, 47, a government employee, agreed. “Violent images can have dangerous effects on children,” he said. “If such images continue to be aired, it would have long term psychological effects. The media should not be an agent of bringing violent imagery into the bedrooms of ordinary citizens.”
Several television stations, however, said they had not been formally notified of the advisory.
“Till now, we have not received anything written,” said Mohsin Raza, Islamabad bureau chief for ARY One World, a 24-hour television channel. “Maybe the government has taken such a decision but we have not been formally informed.”
Mr. Raza said television stations observe some self-censorship and termed the airing of footage of the severed head by news channels “a mistake.”
Azhar Abbas, managing director of Geo, another leading news channel, also said that his company had not received any notification from the government. Nonetheless, he said, “We try in the interest of the viewers not to show very violent scenes because then nobody is going to view it.”
Government officials have also directed local channels to conform to accepted Pakistani norms of decency and morality. Many here criticize the influence of foreign culture, particularly from India, on the programs produced by entertainment channels.
In another development, PEMRA has taken 156 FM radio stations off the air, saying they were spreading religious extremism or antistate propaganda, media reports said. A number of illegal FM radio channels had sprung up in the conservative North Western Frontier Province and the semi-autonomous tribal areas straddling the Afghan border.
Government opponents have used these radio stations to promote their interests
and incite the public, officials said.