Radio for Development In Pakistan
Pakistani media has traditionally been a preserve of the establishment: political discourse has consisted of a small number of political commentators holding forth on the issues of the day. There is very little opportunity for ordinary citizens to make their voices heard. Pakistan’s non-governmental radio sector has expanded rapidly since the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) began issuing FM licenses to private broadcasters in 2002. There are now more than 200 licensed stations, including 26 in NWFP. When the project started, there was little news and information on the NWFP stations. No station had a newsroom or trained staff that produced community information. Building news and information capacity of these stations could go some way, and has done so, in blunting extremist messages and propaganda that is put out by militant groups, particularly in the restive NWFP and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) regions. These groups and others that run pirate stations (over 100, according to recent estimates from PEMRA) are adept at using narrowcasting devices such as DVDs, VCDs, CDs and tapes, which are cheap and easily available in the markets and distributed as 'jihadi' media. The Pakistani regulatory authorities and other stakeholders see private FM radio stations as playing an important community role. But most are not equipped to do so due to technical and capacity constraints and the lack of trained journalists at the stations.
The project produces a baseline report assessing the information needs of the radio stations’ catchment area of listeners. It builds the capacity of three local FM radio stations in the largely Pashto-speaking settled areas of the NWFP to generate locally relevant, issue-based news, current affairs and other information programming. It explores possible value-addition to news and current affairs programmes produced by the stations. The project also builds the capacity of the Gomal University Journalism School located in Dera Ismail Khan City at the strategic confluence of the NWFP, FATA and Baluchistan, to serve as the training ground for future journalists of this region.
This project was designed to empower people to express their opinions and hopes for the future, particularly their demands for good governance and against conflict, radicalisation and extremism by enabling legal broadcasters to act as a platform from which the voices of people/communities can be heard. Three stations were identified and they partnered with Internews for the project: FM Global (D I Khan), FM Dilbar (Charsadda-Peshawar) and Campus FM at Kohat University (Kohat).
The technical assistance provided to the three FM stations by building newsrooms, providing grants for equipment and training programmes for staff built up the technical and journalistic capacity of the three partner FM stations. They now generate daily news and information in the shape of programmes that put the local communities at the heart of their focus. This newsroom initiative for the FM stations has increased both the quantity and quality of news and information programmes; it has lent a voice to the ordinary citizens on subjects like extremism and other governance issues. All three partner FM stations have, as a result of the successful completion of the project, increased their capability to offer news and information programmes responsive to the needs of their respective communities. These capacities have been institutionalised and are demonstrable even after the end of the project. They are likely to continue to be sustainable for a long time as the stations continue using these new techniques and creative angles to produce other programmes.
