TV journalist Asma Chaudhry runs from baton-wielding police, shields her face as they fire tear gas and then describes the brutal crush of another protest against Pakistan's military ruler.
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Pakistan's military ruler(pakistantimes.net) |
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A tape of her broadcast is rushed to one of Geo TV's secret transmission sites, fed to the United Arab Emirates and is, within minutes, being watched by millions of Pakistanis via satellite or Internet - thanks to newly created online video streams.
When President Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced a media blackout following his imposition of emergency rule last Saturday, he underestimated the determination of independent television networks and the desire of the country's 160 million people to get news.
"The media didn't cow down, they struck back," said Adnan Rehmat, who heads Internews Pakistan, a Washington-based press watchdog. "As soon as channels were taken off the air, they quickly created and found new ways to ensure that the flow of information did not stop."
The television news landscape has changed dramatically since Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup, when the only available option to viewers was state-run Pakistan TV. Twenty independent stations have sprung up since then and there are at least 5 million Internet users, nurturing a huge dependence on real-time information.
The government's response was to cut access to cable, the source of the news.
"They thought, somehow, if we turn off TV sets, no one will get any information," said Rehmat, recalling the local expression 'close you're eyes and the mountain goes away.'
"Well that's not really a sophisticated take on things, especially when you look at how the country has progressed on the IT front."
Geo TV - the most popular of the independent TV stations that started hitting the airwaves in 2002 - has always transmitted news to Dubai via satellite and maintained facilities there, in part, owner Imran Aslam said, "because we realized there would be a time when, eventually, we would face a situation like this."
There have been numerous attempts to muzzle the press throughout Pakistan's 60-year history, much of which has been under military rule.
Immediately after Musharraf imposed his state of emergency, authorities installed a nearby satellite system and matched frequencies with Geo TV, jamming the signal and forcing the station to change their transmission tactics, said Hamid Mir, the company's executive editor in the capital, Islamabad.
"Not even the producer knows where we're feeding from now," he said. "We change the site every few days."
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