‘Notices, cases, red lines and violence’ put media in a bind

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s media is caught in a bind — squeezed simultaneously by legal pressure, physical violence, digital harassment and financial coercion. That is the gist of a recent report, released by the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) ahead of World Press Freedom Day 2026, documenting at least 233 incidents of journalists being targeted between January 2025 and April 2026.

The violations include 67 assaults, 67 criminal complaints, 11 arrests, 11 detentions and three abductions.

The Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) looms large over the report. Amended at the start of 2025 and, in PPF’s words, “bulldozed through parliament” without stakeholder consultation, it has become the instrument of choice against journalists. Of the 67 criminal complaints documented, 34 invoked Peca.

Notices and summons from the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) have become, the report says, “a repeat occurrence.” The pattern is grimly predictable: a journalist publishes something inconvenient, and a complaint follows.

PPF report documents 233 incidents of violence, legal action and censorship against journalists over 16 months

The law’s reach has extended to those who defend journalists too: human rights lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her spouse Hadi Ali Chattha, who had represented media professionals in Peca cases, were handed a 17-year conviction under the same legislation.

According to the report, legal pressure has not replaced physical danger — it has been layered on top of it.

For example, the report notes, journalists covering the Aurat March in Islamabad were detained by police and held for nearly eight hours on March 8. PPF also noted a troubling disregard for existing media safety laws: even when arrests are made, journalists have been compelled to surrender their electronic devices in violation of privacy protections those laws guarantee.

The report particularly focuses on the targeting of women in the media, especially through AI-generated content. PPF documented multiple instances in 2025-26 in which fabricated material depicting female journalists was circulated online. In November 2025, for example, journalist Benazir Shah reported that an AI-generated video of her had been shared by an account followed by the federal information minister. Such attacks, PPF noted, are not designed to challenge a journalist’s work but to destroy her reputation through deeply personal and gendered means.

Media organisations have faced pressure of their own. The government’s withholding of official advertisements from Dawn is described by PPF as an attempt to economically strangle the country’s leading English-language newspaper. Urdu daily Sahafat reportedly faced similar treatment. Pemra, meanwhile, has issued show-cause notices that reinforce or extend existing red lines. Geo News received two within months: one in January 2026 over a talk show’s discussion of the Imaan Mazari trial, and another in April 2026 over its coverage of the death of Indian singer Asha Bhosle.

The report situates these failures within a broader pattern of impunity. The establishment in November 2025 of the federal Commission for the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals was a welcome step, the report says, but cautions that it must now be made genuinely functional — with adequate resources and real independence. Unesco’s finding that global freedom of expression has declined ten per cent since 2012 frames the domestic picture in sobering international context. In conclusion, PPF calls on the government, law enforcement and political parties to move beyond declarations. “Issuing statements expressing commitment to press freedom are not enough,” the report states. “The patterns of violence, intimidation and reprisals faced by the media are reflective of an underlying disregard for the need to protect journalists.”

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2026