Islamabad: The members of Digital Media Alliance of Pakistan (DigiMAP) have completely rejected the proposed Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PMDA), terming it unconstitutional and an attempt to muzzle the online freedoms in the country.
The DigiMAP management believes that the proposed authority is the government’s latest effort to impose state control on non-legacy media after totally subduing the legacy media.
The alliance members, in a joint statement, also expressed concern over the government’s “Anti-State Trends Deep Analysis Report (2019 to 2021)” which painted several journalists, politicians and academics anti-state and accused them of treason for voicing their opinion on the government’s policies.
The report may have raised some valid points but the fact that it was prepared by a government department, running on taxpayers’ money, and several journalists were so callously branded ‘anti-state’ for their tweets critical of state policies exposes the authoritarian tendencies of this government.
“It would be suicidal to accept the proposed PMDA when the government has clearly demonstrated that it considers dissent and opposition as treason. It would be tantamount to signing our own death warrant,” DigiMAP statement read.
