Media content has more than seven lives to live. The whole planet is its habitat.
A novel by Hussain Moeen might be gathering dust in a distant library. When we think that it is dead, an animated movie is made on it. Lovers of novel reading are free to make faces at it and say that the digital genre of media has robbed the masses of the charms of literature.
But in reality, the animated movie gives a new life to the novel.
Similarly, the media content made in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is locked behind the confines of language. When these barriers of language are lifted, it fills a bigger market of about 250 million Urdu-speaking Pakistani consumers, 60 per cent of whom are under the age of 30.
This is exactly what Information Minister Atta Rehman tried to sell at the Saudi Media Forum 2025. The three-day event continued in Riyadh from 19 to 21 February.
The event was for media professionals. Tarar was on the 14th page of the 15-page list of 200 speakers selected for the forum.
The Indian ambassador to the Kingdom and Indian media professionals were present on many pages. But no Pakistani media professional could be spotted on the list. Rather than a media professional, a sitting minister represented the Pakistani media landscape there.
During the panel discussion, Tarar referred to filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai as success stories of Pakistani women. He did not speak about success stories of men, though.
I do not know much about how well his message was received by the Saudi audience. But I was the 171st viewer of the footage of the minister's speech uploaded on the PTV YouTube channel a week ago. The footage that Radio Pakistan uploaded had more views but no sound.
The press release of the event that PTV uploaded on its website did not only have grammatical errors but also factual mistakes. These are the institutions he is directly overseeing.
These institutions, especially PTV, are filled with self-proclaimed media big guns. Some real big guns have placed their wives in key positions. They are all fetching very fat salaries. As a result, the institution has also become too bloated to sustain itself, much less run an international course.
Globally, information flows from north to south. Simply put, media content is generated in rich countries and consumed in poor countries. This is a kind of one-way flow of information that leads to cultural imperialism
There is good news, however.
In a meeting with his Saudi counterpart Salman Al-Dossary, Tarar said a joint committee of experts from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will produce media content like songs, films, and documentaries. The two leaders also agreed on the exchange of journalists and training programmes.
I believe that the Saudi side must have called for a joint committee for this task, as Pakistani bureaucracy is known the world over for what it is. Minister Tarar has to make PTV smart and swift to carry out the joint venture with Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, there are still people like PTV director Malik Ramzan Ali who are fit for the task.
Ali graduated from top-notch institutions like Government College Lahore and Quaid-i-Azam University. He has served in think tanks of international repute. His background in international relations is unmatched at PTV.
Had the task been given to bureaucrats, they would have consigned it to officialdom. The committee is a solution only if it is made up of professionals like Malik Ramzan. If uncles in the bureaucracy or the shouting and breathless media failures are engaged in the committee, it will produce anything but quality media content.
Observations about cultural monopoly are also worth consideration.
Globally, information flows from north to south. Simply put, media content is generated in rich countries and consumed in poor countries. This is a kind of one-way flow of information that leads to cultural imperialism.
There has been an awakening about this cultural imperialism at all global forums, not least the United Nations. However, poor nations cannot fight it with the help of resolutions adopted at the UN and other global forums. They have to take action.
The intensity of this imperialism has been amplified by the advent of digital media and multiplied over the past decade as Artificial Intelligence has grown out of all proportion. In an ideal situation, at least one-third of the budget should have been set aside by AI companies to ensure the safety of the products they are producing.
Governments of even the most advanced countries like the US, UK, and Europe were unaware of this rising challenge. When they woke up to the threat knocking at their door, it was too late. However, they started making laws to ensure that the power of AI in producing communication content is harnessed in a way that is safe for human consumption.
The bureaucracy in Pakistan knows the art of making anything unrelated to their aggrandisement impossible to achieve. The dark halls and corridors of PTV were conducive to Turkish dramas but not to Saudi content
The key theme of the Saudi Media Forum was "Media in an Evolving World". It deals with the challenges resulting from fast-evolving technology. Pakistan is a late entrant into this age. Though this government has started making laws to regulate the digital society, there is still a long way to go to keep pace with the modern world.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, we can rule out the element of cultural imperialism in Pakistani society. A dominant component of Pakistani culture has its roots in the Arabic language and traditions. There has been a long-standing desire by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for Saudi media content to be aired in Pakistan.
Pakistan has collaborated with Turkey, and Turkish media content has flooded the Pakistani media industry. Pakistani society indeed shares its cultural background with Turkey, and Turkey is a brotherly country. The quality of Turkish media content is beyond question.
I have time and again stated that TRT World is a news media organisation, while Al Jazeera has yet to prove itself as one. However, Turkey does not house as many overseas Pakistanis as Saudi Arabia. This means Pakistani media content watched in Turkey is negligible compared to Saudi Arabia.
There was some push for Saudi media content in Pakistani society after the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. Tension between Turkey and Saudi Arabia was at its peak in the wake of that assassination.
But the bureaucracy in Pakistan knows the art of making anything unrelated to their aggrandisement impossible to achieve. The dark halls and corridors of PTV were conducive to Turkish dramas but not to Saudi content.
The era of Chaudhry Fawad as Information Minister later befell PTV. A kind of Safi or Safaya group swept through the dark halls and corridors of PTV. The Safaya group mopped up all the resources. Any joint venture with Saudi Arabia was out of the question.
Information Minister Murtaza Solangi had a tough time cleaning up that mess.
It is encouraging that Minister Tarar has not left this task to the bureaucracy in Islamabad and has instead formed a joint committee for joint production. Since PTV is the state media, it is logical to hope that it will have a leading role in fulfilling this task.
It is time for Atta Tarar to walk the talk in Islamabad.
Good luck.