Review of Press and Publication Ordinance of 1963

This ordinance was passed in Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s regime. Power was granted to a district magistrate for the declaration purpose of a newspaper after a personal interview with the applicant. The reason behind channelizing the process was to ensure that the newspaper owner had enough financial resources. To ensure the following of rules of media and its ethics, this ordinance also intended to ensure that the newspaper editor had reasonable command on journalism. To ensure the protection of Pakistan’s interests, the declaration was liable to be rejected. However, if we review this critically, such a move was dominantly intended to safeguard the interests of the government at that time. Ayub Khan was vigilant and wise enough to understand the potential power media had. One cannot ignore the power of media!

The salient feature which said that “no foreigner shall be allowed to own or hold a newspaper until by special permission from government. If permitted, the foreign owner still cannot hold more than 25% of the entire proprietary inserts.” I, personally, believe that this feature wanted the protection of Pakistan’s international interests on a serious basis.

To further control the activities of Press, the Speaker(s) of National and Provincial Assemblies were given power to forbid publications whenever deemed necessary. This act gave immense power to the assemblies by helping them only project what they intended to. The government, through Press and Publication Ordinance of 1963 gained immense power over the Press!

A good measure to curtail the activities of Press was the issuance of the list of 15 offences under Section 24(1). This helped in controlling the Press from the ethical point of view. Journalists could not adopt an aggressive approach. To further help the government and the Press regarding the transparency issue, financial accounts were to be maintained by the publishers and printers. This move helped the Press as a whole to overcome financial crisis.

A very good step taken in PPO was the imposition of penalties by law if the newspapers missed/omitted the features of what paper publishing news should contain. If print line wasn’t published, fines were levied to the newspaper. This was done to ensure uniformity in the pattern of newspaper printing among all newspapers. Keeping the press without declaration was illegal and false statements in the declaration were disallowed in order to achieve the supremacy of law.

From a critical point of view, the ordinance was intended to channelize the workings of the Press. However, from the implementation point-of-view, such measures had a certain degree of failure too. The reason behind that is that in 1963, Pakistan was in an infancy stage of development. The literacy rate of the country was very low. People had little know-how about what happened around the country due to lack of technological development and effective means of communication. Moreover, the government had stressed on accountability while the Press wanted freedom of speech. If a midway would have been found, our media would have been much better than it is now. If the concept of an accountable freedom of speech could have been enforced, things would have presented themselves from a unique angle. The journalists at the time who were strong supporters of democracy were, obviously, opposing Ayub Khan’s military rule. So, the issuance of ordinances, even if intended for a good purpose were generally perceived as an attack on the freedom and independence of media as a whole. This perception still exists with modifications. However, this ordinance on the brighter side provided a deep-rooted framework in the working of the media organizations and successful media owners adopted and conformed to such policies.