ABSTRACT
Since 2002, privatized television news channels have effectively transformed the nature of the national news culture in Pakistan. Drawing local and international attention for their alarming acquiescence in stoking religious and sectarian conflicts, private news channels and their prime-time anchors have been regularly accused of pandering to populist religious sentiments in a range of infamous episodes: from condoning assassinations in blasphemy cases and providing airtime to anti-state militant organizations to popularizing anti-government protests. This chapter will highlight the various forms of media talk circulating within a liberal minority, whose concerns over sensationalist programming began to heighten at the signs of an illiberal electronic public space. This anxiety is stimulated not only through the routinely familiar televisual imagery of religious masses, but more pressingly by the unfamiliarity of new forms of the religious right, visibly endorsed by private media sources. As corporate television channels compete for higher ratings and employ increasingly hostile strategies of doing so, this chapter takes a closer look at the points at which liberal concerns surface in media commentary in order to understand the role of such anxieties in triggering discourses of the religious Other. The aim of highlighting such commentary is to show how the symbolic positioning of these debates within the post-liberalized context of a commercial mediascape may allow for a re-assessment of our prevalent understanding of mass publicity.
