Strangling Liberty: Media in Distress in Pakistan makes an attempt to trace the history of media during the last 66 years that shows as to how tremendous pressure simultaneously stemming from diverse dimensions in the form of extremists’ command on one end and state repressions on the other, ideological constraints, international power game, ethno-religious overtones, and most importantly, the role of Secret Agencies including Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and other military tyrannies, have geared up the issue relating to the oppression of freedom of media in Pakistan an international hot topic for debate.

Pakistan has emerged as one of the most unsafe countries for journalists, claiming at least 118 lives of the working journalists in the recent past. It is an irony that despite freedom of speech and expression, as dreamt by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father and enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan, with terrorism being on top of the agenda, the country has started facing challenging problems, including poverty, corruption and anarchy, as a result of which freedom of press has been brutally throttled.

An in-depth study, the book also examines the new trends of extremism in the society and how they are further narrowing down the already suffocated environment incompatible to the freedom of expression. The critique provides an insight into the hostile environment in which the media personnel in Pakistan are undertaking their professional responsibilities and fighting for their legitimate rights at the crossroads of extremist outfits including despotic Talibans on one hand and Secret Agencies including Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on the other employing repressive pressure on the media.

Riaz Ahmed Shaikh, Ph D, a political sociologist and the Head, Social Sciences at Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST), Karachi intensely researched the role of the media and the impediments the working journalists in Pakistan have been experiencing. Riaz is the managing editor of the Asia Journal of Global Studies, Osaka, Japan. His much-acclaimed publication is Back from the Brink: India-Pakistan Ties Revisited. One of his research papers, Pakistani Military Role in Asian Context has been chosen as an ‘Outstanding Author Contribution Award Winner’ by the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2010.

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