By Shiza Nisar

Television journalist, Ali Musa Raza, continued reporting from the scene as floodwater rose across South Punjab. He warned viewers of rising water levels affecting nearby communities, and moments later, he was swept away by the current. Such journalistic courage signals the risks local reporters take to bring stories from Pakistan’s remote regions to public audiences.

Residents interviewed on the ground offered their own explanations for why such disasters continue to occur. During a discussion of an unfinished drainage project, one resident argued, “If this had been completed, these conditions would not have become so severe.” Another showed frustration that governments typically abandon projects started by their predecessors, leaving communities to deal with the aftermath. Such reactions are easily dismissed as impulsive, even though they signal poor governance, broken infrastructure, and a lack of public accountability, which is the lived reality for these communities.

Interestingly, how rural communities are portrayed by the national media is similar to the coverage of Pakistan by international media. Global audiences frequently encounter Pakistan through stories of terrorism, political instability, pollution, violence, natural disasters or other crises, while the complexities of everyday life receive far less attention. Pakistani voices are present, but international media organizations that decide which stories matter and are prioritized remain focused elsewhere, showing that visibility does not always translate into power. The result is a partial picture that shapes public perception without reflecting the lived realities. The similarity becomes clearer when we examine how rural Pakistan enters the national news. For many communities, national attention arrives during moments of crisis like floods, droughts, security incidents, humanitarian emergencies, and cases of violence. Positive stories are often framed through the language of development, highlighting government initiatives, donor-funded projects, or economic investment. This leaves little room for attention towards everyday realities that shape rural life, including local governance, agriculture, education, healthcare, employment, cultural life, and community priorities. As a result, rural communities become visible during exceptional events but largely invisible in the ordinary realities that define daily life. Inclusion exists, but it often occurs on terms determined elsewhere.

The thrust of conversations about press freedom in Pakistan often focuses on protecting journalists, reducing censorship, and expanding access to information. These are vital concerns, but not the only ones. Some pressing questions that get lost in this narrative and receive far less attention are concerned with who gets to participate in the production of public knowledge, and who has the authority to define problems, identify solutions, and shape national narratives.

Beyond inclusion, the deeper issue facing rural Pakistan is one of representation and power. Rural communities are frequently spoken-about, but far less frequently spoken-with. Even though their stories circulate nationally, decisions about funding, editorial priorities, media ownership, and public visibility are often made in urban-based newsrooms, media organizations, advertising markets and regulatory institutions with limited understanding of local realities. This distinction between speaking-for and speaking-with matters because it is worth recognizing that representation is not the same thing as participation. A community can be highly visible and still have little influence over how it is understood or how it is represented. Clearly, it is easier to be included in national conversations while remaining excluded from the institutions that organize those conversations.

The Geography of Media Power

A nationwide study of 500 rural journalists described a growing “communication imbalance” in which media attention and communication resources remain concentrated in urban centers despite a large proportion of Pakistan’s population living in rural areas. This signals that rural concerns enter national conversations intermittently, while urban priorities dominate them continuously. Such filtered representation raises an editorial question of who gets to decide which stories matter and what deserves to be left unsaid.

The answer lies partly in the geography of media power. While stories may originate in rural Pakistan, the institutions that shape public narratives like newsroom headquarters, advertising markets, media ownership, journalism schools, and regulatory structures are overwhelmingly centered in major urban areas. Editorial decisions about what counts as news, which stories deserve sustained attention, and how communities are represented are therefore often made far from the places being discussed. This concentration of authority helps explain why rural communities struggle to secure sustained attention for the issues that shape everyday life, and the reason why the people closest to these realities are often the furthest removed from decisions about how they are represented.

The marginalization of rural communities is also mirrored by the marginalization of the journalists who report on them, as research on rural journalism in Pakistan has long documented the challenges faced by reporters working outside major cities [1][2][3][4]. Rural correspondents frequently operate with limited institutional support, low or irregular salaries, and fewer opportunities for professional development. A survey conducted across seven districts of Sindh found that rural journalists faced delayed salaries, inadequate facilities, threats, harassment, and limited institutional support, even though they occupy the most precarious positions within the media ecosystem by serving as the primary connection to local realities. Many of these journalists report frustration that stories important to their communities are ignored, deprioritized, or filtered through editorial decisions made in the center, which is not only a lack of coverage but a narrowing of what enters the public conversation in the first place. This communication imbalance creates a situation in which urban concerns become national concerns, while rural concerns remain local concerns. Issues affecting major cities are often framed as matters of national importance, whereas challenges facing rural communities struggle to receive sustained attention unless they are tied to a crisis, disaster, or political controversy.

The decline of local journalism has only intensified this problem as in recent years, across Pakistan, local newspapers have disappeared, district-level reporting has weakened, and many communities increasingly lack media institutions capable of documenting everyday life. This is a form of local news desert, where communities gain visibility during major events but lack sustained coverage of the pressing issues that shape daily life, such as local governance, public services, agricultural challenges, education, healthcare, and community initiatives, which often struggle to reach broader audiences.

The consequences of this neglect extend beyond media visibility, because when communities lose local journalism, they also lose institutions capable of holding local authorities accountable, and documenting community memory. This leads to a growing gap between the realities experienced by rural communities and the narratives that circulate nationally. The problem, therefore, is one of authority beyond access. Rural communities provide information, experiences, and testimony, but they are far less likely to control the institutions that transform those experiences into public narratives.

When Good Intentions Speak-for Others

The tendency to speak-for rather than speak-with communities can also be found in many NGOs and civil society organizations that document local concerns, advocate for policy change, and provide services where the state has fallen short. Yet they can also become intermediaries, translating community concerns into donor language, policy briefs, and national campaigns. Critics of the aid sector have pointed out that donor funding often favors professionalized organizations capable of producing proposals and reports, while smaller community-rooted groups struggle to access the same resources. Here, again, the issue is whether these communities are given a chance to participate in defining the priorities that shape interventions designed in their name.

Consider development projects aimed at improving women’s access to water in rural areas. From a policy perspective, bringing water directly into rural homes appears unquestionably beneficial, as it reduces physical labor, saves time, and improves access to an essential resource, yet such interventions overlook the social realities of everyday life, as for many rural women, trips to communal water sources have historically served purposes beyond water collection. For most women, these journeys created opportunities for conversation, information sharing, mutual support, and temporary relief from the confines of the char-deewari. While improved access to water remains important, the broader lesson is how local people are rarely invited to a conversation that asks what aspects of their daily lives they value, preserve, or wish to change.

Through that lens, the problem is the assumption that empowerment can be designed from above or from without. Too often, communities become recipients of solutions rather than participants in defining them. Whether in journalism, development, or advocacy, the underlying question remains the same: who gets to define the problem, and who gets to set out for the solution?

Speaking-For vs. Speaking-With

At the heart of this discussion lies the difference between speaking-for and speaking-with. To speak-for is when individuals, institutions, or organizations tell the stories of others on the behalf of the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the ones on the periphery, and in contrast, speaking-with means creating conditions in which people participate in shaping how their stories are understood, circulated, and acted upon. The difference may not seem huge, but it has significant implications for power.

A community can be represented without being liberated, as it can be visible without an impact, and it can be referenced without being heard. Sadly, throughout Pakistan, examples of these differences are easy to find such as when rural communities appear in flood coverage but rarely shape disaster policy, when rural journalists gather information but often lack the authority to edit the work accordingly, among many others.

The costs of speaking from the margins can also be consequential. Rural journalists reporting on local realities and activists advocating for their communities often face similar pressures. Climate activist Sajjad Ali from Gilgit-Baltistan described receiving threats because of his supporting work, observing that “if you are talking against powerful forces and in the interest of communities and not profit, then activism has its price.” This experience mirrors a wide reality in which those closest to local concerns often face the greatest obstacles when attempting to form public conversations.

Inclusion exists in representation from margins, but the ultimate leverage sits with others because meaningful participation demands access to platforms as well as access to systems that shape public life. In media, this means local ownership, local editorial authority, and sustainable funding for community journalism; in development, it means involving communities in defining priorities rather than merely enforcing predesigned solutions; and in governance, it means creating opportunities for meaningful influence rather than symbolic representation. Therefore, the challenge is to ensure that rural communities have a meaningful role in deciding what is said, how it is said, what happens afterward, and not just making rural voices louder at turning points.

What Would Speaking-with Look Like?

Since the challenge is one of power, then the solution requires more than increasing coverage of rural communities with conscious rethinking of who controls the foundations through which public accounts are produced and who benefits from such production.

In this sense, rural areas go beyond the assumption that these are locations from which stories are gathered. Rural journalists should not occupy the most unstable positions within the media ecosystem while also serving as its primary connection to worldwide realities. Encouraging local journalism requires practices such as sustained investment in district-level reporting, fair reparation for rural correspondents, and editorial structures that allow local reporters greater influence over the stories they produce.

The decline of local newspapers and community media has left many communities dependent on distant institutions to tell their stories. Reversing this trend will require supporting local news initiatives, community-based media platforms, and independent journalism rooted in the communities they serve. Such efforts of investments in local media are in fact investments in democratic participation and public accountability.

The same principle applies to development projects that are often evaluated according to measurable outcomes such as infrastructure, service delivery, or efficiency. While these outcomes matter, meaningful participation requires asking communities how they understand their own needs, priorities, and aspirations. Consultation should not be treated as a procedural requirement but as a central component of program development and decision-making.

Similarly, civil society organizations and donors must consider how resources are distributed. Supporting local organizations, strengthening community-led initiatives, and transferring decision-making authority can help ensure that representation does not become another form of dependency. The goal should not be to speak on behalf of communities indefinitely but to support their capacity to advocate for themselves.

The question is whether the institutions that shape public life are willing to share authority with the people whose lives they seek to represent, not whether rural communities have stories worth telling. Speaking with communities means more than listening to them during moments of crisis, and seeks recognition as participants in defining problems, shaping solutions, and determining the futures they wish to build for themselves.

Conclusion

Rural Pakistan always has stories worth telling, therefore, the question is who gets to decide how those stories are told, interpreted, and acted upon. From journalism and development to advocacy and governance, rural communities are often included in national conversations without being given meaningful influence over the institutions that shape them. The challenge is to make rural voices louder and to ensure that the people closest to local realities have a greater role in defining the problems, priorities, and solutions that affect their lives. Ultimately, to move from speaking-for to speaking-with requires a willingness to share power.

 

Author bio

Shiza Nisar is a doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information at Kent State University. Her research examines gender, media, social movements and technology, with a focus on how power, legitimacy, and subjectivity are constructed across platforms in the Global South. She draws on feminist and critical approaches to analyze online gender debates and mediated forms of voice.

snisar@kent.edu