BROOKE GLADSTONE:
This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And, I'm Bob Garfield. No one knows who killed Benazir Bhutto, the head of Pakistan’s largest political faction, the Pakistan People’s Party. No one knows what will happen in next month’s elections, delayed for six weeks by her assassination.

Another unknown is how she will be remembered. Was she the photogenic, fearless first female leader of a Muslim nation who heroically inherited her father’s legacy and his tragic fate, or was she a corrupt politician so widely criticized that she had to broker her return to Pakistan to avoid being arrested upon entering the country?

The Pakistani press is struggling with all these questions. The Christian Science Monitor’s Shahan Mufti says that since Bhutto’s assassination the domestic press has largely avoided the ugliness of her past.
SHAHAN MUFTI:
Within hours she was being referred to as Shaheed Bhutto, which means Bhutto the Martyr, which was actually a title held by her father. There was a profound sense of mourning on the television and in the print press. It seemed like the media was mourning Benazir Bhutto along with the rest of the nation.
BOB GARFIELD:
So you've described the kind of emotional reaction – the - logically emotional reaction – to her murder. But I'm wondering what stories about Bhutto, in these very tense times in Pakistan, went unreported.
SHAHAN MUFTI:
The press hasn't come to a place yet where it can pull back and coldly analyze Benazir Bhutto’s political career and her recent political moves. This is something that Benazir Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party, is definitely trying to capitalize on. That is part of why Pakistan People's Party was putting an immense pressure on the government to hold the elections this coming week and not delay them. Many were counting on what’s been called a sympathy vote.
BOB GARFIELD:
The party has announced that it will be led by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Zardari, and her son, Bilawal, who is a teenager. He’s a 19-year-old. And her husband was a crook. How has this news [LAUGHS] been received by the Pakistani people and how is it played in the press?
SHAHAN MUFTI:
Again, we're talking about a period right after Benazir Bhutto’s death, when not many people seemed to be questioning this. The naming of Bilawal Bhutto – Bilawal Zardari, whose name has suddenly been changed to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari – he’s a teenager, like you said. He’s at Oxford University, a big fan of Facebook. A lot of the information coming out about him is coming out on Facebook right now.

The Pakistan People's Party, it is the largest and the strongest political party in the country. And there might be questions asked in the press and within the party, really, of why the reins of the party are going to the husband, who is, like you said, has a reputation for being one of the most corrupt political leaders the country has seen, and her teenage son, who hasn't lived in the country for a good part of his life and who still is not in the country.
BOB GARFIELD:
If it is true, as Pervez Musharraf has alleged, that this was an operation by al Qaeda elements within the tribal areas of Pakistan, what has been the press reaction to it?
SHAHAN MUFTI:
President Pervez Musharraf addressed the nation on Wednesday. He said he had a request for the media to expose militant leaders in the country and thereby support democracy.

The press at this time is really caught up in the blame game that is going on in the political circles, where the Pakistan People's Party seems to be blaming Musharraf and his loyalist parties for the assassination, where other parties are pointing fingers at the intelligence outfits. And Pervez Musharraf’s appeal to the media is really an attempt to direct attention towards militant elements in this country and how they might be involved.
BOB GARFIELD:
Are you under any restrictions on what you may report based on, you know, the previous emergency decrees or any subsequent legislation about criticizing the government or the president?
SHAHAN MUFTI:
Nothing is very clear. There have been foreign journalists thrown out of this country. As far as the Pakistani media goes, there has been a tempering down of any criticism of the armed forces, which can be met with harsh punishment now.

Their satire has disappeared from television, and satire was proving to be one of the main tools with which television media was really expressing its frustration with the government. Satire has not been banned, but it essentially can't find its place in the media environment any more.

Of course, this is all in the background of the curbs that were introduced on the media after the emergency. And all the television channels had to sign a code of conduct to come back on air when they were taken off.

So it’s an uncertain environment right now, and the media isn't sure exactly what the limits on it are.
BOB GARFIELD:
One of the theories about the assassination is that Musharraf’s own intelligence services, or elements within them, may have cooperated in the assassination. Can domestic reporters actually try to get to the question of whether this was at least partly an inside job?
SHAHAN MUFTI:
No news coverage that I have seen has dared go in that direction. Because the media environment, the information environment in this country is so threatened, there is a tendency to resort to conspiracy theories immediately. The government, a few days after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, came out with a press conference in which they gave a theory for her death which seemed ludicrous to many.
BOB GARFIELD:
The sunroof explanation.
SHAHAN MUFTI:
The sunroof explanation, which said that she had hit her head on the lever of a sunroof — the government has since retracted that as the cause of her death, but it is really those kinds of things, and then obviously the limits on the media, that lead people to conspiracy theories which [LAUGHS] may or may not be true.
BOB GARFIELD:
Okay Shahan, thank you very much for joining us.
SHAHAN MUFTI:
It was a pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD:
Shahan Mufti is a freelance writer based in Islamabad and a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor.