ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights 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. It 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 post-liberalized context of commercial mediascape may allow for a re-assessment of our prevalent understanding of mass publicity. The chapter begins with contextualizing the conditions of publicity that have come to structure the ways in which competing narratives play out in contemporary Pakistani mediascape. It starts from the premise that General Pervez Musharraf's government imposed a version of secularism under banner of 'Enlightened Moderation' as a crucial policy that helped legitimize his regime after he authorized a military coup in 1999.
