Media has been considered as the ears and mouth of modern societies. It has a substantial role to enlighten the public and to disseminate the cultural tendencies of society. Ahmed (2018) well-presented these phenomena when he said: “the role of media is very significant to enlighten the masses regarding happenings in society”. Language had been considered as the basic component of media. Media outlets provide information to society as well as affect the individuals’ minds, using language as a tool. According to Ahmed (2018), “Media has a vibrant role in society, and it can affect society positively or negatively in many aspects, through its content”. Hence language, as one of the components of any culture can be influenced either positively or negatively by Media Houses.

The language always reflects the culture and use of the language show the cultural values and traditions of that particular area. The language and culture have their relationship, which cannot be untied. It is observed that language is the main component to express cultural ties, norms, values and traditions of a particular land. The language represented its culture rather used by media outlets or within personal communication. The phenomena had presented by renowned scholars Emmitt and Pollock (1997) with these words “language is rooted in culture and culture is reflected and passed on by language from one generation to the next”. The same has also been reflected in the quote “one can see that learning a new language involves the learning of a new culture” by All wright and Bailey (1991).

It is well known all over the world that information generated by the media of mainstream has its own interior motives defined or countries and poor southern countries. The said researcher believed that the flood of the news staff of the western countries usually, target the developing countries to serve their vested interests. Most of the contents of international global media defuse western cultures and thus distort century’s old customs and traditions, snatch their independence undefined as Rokya Hassen (2016) indicated unbalanced and unreasonable information flow among the northern developed and damage cultural integrity. For instance, to be fully benefited from the new technology of social networking, one needs to be well versed with the language of English. Therefore, the people in bulk invest their times and energy in learning the English language and thus ignore the local languages that have seeds of local cultures.

The studies have elaborated that the differentiation in language use may affect cultural values. It has also been noted that the change in language use may change the cultural perspective of someone. Emmitt and Pollock (1997) presented this concept as: “Even though people are brought up under similar behavioral backgrounds or cultural situations but however speak different languages, their world view may be very different”. The studies elaborate on the phenomena that language is the tool to express the innate and inherent culture, and use of content describes the innate culture from where the language is used. The renowned scholar Hantrais (1989) presented the same tendencies in her study when she found: Culture is the beliefs and practices governing the life of a society for which a particular language is the vehicle of expression. Therefore, everyone’s view depends on the culture which has influenced them, as well as being described using the language which has been shaped by that culture”. Edward T. Hall (1976) suggests what we normally refer to as "mind" is actually internal culture. He puts music, art, foods &drinks, dresses, greetings, and outward behavior in the tip of the iceberg and environment, time, communications, space power, individualism, competitiveness, structure, and thinking deep inside. All given components are repeatedly used in media contents. Here in this study, the researchers tried to sort out whether Pakistani media is playing its role to promote Pakistani regional languages and culture.

The aim of the study was to examine the scene of the media landscape and its role to protect the native cultures and languages. The study also tried to assess the picture of foreign influence on Pakistani media and its societal effects on native languages. The study was done with the qualitative content analysis of official data of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. To sharpen the data analysis and to find the meaning full results from the statistical numbers provided by the two national offices, in-depth interviews of senior communication and language experts were conducted through a questionnaire that consisted of open-ended questions. Answers of the respondents were presented in a descriptive way in results.

Pakistan has vivid media topography with more than a hundred private and six governments own TV channels and thousands of newspapers. According to official data provided by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), there are 126 Television channels and 188 FM radio stations including 45 non-commercial stations. Out of these 126 TV channels, 23 English language channels, 14 Urdu language channels and one Pashto language channel are owned by foreign nationals. There are two English, six Pashto, five Sindhi, two Saraiki, one Balochi and one Punjabi language local channels in the country.

The scenario clearly presented a picture that out of 126, there are only 15 TV channels with native languages, 25 are in the English language, and 85 are in the Urdu language. Although Urdu had been declared national language of Pakistan it does not represent the culture of any area across the geographical boundaries of Pakistan. Findings of the study showed that the majority of people in Pakistan have Punjabi as their native language, but there is only one TV channel with Punjabi language functioning in the country. Baluchistan, being the largest territorial province too has one Balochi language channel. The Pashto and Sindhi have seven and five TV channels, respectively, to promote native language and culture in innate content. This small number of regional language-based channels is insufficient to promote the native languages or cultures as a whole. The communication experts agreed that language affects culture and societal tendencies. Pakistan has a big portion of electronic media with 25 English language TV channels in the country and with 92 percent foreign ownership affects the societal traditions, norms and values. The foreigner owned Urdu TV channels present the translated verbal content, but the pictorial view of the majority content fails to represent the local cultures and traditions. The population landscape of native languages presented a different scenario than its media presence. According to official data of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the population landscape with native languages was 44.15 percent Punjabi speaking, 15.42 percent Pushto, 14.1percent Sindhi, 10.53percent Saraiki, 7.57percentUrdu, 3.57percentBalochi and 4.66percent having other small languages as native. These other small languages are a set of 57 languages have six million speakers around the country. Language and communication is an important ingredient of culture, and the media can use or misuse this ingredient to polish or demolish a culture. When native language channels are small in number, then responsibility for the promotion of the native cultures falls on the shoulders of the mainstream national media. But Pakistani mainstream media is not paying attention to promote indigenous languages. Pakistani media not only deviate from its role towards society, but it is also damaging the local culture. The study found another aspect of population landscape. As per findings, there are more than 99 percent people in FATA and 73.9 percent in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP) with Pashto as a native language. In the province of Sindh, 59.76 percent people speak Sindhi whereas, 21.05 percent are Urdu speaking people. Likewise, the province of Baluchistan, 59.75 percent is Balochi speaking people. In the province of Punjab, 75.23 percent residents speak Punjabi and 17.3 percent are Saraiki speaking natives. Another fact of population landscape has been found in shape of populace with education. To utter surprise, the province of Punjab was unearthed the lowest in this picture. The data resented the literacy scenario with the findings that the overall population in the country with matriculation was 17.29 percent and there in Punjab, the rate was 16.78 percent below all other provinces. To the dismay of the literacy scene in Pakistan, the research further explored that the province of Punjab has graduate (BA/BSc) rate of 3.23 percent in overall 4.38 graduate rate, and sixteen years masters (MA/MSc) ratio of 1.07 percent in overall 1.58 percent rate in the country. These findings suggest a clear sign of low literacy rate in this province and hence the need for conversation and communication in native language is much more important for natural growth and understanding of the masses.

The study lime lighted the scenario that language and medium of communication cannot be separated at all. Findings of the research enlighten that the language is nothing without medium of communication. It furthered, that media is powerless to communicate if fails to choose the language according to perceivers. The study suggested to the people at the helm of media management to do some modifications and tweak in media intentions. The current study presented that Pakistani mainstream media is damaging the local and native languages and cultures by presenting non-indigenous content in the shape of language, dress, food, music and drama, and displaying the invaded content, especially, in pictorial shape. A the majority of media outlets are owned by foreigners, consequently most of the time, they present a mixed culture of a specific class of a few instead of the whole population of the country. Moreover, Pakistani media has become the main reason to affect the language style, grammatical compositions and accent of the majority. The local media always has to protect and promote the local culture and set barriers against culture invasion, but here in Pakistan, we see that the local media has been protecting and promoting the cultural invasion. There is not a single example found in Pakistani mainstream media that has tried to protect local culture and displayed the local content solely. This is much similar to Edward’s concept of human mind and personality, which he compared to an iceberg, with a conscious mind representing the tip and the unconscious or subconscious mind reflecting under the surface portion. Hence, human mind and personality grow within the natural environment, culture and native language is the best tool for communication to provide a natural environment to habitats of an area. Though it is very hard to ensure that the norms and values of the indigenous cultures and pros and cons of native languages persevere in the country, but sustainable efforts in this direction contribute a lot in achieving the goals.

It is not surprising to mention that most of the people in Pakistan have adapted to numerous aspects of the western cultures in their daily lives. It is getting tough for local and regional languages and customs and traditions to survive and save themselves from impurities. In view of the fact that the global technology of communication is produced and run by advanced countries of the west, items with local cultural ingredients are overcome by the contents having seeds of the so-called liberal and democratic cultures. To promote the native languages and our socio-cultural norms, the people at the helm of affairs in Pakistani media need to contribute to their potentials.

Although, overall norms and values of our society are geared up and furthered by the national mainstream media under the umbrella of Urdu language more planned efforts are required before native languages, and norms and values of the local cultures are engulfed by the popular culture presented by Pakistan media. Pakistani local channels are few in number, and they try to follow the mainstream media for their content and style with the local language. Media in regional languages disseminate contents that support nationalism and patriotism, preserve native languages, social and cultural norms and values and ensure the process for national and cultural integration. Pakistani mainstream communication media need to be reshaped to represent the social and cultural facets of the society in large, its people and their cultures, languages, and educational system.