A citizen’s perspective on TV anchors in Pakistan – by Naseer Ahmed
Naseer Ahmed offers a critical perspective on TV anchors in Pakistan, suggesting that journalists, including TV anchors, cannot indefinitely escape from accountability. The day will soon come when many of them will be held accountable for their yellow journalism by the nation.
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Pakistan’s media is guilty of being a microcosm of the society that it reports on, reports for and reports to. It is a reflection and an extension of Pakistan at large. That doesn’t change its basic function. It is not the government. But it is a legitimate democratic institution. If there is an imbalance, it is that the new Pakistani media is a middle-class and a largely urban institution. If there’s one thing that really gets the Pakistani elite, it is this gnawing, jabbering, complaining “middle class.” No wonder the news is becoming the news.
Mosharraf Zaidi
http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=216860
As many grow skeptic of the media for not highlighting what good is happening in Pakistan or for instance how many schools is being re-build, such news will give the masses a will to fight the evils of extremism.
Hamid Mir writes in Jang today (7 Jan 2010) stating that the legal proceedings against the missing persons case in the Supreme Court of Pakistan are the real test of Pakistani media.
Will the NRO-phobia anchors (Talat Hussain, Shahid Masood etc) now focus their attention on this case? Will Imran Khan, Munawar Hassan and Hameed Gul do something about this with equal fervour?
Hamid Mir writes in Jang today (7 Jan 2010) stating that the legal proceedings against the missing persons case in the Supreme Court of Pakistan are the real test of Pakistani media.
Will the NRO-phobia anchors (Talat Hussain, Shahid Masood etc) now focus their attention on this case? Will Imran Khan, Munawar Hassan and Hameed Gul do something about this with equal fervour?
Judge calls it Gestapo-like reign of terror
By Nasir Iqbal
Thursday, 07 Jan, 2010
Incidents involving hundreds of missing persons have been reported to the court in the past four years. — File photo
PAKISTAN
The ‘disappeared’
The ‘disappeared’
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court declared on Wednesday the term of “missing persons” applied to all people picked up by intelligence agencies.
“Missing persons are only those who have been picked up by intelligence agencies as we cannot include every case of ransom, abduction or enmity into the category of missing persons,” observed Justice Javed Iqbal, head of a three-judge bench hearing the missing person cases on petitions filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Defence of Human Rights and the Human Rights Network.
The bench, which includes Justice Raja Fayyaz and Justice Mohammad Sair Ali, summoned the Inspector General of Frontier Constabulary and Major Ibrahim next week to explain how Mustafa Azam, an accused in the Hayatabad (Peshawar) bombing, went missing after he dad been arrested his involvement in the blast but released within an hour.
The Supreme Court also wanted to know why names of brigadiers or majors always surfaced whenever cases of missing persons were taken up for hearing. Who had given them the right, it asked, to pick up individuals at will?
“There is a reign of terror like Gestapo and anyone can just barge into someone’s house to pick anyone,” Justice Raja Fayyaz said.
The court would be satisfied even if one person was recovered and the anxiety of one family was addressed, Justice Iqbal observed.
Mr Azam, father of Mustafa Azam who has been missing since 2006 from Sindh, informed the court that Major Ibrahim of the FC admitted that his son had been picked up for his involvement in the Hayatabad blast, but released after an hour.
Since then, he added, he had gone to several prisons and met many people, but had not been able to trace his son.
The working of the FC had no semblance of the law, the court said, adding that the FC had no right to arrest or detain any person.
The court asked the FC to carry out what assigned to it under the law and said that its interference in civilian matters should not exceed the directives given to it.
“What kind of democracy is this where there is no respect for human rights,” Justice Iqbal said, adding that the entire system was on the verge of collapse, but there was always a hue and cry whenever there was an intervention by the court.
HRCP chairperson Asma Jehangir told the court that 31 people, including a Norwegian, Ehsanullah Arjumandi, had been picked up from Balochistan after the installation of the PPP government.
Justice Iqbal said he had seen the record of Mr Arjumandi who in fact belonged to Iran and even his relatives had claimed that he used to travel on counterfeit Pakistani identity card.
“From where you have derived the authenticity that he was picked up by security agencies,” the court asked and deplored that in dozens of cases intelligence agencies had denied that the person in question was in their custody.
“We have written statement of the driver of the bus from which Mr Arjumandi was picked and even the Norwegian embassy had acknowledged that the accused was a Norwegian national of Irani origin,” Ms Jehangir said.
She demanded the setting up of a commission to look into the issue of missing persons in Balochistan and to proceed against those responsible. She also called for payment of compensation to the victims
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-military-role-missing-persons-case-qs-03
here was always a need of free and impartial media in Pakistan. But when in Musharaf period media was given a free hand so at that time it was the responsibility of the government to make certain rules for it. Most of the channels are owned by the people who are purely capitalistic in nature and their sole purpose is making money. Now it is very easy for international agencies to pressurize them using ads of multinational companies. And their headquarters are outside the country so if government wants to apply some rules on them, they can run their channels from abroad. Secondly our people are illiterate and those who are literate, are not politically aware of the consequences of uncontrolled media. As our political parties are not organized from within and they don’t have strong roots in the people so public can be very easily misguided by the media. Besides this in Pakistan there is no journalistic culture and ideology and the journalisms departments of universities just teach journalistic techniques. There must be some subjects in the curriculum of journalism that can guide the students ideologically. Pakistani media must show maturity and play positive role. NRO is not the only issue left. Media is a mirror of the society and it must discuss issues relating to common men.