Recently Talat Hussain wrote a melodramatic article called “10 things I hate about foreign media and reporters”. It contained Talat Hussain’s usual hypernationalist rants against foreign journalists in Pakistan. Examples from his article:

The incessant complaining. Living in outsized houses, many times the size of the shacks in which they spent most of their lives in back home, their instinct for comfort grows in inverse proportion to their desire to find the truth. It is almost as if Pakistan is a shopping mall of special privileges and they have unlimited credit on their cards.

[…]
The half dozen rent-an-analyst experts most of the correspondents rely on. The garbled inanities of this lot are chiseled into sharp insights. Their redundant designations (retd this, retd that) are woven into news stories like plastic beads on a cheap thread. This trash-in-trash-out cycle of news spins on subjectivity, which of course can’t be challenged because a foreign journalist ‘knows his/her job’ best.

However, since this particular article was on the internet and not Talat Hussain’s show where he is free to lecture and talk down to his guests, Talat Hussain was severely criticized by several of the commenters on the article including some commenters from Balochistan. Here are some of the comments on his article:

Commenter Ghulam Farooq Baloch had this to say about Talat Hussain’s article:

Seems Talat wrote this piece about himself when it comes to his highly biased reports and analyses of Balochistan. He followed the agencies’ line in his interview with IG FC in Quetta as if he had come solely to confirm what had been told to him about the presence (read “absence” in the official words) of Taliban in Balochistan. Likewise, he went on to personally and unprofessionally with Bramdagh Bugti in the interview because he had been informed by some ‘invisible forces’ that the Baloch leader was fighting India’s war in Balochistan.
Talat sahib, this write-up has helped to expose your double standards when it comes to reporting on Balochistan

Commenter Balaach Baloch added:

There is a need to expose these elite journalists of Pakistan like Talat who entirely rely on the GHQ information. They have become a tool in the hands of the establishment to make fun of people living in Balochistan and other smaller provinces.
Seems the country was not doing bad enough with Ziad Hamid and Ahmed Qurashi that Talat has also the rank of the so-called “Pakistani-nationalists”

Commenter Wasil Arian:

This acute bitterness,abounding rage and utmost hatred prompting to spew so much venom at foreign journalists although disgusting is not unexpected from the authour for those who are fimiliar with his antics as a TV talk show host.
All this is coming from the myopic vision and mossy psyche adorning the minds of a number of right wing Pakistanis claiming themselves to be KNOW ALLS because of their infinite idiocy.
In this regard I shall like to ask following qustions from the authouth
Does he realy believe that all miseries, sufferings and deprivations of his fellow citizen have resulted from the interaction with the west ?
Are all these social, economic, political and cultural coundrums have been exported to this country by the west?
Whether Pakistan will be better of west is made to pack and leave alongwith its availabe troves in the field of social and natural sciences and technologies in the field of Agriculture, transportation and communicatin etc. ?
What has given you the idea that these journalists who visit from foreign lands are less qulified in the profession than you and your likes ?
Do all these journalists have qulity of living inferior to what they get in Pakistan as you impmlied by their residing in shacks ?
Do all the these foreign countries have sub-standard educational and traing institutes which fail to equip them appropriately as your alma matter has done?
Is it not incumbant on every good journalist to show and report whatever are the ground realaties instead of glossing over the ugly ones which may be more newsworthy and can even help to make amends sooner or later?
The above questions if addressed honestly and open mindedly will alleviate some of the bitterness,hatred and rage expressed in this piece.
It may also generate some positivity of outlook that most of the foreign journalists if not all are well qualified and hard working professionals who forsake many personal comforts and do without so many facilities when they come to a coutry like Pakistan where they sometime face a lot of prejudice, narrow mindedness and wher some time they have to put their limbs and lives on the line.

Now what a pity that the media is dominated by the voices of people like Talat Hussain and other Pakistanis like the commenters on his article are never heard.

Comments

comments