‘Fed story’ contained denials by information minister

ISLAMABAD: Neither has any single evidence of involvement of any particular individual in sharing the story regarding details of an October 3 meeting with ‘Dawn’ been produced by any side nor could the investigating team conclude as to which participant(s) of the meeting shared information with the journalist, it was reliably learnt.

According to credible sources, one side without producing any kind of evidence whatsoever insists that it was information minister Pervaiz Rashid who ‘fed’ the story to ‘Dawn’ journalist Cyril Ameida. However, according to the so-far findings of an incomplete inquiry, the ‘Dawn’ journalist did contact information minister Pervaiz Rashid and met him to take the government’s version on his story but the latter never fed him the story as a source. The information minister denied most of questions asked by the journalist on the basis of information he already had. The information minister also confirmed some points. The journalist also reflected these denials of information minister in his October 6 story.

However, there has been a consistent campaign by a section of the media and repeated statements are being given to portray contents of a news story as a national security threat. By making a mockery of ‘national security’, some anchors are crossing all limits to create distrust between civilian and military leaderships of the country which, in fact, could be a real national security threat. In journalists’ community, it is a well-known principle that generally a journalist never contacts his source to take version or to verify the information provided by the same person.

According to the so-far findings, the journalist contacted information minister, foreign secretary, a special assistant, principal information officer and others to take government version and to professionally verify his information which simply means that none of these could be his source of information. While it is being insisted that the civilian side leaked the information, no evidence on this count had been shared so far.

It is also important what was shared in the story in question as the conversation took place in the said meeting was often discussed in articles or in talk shows and was not at all a surprising or a novel thing. Some forces are using this misunderstanding between the civil and military leaderships of the country to fuel a fire and to create more justifications of a political party’s call to shutdown the capital of Pakistan in the first week of November. Repeated press releases and statements are adding fuel to this situation and pushing the country towards chaos.

Pervaiz Rashid is being alleged of ‘feeding’ the story only because he met a journalist to respond to his queries was something that an information minister had to do many times a day. It is strange that all this is being done without producing any evidence. Clearly, still there are possibilities that any participant of the said meeting could share the information with any journalist.

Instead of closing the matter and moving ahead to find out those responsible for much bigger national security lapses and embarrassing incidents, there are some in the media which are trying to create rifts between institutions.