Urdu Conference session: Unpublished news appears on social media

KARACHI: Commenting on the sorry state of media, the penelists were of the view that commercialism in print and electronic media is responsible for the mess journalism is facing in the country.

They were speaking at the session, titled, “Journalism: a reflection of society?” at the 11th International Urdu Conference at the Arts Council Saturday afternoon.

Muneeza Jehangir said that they have been told that the media is the voice of the voiceless masses but regretted that the TV footage of the blast at the Chinese consulate in Karachi was widely covered while the blast that took place at Lower Orakzai in KP which claimed a far greater number of lives and wreaked far more damage was hardly given any coverage.

“Does Pakistan just mean Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi,” she questioned cynically.

“Today the chief issue is the onslaught of commercialism that has polluted the pursuit of journalism”, she said. Zarrar Khuhro agreed but differed, saying that in the modern world there would have to be a trade-off between objectivity and commercialism, given the intrusion of corporatism.

“How else would the channels and publications pay their staff adequately?”, he remarked sardonically.

Another noted TV journalist said that there was a nexus between the media owners and the government machinery and cited the fact that recently, while the working journalists were demonstrating against the high-handedness of the state machinery. Azhar Abbas, Managing Director, Geo TV, said that the media was at war with itself and cited the case of CNN journalist Costa who was asked by Donald Trump to shut up.

He said if a news does not appear in newspapers, it comes on the social media.

Abbas said that all media networks protested Trump’s stance, including Fox News with an unsavoury reputation of being the establishment’s lackey.

Here, Abbas said, when such an unfortunate incident occurs with a certain channel, the other channels seem to be waiting in ambush to embarrass it further with their criticism and curry favours with the establishment.

Muneeza Jehangir questioned as to why it was that the state’s axe always fell just on the liberal, progressive leftist elements.

Mazhar Abbas said that people were more aware in the days of censorship. Papers, he said, published clarifications and apologies while the channels just did not bother.

Talking about commercialism, Zarrar Khuhro cited the recent coverage of the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s tour of various bottled water companies and said that a lot of fanfare was given to the tour but in case of a certain company, hardly a few seconds was devoted to the tour.

He disclosed that this was because that company sponsored the 9:00pm news bulletin. All the panelists agreed that social media offered a lot of hope amid the grim scenario.