For a while now there has been a discussion about the rolethat the media plays. Throughout that discussion it has always been said thatthe media is unbiased and it is doing its duty of bringing hard facts toviewers spread all across Pakistan. The assumption has been that nomatter who owned the media outlet it would be totally unbiased when it came toreporting. And yet all the viewers and everyone involved always knew that everychannel had a specific agenda and that it would always push forward its ownversion of the truth rather than just the facts. Actually this case was made in detailrecently by a friend of mine in his article that can be found here. Sogiven we all knew this already, yesterday’s DUNYA TV episode or shall we justcall it a broadcast was one of the saddest and most disturbing things I have seenin my life.
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| The All Knowing….Lucman |
Starting with Mubasher Lucman, who is a talk show hostsomehow and claims to be seeking justice for all and yet he is the guy who stillowes USD 80,000 to a studio in Thailand, who went on a rant over the phone saying that Punjab has Bird Flu. Then slowly like a pathetictabloid story, the longer his argument went on, the clearer it became that there was nothing to it. Butwhile this conclusion was reached, he had already blamed the Government ofPunjab about 50 times. So in recap, he blamed the Govt. of Punjab for the BirdFlu that does not exist. Funny enough this story came in print a few days ago,and upon talking to one of the office bearers of the Poultry Association I wastold that it was a rumor to bring down the price of Chicken which recently has gone up quite a bit. It is a week old story but it was soon cleared up andretracted. But Mubasher Lucman, went on National TV or whatever DUNYA TV is,and started this rumor again without any solid proof. Within hours, DUNYATV had successfully managed to play with livelihoods of millions of people inPunjab without any proof just for the sake of making Government of Punjab lookbad.
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| Actual FIR that was filed against Mian Amir by the Father of one of the girls killed |
Then came the news bulletins, where most of the headlineswere categorically against the ruling government in Punjab. I mean it came to apoint where it was insane; they stopped trying to hide their hatred and just went full on against them. Be it the non BirdFlu story or the Building Collapse, everything was just simply blamed and somehowtied to the Government in Punjab. It became even sadder when DUNYA TV figuredout that an FIR had been lodged against their owner, Mian Amir who also happensto own the Punjab Group of Colleges. And that is when the figurative shit hitthe fan for DUNYA TV. Within a space of 5 minutes, they went ballistic as iftheir offices were under siege and they were broadcasting live from Homs inSyria rather than from their comfy office block in Lahore. They actually hadviolin music playing in the background while they narrated the story of HOW THEGOVERNMENT OF PUNJAB HAD LODGED AN FIR AGAINST THEIR OWNER because DUNYA TV wassaying the TRUTH. Now this claim on its own is misreporting of the highestorder as the Government of Punjab did not do that. It was the father of one of the girls killed at Punjab College’s Concertin Lahore. And to prove it, the picture above is of the FIR. IF you do not know thisstory, let me explain. You remember a few weeks ago there was a stampede at acollege concert in Lahore which was played out as the Atif Aslam Concert wherethe exit doors were shut down and a bomb threat caused a stampede resulting thedeaths of three girls. Well that story was killed off very quickly and it didnot even play once on DUNYA TV because the owner of that college was Mian Amir,who also owns Dunya TV. But afterfailing to pay off the victim’s family, an FIR was lodged.
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| Owner Dunya TV and Punjab Group of Colleges |
But DUNYA TV took this and turned it in to something thatcould give them political Milage by saying the Government of Punjab did this.And what is worse is while they were reporting that the FIR was filed, they didnot mention even once in 3 hours for exactly what instance was it filed instead they did their best to spread the narrative that it because DUNYA TV had raised the Punjab Institute of Cardiology story and now they were being punished for it. Logically if that were the case, GEO and Express would have been screwed over too but no DUNYA TV did not think of that logic.
The fact of the matter is, this whole episode has shown howchildish our media is. Within 4 hours, one media group for its own purposes hadspread a rumor that affects the livelihoods of millions of people and then hadmanaged to snub a story about their sister concern (Punjab Colleges) and turnthat in to a story of political victimization. All this took 4 hours. That isscary to say the least.
While this discussion on responsible media and the needfor media’s role to be well defined, we need to start moving towards specificsnow. The time for awareness and advocacy is nearly over; actual actions need tobe taken now. Things like what DUNYA TV did yesterday cannot be tolerated indecent or even semi-decent societies where a news channel can endanger millionsof livelihoods and then cry political victimization as part of its grand schemeof blackmailing a provincial government. We as the citizens cannot sit ideallyby and let this happen because it is insulting to our intelligence. Channels like DUNYA TV cannot be allowed tocontinue claiming that they are independent and unbiased. They need to clarifythat they are agenda based news outlets there to provide cover for their owners’other business ventures because that is a fact. It is about time we startcalling things as they are instead of hiding behind the myth of being unbiasedand objective.
And just to remind you, Mubasher Lucman, who always goesaround claiming to be honest is the same guy who bought Twitter Followers. Who doesthat? And yet this guy did. So think about his mentality next time you hearanything coming from his mouth. And for your comic pleasure following is the video where he makes a claim about Bird Flu without presenting an iota of proof and the Anchor lets him go on without once asking for evidence.
Syndicated from: Seedhi Baat
