The News | Pakistan Media Watch –– پاکستان میڈیا واچ

Archive for the ‘The News’ Category

The News for the Prosecution

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Is The News (Jang Group) reporting on court proceedings or trying to influence an issue that is sub judice? This question must be asked in light of a report by Ahmad Noorani of 31 December, ‘Asma focused on army bashing, not maintainability of petitions.

The short, four paragraph piece in Saturday’s newspaper contains a sensational headline and opening paragraph which can only be read in a way that will influence the readers to believe that Asma Jahangir is anti-military – a dangerous accusation in these times.

Mr Noorani’s article appeared on the same page as another piece that terms the respected international human rights NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’ as taking ‘a highly objectionable and partisan position against the superior judiciary of Pakistan’ after Pakistan Director Human Rights Watch Ali Dayan Hasan expressed concern about the Supreme Court’s verdict. According to The News, the ‘highly controversial statement’ insisted that “all arms of the state must act within their constitutionally determined ambit and in aid of legitimate civilian rule”. Does Jang Group really find the Constitution ‘highly objectionable’?

Just below this piece, in fact, was another piece attacking Human Rights Watch, this time terming it as ‘a foreign organisation working in Pakistan under the cover of human rights’. In an utterly bizarre and inexplicable practice, The News then goes on to quote its source against Human Rights Watch – none other than Mr Ahmad Noorani!

The News goes on to attack the person of Human Rights Watch director Ali Dayan Hasan. After printing his statement:

“No one from the government approached me to issue this press release and it was issued by my organisation considering the fears and threats to constitution, democracy and human rights in Pakistan”

The News injected a rumour that “It was also being said that he had issued this press release on directions of the federal government”. As with very many Jang Group sources, these cannot be verified and The News offers no evidence to support the claims their mysterious ‘sources’.

It should be noted that the person who appears to behind a few of these biased and sensational articles, Ahmad Noorani, has a track record of reporting incorrect information and biased articles attacking the present government.

As the issue of the memo case is presently sub judice, journalists should report only the facts and not attempt to influence proceedings or to anticipate the course of the inquiry or predict the outcome. Let the court do its work. It does not need Jang Group prejudicing the courts statements and decisions and thereby undermining the very independence of the court itself..

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Tags: Ahmad Noorani, Ali Dayan Hasan, Asma Jahangir, bias, Human Rights Watch, Jang Group, judiciary, memogate, The News
Posted in Jang, The News | 15 Comments »

Corruption, Perceptions of Corruption, and Media

Friday, December 30th, 2011

Is the government corrupt? Which department is most corrupt? How much of your answer to these questions is based on hard facts, and how much is based on what you’ve been told by the media?

On 25th December, in a report titled, ‘Military stands at number five among corrupt institutions’, The News reporter Usman Manzoor wrote that “sources said military stood at number five among the 10 most corrupt institutions of the country.” Once again, Jang’s sources have let them down.

The actual report, which was released on 28th December, lists the military at number nine. And the report does not list “the 10 most corrupt institutions of the country” – it lists only the 10 institutions TIP asked about.

Unlike the previous surveys, this year the NCPS covers only the basic survey report to measure the perceptions, nature and extent of corruption being faced by consumers of the following ten public sector departments:

1. Police
2. Electricity Supply
3. Health Dept.
4. Education Dept.
5. Military
6. Justice / Courts
7. Revenue / Property Registration
8. Taxation
9. Customs
10. Tendering & Contracting

Local Government has been deleted from the survey, and Military has been added for the first time in the list of departments surveyed

After the report was released, Pakistan Today, however, carried the headline, ‘In the list of corrupt, military among top 10 and ‘independent’ judiciary also climbs’. While not as bad as the headline in The News, it is still factually incorrect.

If reporters had bothered to read as far as the first page of the Foreward, they would have learned that, of the ten institutions covered in the report, “The least two corrupt departments are Education and Military“.

We would not be so bold as to suggest that corruption is not a major problem in society. The media has a role to play in solving this problem by investigating and exposing corruption where it exists. But this requires more than rumours, gossip, and misleading reporting – it requires real journalism.

Oh, and if TIP really wants to stir a hornets nest, perhaps they should do some research on corruption in another institution – media.

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Tags: corruption, fact checking, headlines, Jang Group, misinformation, misleading, Pakistan Today, The News, Transparency International
Posted in Pakistan Today, The News | No Comments »

The News vs. The News on nukes

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

Is the government threatening the security of the country by cutting development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme? Or is the government improving the security of the country by investing in a modern nuclear weapons programme? According to The News (Jang Group) the answer is yes to both.

In Monday’s copy of The News, Ansar Abbasi warns that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is not a top priority of the present regime, and that because nuclear development has not been funded properly, it “has been stopped”. According to Abbasi, an “informed source, who has been one of the top nuclear managers of Pakistan’s nuclear programme” (his initials wouldn’t happen to be AQK, would they?) explained that because of the policies of the present government, our nuclear programme is experiencing “technical roll back”.

This is a particularly interesting situation to be in since in May of this year, The News reported that Pakistan under the present government is on path to become the 4th largest nuclear state and is quickly outpacing other nations in both number of warheads and technology.

Former UN weapons inspector David Albright, reported that Pakistan appears to be building a fourth plutonium reactor at the Khushab complex, and is expanding plutonium separation capabilities at another site.

Another report, from a US think tank, says Pakistan now has 70 to 90 nuclear warheads, more than its rival India. This puts Pakistan on track to command the world’s fourth-largest nuclear weapons arsenal by the end of the decade.

The evidence suggests that Pakistan is trying to develop a second-strike nuclear capability. Pakistan has tested cruise and other missiles that can carry strategic warheads from land or even from submarines.

That hardly sounds like the defence policy of a government that is turning a blind eye to security. In fact, The News reported advancements in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme in April also when the military successfully tested the Nasr, a ballistic missile of Hatf series, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead can hit targets up to 60 km.

Strategic planners term the test a ‘new and very significant development’ since the missile falls in the category of tactical nuclear weapons. “This is a low-yield battlefield deterrent, capable of deterring and inflicting punishment on mechanised forces like armed brigades and divisions,” said an expert in the field of missile technology. “This takes care of the Indian Army’s obsession with finding space for limited war under the nuclear umbrella.”

Addressing the gathering at the undisclosed location, DG SPD Kidwai said the test was a very important milestone in consolidating Pakistan’s strategic deterrence capability at all levels of the threat spectrum. He said in the hierarchy of military operations, the Nasr Weapon System now provided Pakistan with short-range missile capability in addition to the already available medium- and long-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in its inventory.

The president and prime minister have congratulated the scientists and engineers for their outstanding success and warmly appreciated the successful test.

In November of this year, Ansar Abbasi himself reported that ‘Pakistan’s nuclear programme has made some extraordinary progress by developing one of the world’s smartest nuclear tactical devices’.

The defence budget increased 15.3 per cent in 2009, in 2010 saw a 17 per cent additional increase, and in 2011 ballooned by an additional 12 per cent. Since taking power, the PPP-led coalition government has increased defence spending by at least 44 per cent over the budgets under the previous regime.

Is Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme threatened by budget cuts made by the present regime? Years’ worth of reporting by Jang/Geo provide ample evidence that successive governments including the present one have dedicated a vast amount of resources to the nuclear weapons programme that have yielded great advancement in both the number of warheads as well as advanced tactical technologies. In trying to accuse the PPP of weakening Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Ansar Abbasi only exposes his own lack of credibility.

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Tags: Ansar Abbasi, incorrect information, Jang Group, nuclear weapons, political attacks, PPP, The News
Posted in Jang, The News | 2 Comments »

Media, Rumours and ‘Public Importance’

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

A report in The News today serves as an excellent example of how the media’s power to shape the way we perceive events can be used to serve a political agenda. According to reporter Sohail Khan, former Senator Azam Swati (PTI) through his counsel Tariq Asad has petitioned the Supreme Court to place the name of President Asif Zardari on the Exit Control List. Why? Because an article in The New York Times said that Zardari could be planning to leave the country after 27th December. Swati’s counsel argued that this raised a question of public importance per Article 184(3).

A few things should be noted here. First is the New York Times article which serves as the basis of Swati’s petition. Here is the part that Swati quotes:

Some Pakistani and Western officials said last week that if Mr. Zardari returned, it could be only for a cameo appearance before Dec. 27, the fourth anniversary of the death of Ms. Bhutto, the two-time former prime minister, in a gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.

After that, Mr. Zardari would probably leave for a long — perhaps permanent — convalescence in London or Dubai, the officials said.

Who are these “Pakistani and Western officials”? Nobody knows. Are they opposition party members or some other kind of agents? Do they have any way of knowing the president’s plans, or is this pure speculation based on thin air and wishful thinking?

Additionally, the same New York Times article also says that “General Kayani told the United States ambassador at the time, Anne W. Patterson, that he “might, however reluctantly,” pressure Mr. Zardari to resign and presumably leave Pakistan”. Would this not result in a question of public importance per Article 184(3) also? Why does Swati selectively quote The New York Times article? Is it because he is using the media to report the facts or to promote a political agenda?

Actually, Azam Swati is not the only one who selectively quotes from the foreign media. In his own petition to the Supreme Court, Swati notes that “the news of NYT has been reported by all the newspapers of Pakistan”, giving it extra importance. But these reports also selectively quote the original article.

The Nation reported the Times story with the headline, ‘Zardaris return cameo appearance’, as if it were a statement of fact and not a speculation attributed to unknown people. And in its report, The Nation conveniently left out the part where Ambassador Patterson claims that Gen Kayani told her he was contemplating a coup.

The News included even less in its report, saying the Times “quoted some Pakistani and Western officials”, but failing to note that nobody knows who these “officials” are. The News even went further and removed every part of the original New York Times story about the military threatening the civilian government and making it seem like the president was thinking of running from the country.

Dawn pared the original report down to little more than just a headline, but at did note the Times’ claim that the Supreme Court was being “pushed by the Army” to investigate the president.

This was reported the same way in Urdu papers also. Jang carried the story as a brief news piece suggesting there was reason to believe the president might leave. Nawa-i-Waqt carried the brief version of the story as well, and Express even added a little touch of its own by reporting that “according to New York Times report, 27 pakistani officials and western ‘diplomats’ have said that his return is temporary” – none of which actually appears in the New York Times story.

In other words, there is a petition before the Supreme Court that is based on media reports that selectively summarise a foreign media report that paraphrases the speculation of unidentified people. As a result, the people’s perception of events may have been manipulated, and what they believe is reality may actually be a carefully designed version of reality that better serves a political end. Ironically, the foreign media group at the foundation of this case is one that is routinely criticised for “publishing anti-Pakistani reports” that are “planted to derail a country like Pakistan” when the claims it reports are viewed less favourably.

The public interest is not defined by political ends, but by knowing the truth. This is a shared responsibility of both media and judiciary. If one fails, it can cause the other to fail also. Reporting rumours and innuendo is not journalism, and legal decisions based on such rumours and innuendo is not justice. If the media fails to do its job responsibly, it can have disastrous consequences.

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Tags: Azam Swati, Dawn, judiciary, politics, Sohail Khan, The Nation, The New York Times, The News, Zardari
Posted in Daily Nawa-i-Waqt, Dawn, Ethics, Foreign Media, Jang, The Nation, The News | No Comments »

Media Speculation Wrong…Again

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Immediately following the president’s departure, media began speculating that the president would not return. Zardari’s brief trip to Dubai for medical treatment was immediately jumped on by the usual suspects who added another chapter to their never ending predictions of the president’s early departure, or immature and petty insults by the type of ‘freelance journalist’ who demands that people “stop making highfalutin statements from abroad that you love Pakistan”…from New York City, USA. Of course, lo and behold…

As we expected when the president left, the new media circus was just a re-airing of the same “journalistic garbage” that has been heaped on the president since day one. No coup. No resignations. No revolution…no truth to so much of the reporting and commentary by the same old media hacks who choose to spend countless hours on rumour and speculation instead of doing honest journalism. It’s not just a shame, it’s a re-airing that’s quickly getting old.

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Tags: speculation, wishful journalism, Zardari
Posted in The News | No Comments »

The News Attacks Imran Khan

Friday, December 16th, 2011

An article of Mariana Baabar of The News on Friday continues Jang Group‘s bad habit of lobbing senseless attacks against politicians based on nothing but personal animosity and political bias. The article in question, ‘Imran meets Munter, Raphel at PTII secretariat’, discusses a private meeting between Chairman PTI Imran Khan and American Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter and senior adviser to Mark Grossman, Special Representative of US President on Pakistan-Afghanistan, Robin Raphel. But rather than report on the facts of the meeting, Mariana Baabar instead takes the opportunity to insult the PTI chief and inject an air of conspiracy about the meeting.

According to the report, Imran Khan was “extremely insecure” and acted in “dictatorial fashion” simply because he met with the American officials privately. The reporter compares Imran Khan’s behaviour to former dictator Gen Musharraf saying that “there is no record anywhere about his various meetings with the world leaders as he kept everyone out, including the note taker” without considering the statement of PTI Information Secretary Shafqat Mehmood that even though he was unaware of the meeting maybe it was the case that Imran Khan did not have time to gather a team. Instead, the reporter quotes Shireen Mazari saying that she asked to attend but was told by Imran Khan that it was a private meeting between himself and the Americans, but the reporter did not note that Shireen Mazari has been unhappy with PTI for some time.

Baabar goes on to ask “will Pakistanis now have to rely on WikiLeaks to know what transpired at the PTI central secretariat on Thursday?” Why should anyone rely on WikiLeaks to know what transpired? Why doesn’t the reporter simply call Imran Khan and his spokesman and ask for a briefing. Or is the reporter, without even trying to learn the facts, already assuming that Imran Khan is a liar?

Whether Imran Khan chooses to take his senior advisors to a meeting or whether he chooses to go alone is a party matter. It may be newsworthy that the PTI chief is holding secret meetings with American officials, but the responsibility of a journalist covering such a story is to carry out careful fact checking and investigative work to get to the bottom of a story, not attack the politician and create an aura of conspiracy.

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Tags: bias, Imran Khan, political attacks, PTI, Shireen Mazari
Posted in The News | No Comments »

More Layout Humour

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

We posted before about how sometimes layout decisions can result in unintentionally (we assume) humourous juxtapositions. The last example came from The Nation. Today’s is from The News.

Unintentionally funny layout, or subtle editorial messaging? We will leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions!

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Tags: funny, layout, The News
Posted in The News | No Comments »

Jang’s “Special” Reporting

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

This has been a bad year for Muhammad Saleh Zaafir. The ‘Editor Special Reporting’ of Jang Group has been publishing one article after another of especially poor quality.

In January, Muhammad Saleh Zaafir wrote a bizarre conspiracy theory suggesting that President Zardari held a ‘mysterious meeting’ with President Obama, despite the fact that details of the meeting were available on the same day. Actually, the meeting was so not mysterious that photographers were even present.

A few months later, the same Jang Group reporter was exposed when he claimed to have received detailed information from ‘highly placed defence sources’ that turned out to be nothing but a cut-and-paste from Wikipedia.

Today, Muhammad Saleh Zaafir is back armed not with conspiracy theories or plagiarism, but drawing room gossip. Don’t take our word for it, this is how Mr Saleh Zaafir describes it himself!

This was gossip in the Kenyan reception held on Monday evening.

The gossip he ‘reports’ is that Husain Haqqani “tried to escape” but was prevented by the PM. The former Ambassador responded on Twitter noting that “First they said I will not come 2 Pakistan. Now they say I am in some hurry 2 leave. Wrong both times ”.

It is important to note that Muhammad Saleh Zaafir has a long history of inventing and reporting false information. In fact, he was warned by the Supreme Court against this habit and made to publicly apologise in 2007.

Muhammad Saleh Zaafir, who is the reporter of the said news items, when confronted with the same, frankly and honestly conceded that he had made no effort to verify the veracity of the allegations levelled in the said news items before publishing the same nor did he have any proof in support of the contents thereof. He, however, added at the very outset that he had utmost regards and respect for not only the said hon’ble judges of this Court but for the entire judiciary; that he did not have even an iota of doubt about their integrity and character and that reporting the said news items was a grave mistake on his part.

Muhammad Saleh Zaafir needs to understand that ‘Special Reporting’ does not mean parroting drawing room gossips and cutting-and-pasting from websites, but actually taking the time to do some basic background research and fact-checking before filing an article.

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Tags: fact checking, gossip, Husain Haqqani, incorrect information, Jang Group, Muhammad Saleh Zaafir, plagiarism, The News
Posted in Jang, The News | No Comments »

Will Ahmed Quraishi be the next memogate victim?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

The latest version of the media’s ‘memogate’ parlour game has turned from who knew what and when about the infamous memo to who knew what and when about the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May. Mansoor Ijaz invented this new version of the game by first alleging that Husain Haqqani and Asif Zardari secretly knew about the raid before it happened. He provides no evidence, of course, and his claim flies in the face of all logic and reason, but since when have logic and reason been required rules for our media parlour games? In fact, already the field has expanded to speculation that UK High Commissioner Wajid Hasan also knows something he’s not telling, including a front page article in The News that asks, “Will Wajid Hasan be the next memogate victim?” But why limit the field to only PPP officials? Surely there are plenty of people who can be brought to dock on the same quality of speculation and innuendo.

Let’s begin with Ahmed Quraishi. On 6th May, Ahmed Quraishi was the guest on Voice of Russia‘s radio programme. During the interview he said that,

“At some level, maybe not the entire government, but at some level Pakistan definitely was on board with the United States before the operation was carried out and some of the logistics that were involved in that operation do indicate that it would not have been possible to carry out the operation in its entirety without a major, a good level of cooperation on the Pakistani side”.

Quraishi goes on to say that the Abbottabad operation “of course also vindicates the US intelligence community [and] the US military in Afghanistan”. Interesting.

Then on 10th May, Ahmed Quraishi further wrote that the operation that killed Osama bin Laden was a joint Pakistan-US victory. Here is how Ahmed Quraishi described the scene:

“Crucial and critical intelligence from Pakistan and the United States succeeding in pinpointing the location of al-Qaeda terror chief. ISI gave decisive leads on the trusted courier of bin Laden. The CIA and the US military put together a plan to take him out. By virtue of the more advanced American surveillance technology, Washington filled in the gaps and sealed bin Laden’s fate.”

Ahmed Quraishi then goes on to criticise the military for not explaining their larger role in the operation.

“Instead of ‘admitting’ failure, it was better for the army chief to object to CIA hijacking a joint victory and turning it into a one-sided victory and a one-sided attack on our military and ISI. And we could have certainly done without our foreign secretary quoting US national security adviser to confirm to our media that we did scramble some fighter jets in the end. The weak media management capabilities of our civilian and military bureaucracies are breathtaking.”

Neither is Ahmed Quraishi the only one who was making such statements. Let us take a moment to revisit the front page of The Nation on 3rd May, just after the raid:

The Nation front page of 3rd May 2011

The front page article by Sikander Shaheen quotes “top level official sources” saying that “200 Pakistan Army men provided ground support” for the operation while “four helicopters of the Pakistan Army hovered over the fortress-like hideout of al-Qaeda chief at Thanda Choh”. Shaheen goes on to quote “military sources” that “US dignitaries thanked the military leadership of Pakistan on intelligence sharing and the successful operation”.

It seems that perhaps not only Ahmed Quraishi but Sikander Shaheen, military and intelligence leadership, 200 jawans and four helicopter pilots should be under suspicion.

Let us be clear: We have not seen any evidence that Ahmed Quraishi, Sikander Shaheen, Wajid Hasan, Husain Haqqani, Asif Zardari…or anyone else had any advance knowledge or was privy to any secret information about the raid. During the aftermath of the raid, there was great confusion and many people were making guesses about what happened. Because of this, it is easy to take even the words of a democrat like Wajid Hasan or a hyper-nationalist like Quraishi and twist them to create suspicion. But that is not journalism.

The White House has categorically denied Mansoor Ijaz’s claims that anyone knew about the Abbottabad operation, and headlines speculating about whether one or another government official may have had secret knowledge of the American operation are completely irresponsible. Rather than carrying out witch hunts against government officials based on speculation and innuendo, perhaps it would be better if journalists thought about who was feeding them false information following the raid and who is feeding them information now.

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Tags: Ahmed Quraishi, Asif Zardari, Conspiracy Theories, Husain Haqqani, Mansoor Ijaz, memogate, Sikander Shaheen, The Nation, The News, Wajid Hasan
Posted in Conspiracy Theories, The Nation, The News | 1 Comment »

New media circus same as old media circus

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

On Tuesday, President Zardari left for Dubai to receive medical treatment. Within minutes, the media circus began and rumours of a coup began to circulate. While no one has yet to provide a single piece of evidence suggesting that Zardari will resign or a coup is imminent, the story continues to dominate media headlines.

Part of the reason may be attributed to the way government officials like to give out as little information as possible, opening the doors to speculation. Arif Rafiq, a US-based consultant on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues, wrote on The Pakistan Policy Blog yesterday that Farhatullah Babar’s statement was clearly not the whole truth, which resulted in some journalists jumping at the opportunity to attack the president. This theory was echoed by Tariq Butt in The News the next day.

While a lack of fully forthcoming statements is a problem, especially in politics, it does not excuse reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the media. Official spokesmen have a responsibility to give the press true and accurate information. But if they don’t, it does not give journalists license to simply make up whatever they wish were true.

One of the reasons the rumours took on such a life was that they were being reported not only by the well-known anti-Zardari types, but even those such as Najam Sethi whose show on Tuesday night helped fan the flames of rumour and speculation.

Frankly, we were surprised by Sethi’s tone. This is, after all, the same journalist who strongly criticised exactly this behaviour just a few months ago.

Some well-known journalists have been predicting the end of the Zardari regime for over a year now by regularly giving D-Day deadlines. But President Asif Ali Zardari continues to defy their hollow predictions, prompting Javed Hashmi to wisecrack that a PhD in politics may be required to fathom his brand of politics. Considering how very consistently wrong they have proven to be, one may be forgiven for wondering whether it is lack of intelligence or scarcity of credible sources that lies at the root of their helplessness and rage. Or is it plain wishful thinking and personal vendettas that are masquerading as serious front-page political analyses?

Given that this was an unusual deviation for Sethi, and his claim to have been receiving word from ‘sources’, the rumour was given credibility. And yet, as the days go by, any actual substance to the rumours remains elusive, and the story has shifted from reports of speculation to reports about reports of speculation. Is there anything sillier than media reporting about how it’s reporting about rumours?

That’s not to say the rumour-mongering has stopped. Multiple newspapers including Dawn and The News reported on Thursday that a US magazine (Foreign Policy) claimed that President Zardari “may resign from office on account of ill health”. The News featured the story prominently on the front page. Despite the sensational headlines, the article they are reporting about actually says something quite different.

The original article by Josh Rogin does not report that the president may resign over ill health – that was only one speculation by an unnamed former US official. Actually, the article’s greater speculation is whether the military is plotting a coup against the government. But again, even in the Foreign Policy article, this is only rumour and speculation.

Moreover, what our media is not reporting is that the same magazine updated their article to say that the president will not resign, and that “The rumors of a silent coup are sometimes a way of trying to effect a silent coup”. Additionally, Foreign Policy published a new report yesterday saying that “Zardari won’t resign”. Will Jang consider this worthy of front page news also?

As the actual story of the president’s health condition and treatment lay to rest rumours of coups and resignations, responsible journalists should take note of what ‘sources’ were giving them what information. There they might find a much more enlightening story than the silliness we’ve been fed over the past few days.

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Tags: Arif Rafiq, Dawn, Foreign Policy, Jang Group, Josh Rogin, Najam Sethi, Pakistan Policy Blog, rumours, speculation, The News, Zardari
Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Dawn, Jang, The News | No Comments »

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