For reference, the cartoon we are examining is below:

Let us now recall the true outcomes of each of the events noted in the cartoon:

Dr Aafia’s Case: President Zardari ordered the government to provide free legal aid to Dr Aafia, and government officials in Islamabad and the US worked for her defence from the beginning of her case, including hiring an expensive legal team on the insistence of her brother Mohammed Ali Siddiqui. The government’s support for Dr Aafia continues as Interior Minister Rehman Malik met with Dr Aafia’s sister in March to discuss continued efforts to obtaining her early release.

Raymond Davis Case: Raymond Davis was arrested by Pakistani police, indicted by a Pakistani court, and was sentenced to 41 days imprisonment, Rs 20,000 fine for carrying an illegal weapon, and diyat of Rs 200 million to the heirs of the deceased.

Osama’s Case: This is a tougher nut to crack. What exactly is the case? That Osama was present in Pakistan? This much has been confirmed by al Qaeda and his wife. That the Americans carried out the raid without informing Pakistan? That too is not contested. There was never a “surrender” to anyone, so it is not clear what this means.

US Apology over Salala: The same day this cartoon was published, Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman was quoted in Dawn saying, “Pakistan will continue to press for an apology, and work for best outcomes for our nation. As the foreign minister said, Pakistan has made its point, and we will continue to do so”. Again, it seems that no surrender has been offered.

NATO Supplies: Discussion on whether or not to re-open NATO supplies took place at a joint meeting of Defence Committee of the Cabinet and military leadership. No decision was announced, but there are reports that the leadership is close to an agreement to re-open supplies at a cost of $1 million each day and other possible conditionalities. That’s a negotiated settlement, not a surrender, and it hasn’t even happened yet.

To surrender is to quit, to give up, to submit. In none of these cases did Pakistan surrender to anyone. The Nation may not agree with the outcomes in each of these cases, but to term any of them as ‘surrender’ is misleading.

The piece by Husain Haqqani was actually the reproduction of an op-ed that was published in The New York Times last week. Ahmad Noorani, whose title at Jang Group is ‘Investigative Journalist’ has a response published next to the reproduction of Haqqani’s op-ed.

We do not intend to either defend or reject Husain Haqqani’s or Ahmad Noorani’s personal opinions as each is entitled to his own personal opinions. But we do believe it is important to note a few things about this ‘Haqqani vs. Noorani’ episode as it points to several important problems related to journalistic practices.

First is the simple fact that The News continues to blur the line between journalism and opinion making. If Jang Group values the opinions of Ahmad Noorani, they should move him from the Investigative Reporting department to the Editorial department. Publishing Mr Noorani’s personal opinions in place of factual news reports undermines the credibility of Jang Group‘s reporting as a whole as it suggests that the Editors do not know the difference between facts and opinions. Similarly, if The News wanted to republish Haqqani’s op-ed from The New York Times, they should have done so on the Opinion page, not the National News page. If they wanted to publish a response, that too should have appeared on the Opinion page by a qualified columnist or a member of the Editorial staff. Publishing these pieces in the National News section deprives readers of actual news reporting, displacing facts with opinions.

Then there are the serious factual problems with Mr Noorani’s column.

According Noorani’s piece, Husain Haqqani “accused the entire Pakistani nation as the only Muslim society, which supports terrorists”. This sounds terrible. And it would be if Haqqani had actually written such a thing. Here’s what Haqqani actually wrote: “Pakistan was the only Muslim country in which hundreds of demonstrators gathered to show solidarity with the dead terrorist figurehead”.

Haqqani wrote “hundreds of demonstrators” and Ahmad Noorani claimed that he accused “the entire Pakistani nation”. Haqqani wrote that some demonstrators “show solidarity with the dead terrorist” and Ahmad Noorani claimed that he said we all “support terrorists”. Ahmad Noorani then goes on to say that Haqqani “claimed the whole Pakistani nation was supporting Osama on his death anniversary”. Again, this would be a serious charge if it were true. But again, Haqqani’s op-ed contains no such claim. The fact that Haqqani’s op-ed was re-published next to Ahmad Noorani’s response makes this impossible to deny.

Did Noorani not actually read Haqqani’s piece before he wrote his response? Or is he simply lying about what Haqqani said in an attempt to vilify him? Either way, the next obvious question is how the Editors at The News could allow such a potentially libelous mistake to be published in their newspaper? Did they not read both Haqqani’s op-ed and Noorani’s response to fact-check before publishing them?

These factual errors occur early in Noorani’s piece, and set the stage for some bizarre acts to follow. For example, shifting from Haqqani’s op-ed to the question of allegations against President Zardari, Noorani writes;

…none else than the US Senate itself had investigated this money laundering case and had held Haqqani’s boss in Islamabad guilty of money laundering.

This raises two important questions. First, how can Ahmad Noorani be trusted to provide accurate reports on court cases, which he often reports about, if he has already convicted certain parties in his own head? Is he a journalist or a wanna-be prosecutor? Second, if Ahmad Noorani accepts the findings of US Senators on the issue of money laundering in Pakistan, does he also accept the findings of US Senators on the issue of Taliban ‘safe havens’ in Pakistan? We would kindly request that Mr Noorani be careful how he selectively quotes foreign politicians against Pakistanis because his actions might result in grave consequences that he did not consider.

Things take a turn for the truly bizarre, though, when Noorani returns to the topic of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan and Haqqani’s asking “why Pakistanis are debating the secret US raid in Abbottabad and not asking who was responsible for his presence in that city”. In his response, Noorani asks the following question:

Has Mr Haqqani not been briefed about the Pakistani position on this issue and is he not supposed to discuss that as a representative of the Islamabad government in US media?

This is truly bizarre. Is Mr Noorani not aware that Haqqani resigned his position several months ago and holds no official position, therefore is neither party to briefings nor a representative of the govenrment? Noorani’s analysis also raises the question: what is this briefing about the Pakistan position on this issue – something that has not been publicly reported. If Mr Noorani is aware of briefings on an official position with regards to Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, perhaps he should report them to the public. Or, if they are state secrets that he has been made privy to – officially or unofficially – perhaps he should not expose them in order to ‘get’ someone.

These are but a few of the factual errors and professional problems with Ahmad Noorani’s response to Husain Haqqani’s op-ed. Many more exist. Such can be expected given that Ahmad Noorani is not a professional analyst, but they are deeply troubling as he is supposedly an ‘Investigative Journalist’. How many of Ahmad Noorani’s supposedly investigative pieces are filled with factual mistakes and uninformed speculation? Ahmad Noorani is entitled to his own opinions, but he is not entitled to misrepresent his subjects and invent ‘facts’ from thin air.

Then there is the issue of editorial oversight, which appears to be completely missing in this case. Several of Ahmad Noorani’s factual errors are easily detected simply by reading the very first sentences of Husain Haqqani’s op-ed. If Ahmad Noorani did not read them, shouldn’t his editors have? This would have saved The News the embarrassment of publishing an opinion piece riddled with so many factual mistakes.

Finally, there is the issue of journalistic credibility. If The News publishes ‘Investigative Journalists’ who have already formed opinions about their subjects, how can readers know that what they are getting is objective research and not reports twisted by Confirmation Bias?

We take no position on the opinions contained in either piece. Haqqani’s op-ed was certainly worthy of a responding editorial, though why The News gave this assignment to Ahmad Noorani and not the Editorial staff leaves us scratching our heads. Certainly Ahmad Noorani is entitled to his opinion, but our concern is that his response contains so many glaring factual and ethical errors as to threaten the credibility of one of Pakistan’s largest newspapers by publishing it as it was filed.

Noorani’s piece may be a hit within certain quarters, but people who expect a newspaper to value facts – even those with no fondness for Husain Haqqani or the PPP – are certain to see Noorani’s column as a serious lapse in professional judgment. It will be interesting to see how the leadership of Jang Group will address this embarrassment.

See also:

• Jang Group Attacks Human Rights Watch
• Ahmad Noorani Wrong Again
• The News Report on Constitution Contains Factual Error
• Disaster Relief, Then and Now
• Dear Editors, Please Wake Up!
• Ahmad Noorani Mischaracterizes Zardari Statements, Contradicts Own Newspaper

The article quotes PAMCO former CEO Dr Hamid Jalil giving his opinion that because a case of ‘mad cow’ disease was discovered in a California farm by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Pakistan should stop import of live animals from the US. The report which appeared in Monday’s Lahore edition does not present any evidence that any diseased animal has been imported to Pakistan.

According to livestock and meat trade data available from the USDA website, America’s largest export market for beef is Canada followed by Mexico and Japan. In fact, Pakistan does not even make the list of the top 20 countries that import American beef, falling instead into the category, “Other countries”.

It should also be noted that the case of ‘mad cow’ was identified in the US specifically because they have put in place systems to monitor and trace diseases to the source. Despite the impressive growth in Pakistani beef production, we have not invested in similar systems of tracking and cataloguing livestock.

Dr Hamid Jalil raises a legitimate point about whether imports of American beef should be suspended until the USDA can confirm that the disease has been contained and does not pose a threat. This is something that scientists and can test and confirm so that the people are assured of the safety of any food imports. There is no evidence presented, however, that any infected cattle have been imported till date. Neither is there any evidence to support the conspiracy theory that US is targeting Pakistan with diseased cattle.

We noted a few years ago that Mr Sehgal had been praising US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and emphasising the need for Pakistan to accept the $7.5 billion US aid package known as ‘Kerry Lugar’ without informing the public that he had business relations with the American private security and logistics company G4S, formerly known as Wackenhut Corporation, which has contracts in Pakistan.

Actually, Mr Sehgal’s business interests go far beyond a simple association with an American private security company. He is Chairman of Pathfinder G4S, a company that owns defence and logistics businesses across Pakistan including the two largest private security G4S companies in Pakistan Security & Management Services (Private) Ltd and Wackenhut Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd, SMS Couriers (Private) Ltd, Pathfinder (Private) Ltd (Trade and Countertrade); other companies in the GROUP are; First Select Pakistan (Private) Ltd, Energy and Resource Services (Private) Ltd (energy-related projects) and Dynavis (Private) Ltd (Group marketing and publications). SMS Land Development (Pvt) Ltd and SMS Construction (Pvt) Ltd.

Here is a clip of Ikram Sehgal himself explaining his business interests on the American talk show Washington Journal:

We applaud Mr Sehgal on his business success, which is truly impressive. And, whether or not we disagree, we respect Mr Sehgal’s right to personally believe that military coups and dictatorships are the best path forward for the nation. But we also believe that more disclosure is needed so that when Mr Sehgal is presenting his views, people are not misled into believing that he is qualified as a trained academic. Ikram Sehgal is first and foremost a businessman who makes his money from defence and security contracts, including contracts with foreign governments. Media groups promoting Ikram Sehgal’s views should disclose this information so that the public can judge his opinions based on all the facts.

Here is the real photo of Rupert Murdoch for comparison.

Has no one at The News actually seen a photo of Rupert Murdoch before? More importantly, doesn’t anyone at The News know what a human being looks like? The bizarre proportions on the figure in the photo published should have at least made someone check the authenticity of the photo before it went to publication. And a simple ‘Google Images’ search would have easily revealed that it was not a real photo of the subject.

As funny as this mistake is, it raises troubling questions about fact checking and credibility at The News. If such an obvious fake can make it all the way to print, what else in The News has not been fact-checked or verified?

The story Shaheen Sehbai Tweeted is posted on the website ‘News Central Asia’, which is run by former officer Pakistan Navy Tariq Saeedi who emigrated to Turkmenistan.

In 2002, it was not America that Tariq Saeedi was warning about, but a conspiracy by “Mossad, RAW and Israeli-Russian-Ukrainian drug mafia” to take over the entire world. As usual, though, taking over the entire world starts by taking over Pakistan. And these Hindu-Zionists were being aided by a government official who “aimed to undermine the whole foundation of Pakistan”. According to Tariq Saeedi, that official was Benazir Bhutto.

It cannot be said with certainty but there are some reasons to assume that Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, wittingly or unwittingly, played in the hands of RAW-Mossad masterminds. High ups in Pakistan’s military still believe that Benazir Bhutto has connections with RAW-Mossad nexus and General Pervez Musharraf himself declared her as “security risk” during a chat with Pakistan’s leading editors and correspondents just before his referendum campaign.

Benazir’s visit to India last year at a time when Pakistan was going through one of the worst crises in its history, and her statements there which aimed to undermine the whole foundation of Pakistan, generated more than a flicker of doubt in analytic minds. The basic question arises: Who is Benazir Bhutto? Leaving BB to her own fate, let’s return to RAW-Mossad connection.

Saeedi updated his story by 2010, though, leaving behind the slanderous accusations against Benazir Bhutto and transforming America from the simple pawn of Mossad to a global force preparing for a full-scale invasion of Pakistan.

He explained, “The US Navy would be in a position after July 2010 to station some landing ships, probably four, near the territorial waters of Pakistan. They would be able to land and support more than 30000 troops, complete with transport units and fighting gear, anywhere at the Pakistan coastline between Pasni and Gawadar. There would be aircraft carriers with more than enough warplanes to overwhelm the Pakistan Airforce. This is the other jaw of the pincer.”
The picture thus emerging was that after July 2010, the US would have substantial number of troops at the border of Pakistan with Afghanistan. This is the area where the Chagai district of Pakistani Balochistan meets the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The total number of these troops, Oleg in Moscow estimated, would be more than 35000.

Simultaneously, as Simon told us, there would be some 30000 soldiers and marines waiting to land at the beaches of Balochistan. This makes military sense, especially in the face of the fact that the part of Balochistan that lies between these two pressure points does not have any significant presence or support system of Pakistan army.

As usual, this conspiracy theory too did not turn out as predicted. So why is Shaheen Sehbai projecting the old tales of a discredited conspiracy theorist? The answer may lie in his Tweet.

Shaheen Sehabi recommends Tariq Saeedi’s tale with the caveat, “Don’t know how credible is it, but must see n react”. In other words, Shaheen Sehbai read some sensational tale on the internet and without taking a few minutes to check the credibility of the piece and its author, he recommended it as ‘must see’. This Tweet was not even based on the rumour from a personal source, but some random writing posted on the internet! It took us approximately 5 minutes to determine just how credible the story is.

This raises the obvious question of what other sensational tales Shaheen Sehbai has repeated without doing any background checks or investigations. That Shaheen Sehbai does not know how credible the tales he is repeating are raises troubling questions about Shaheen Sehbai’s own credibility.

Saleem begins by terming the Prime Minister an ‘ex-con’ based on his having been convicted by the Supreme Court of contempt and completing his 30-second sentence. But even in the very first paragraph the author’s argument begins to run into problems. According to Farrukh Saleem, the dictionary defines a convict as a “person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court.”

The Prime Minister, however, was never charged with a crime. According to Dawn, “The bench of the Supreme Court had charged the prime minister with civil contempt, instead of judicial or criminal contempt”. If the Prime Minister was not charged with a crime, how could he be convicted of such? Such mischaracterisations raise the question whether Farrukh Saleem is trying to have an honest discussion about the Prime Minister’s case, or whether he has some other agenda.

Actually, facts do not appear to have been the purpose of Farrukh Saleem’s article, anyway, as is evidenced by his second paragraph in which the author proposes his own sentence against the Prime Minister:

The ‘ex-con’ label, in the world outside the Land of the Pure, attracts lifelong implications including social stigma, vilification, societal and employment discrimination. Social stigma is when society thinks that a particular person has done something “really bad”. Social stigma is the “severe disapproval of, or discontent with, a person on the grounds of” criminality. As a consequence there are severe consequences including being branded for life, employment plus loan discrimination. All in all, these are all societal measures to discourage such behaviour.

The author then writes something that suggests the Prime Minister alone is not his target:

Plus, the day the Supreme Court found the PM guilty of a crime saw a PPP candidate winning in Multan PP-194 by-elections.

What does the success of Usman Bhatti in PP-194 by-elections have to do with the Prime Minister’s contempt case? Is it the case that Farrukh Saleem is upset not because he believes the Prime Minister did not receive harsh enough punishment, but because a certain political party continues to succeed at the polls?

The answer may be found in Farrukh Saleem’s concluding paragraph in which he explains his own theory of ‘journalism’.

Law does not belong to the courts alone, the Pakistani society-and the voter-must also vilify and discriminate against the behaviour and actions that have been declared as being criminal or illegal by the courts.

The author appears to be boldly suggesting that voters should punish the PPP as a whole because the Prime Minister was convicted on a charge of civil contempt in a complicated and controversial case. Farrukh Saleem starts his column by mischaracterising the Prime Minister’s case, and then uses this mischaracterisation to request voters to punish the Prime Minister’s party at the polls. This is not journalism, it’s political activism.

For our dear readers who do not understand Urdu, please allow me to offer an explanation. This clip begins with Kamran Khan asking the Information Minister for his views on whether the Supreme Court would acquit the Prime Minister. But Minister Kaira had something he wanted to say first.

My views later, but let’s first discuss the initial 18 minutes of your programme. The way you conducted your show – aiming at PM’s sons, family, his character – you have already declared him a convict, and are asking me this question after giving your opinion.

You are giving your opinion first and then asking me about my views, knowing that it’s not the anchor’s right to give his or her opinion first. Your right is asking questions. You already created a mindset in your audience – a biased mindset, that is – before even asking me my views.

You also showed a few clips from Chief Justice speeches in the beginning that were “assumptive”. – “If”, “In-case”, “this could happen”, “about to be give verdict” etc. You didn’t say anything, and yet you said a lot of things. In all your conversation, you kept the thrust on showing that he is a sinner and verdict has already been declared against him. Is this all not an influence on the court that is going to decide tomorrow? Is this not an attempt to bias the court?

The way you talked about my PM, I listened with a lot of patience. I listened to you for 18 mins defaming my party leader and the PM and I didn’t say a word so please let me speak. PM is appearing in front of the court tomorrow and you lay special emphasis on this when you said that “this has become a habit of the PM” and that “I will not accept this decision” even though the PM never once said this. I am completely negating your statement and saying that PM never said anything like that. He has always said, “I respect the court”. His lawyer inside the court mentioned that whatever you decide here will be implemented upon to the fullest.

The way you thrust forward your views is similar to bending facts and distorting them. You build up your opinion in front of viewers and this is a very unacceptable. We go and fight our cases in the courts; we don’t fight with the courts.

Kaira’s complaint about Kamran Khan’s behaviour may seem like the frustrations of a PPP Minister, but they might also be familiar to another high profile figure who is anything but a jiyala. Five years ago, Kamran Khan was playing the same role of media creating a biased mindset in the audience only this time his target was not the PM, but Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry himself.

We have noted several times the importance of media acting responsibly and not attempting to influence the outcome of a case or to create a biased mindset in the public before the Court has made its decisions. Opposition supporters may be enjoying the media’s keeping the PM in their sights today, but the PPP won’t be the party in power forever. And when the tables turn, well, just ask the Chief Justice…

Reporting the Court’s decision, Dawn carried the headline, Commission free to record Haqqani’s testimony via video: SC. According to this report, the Court favoured Haqqani’s plea and urged the memo commission to provide the former Ambassador with video link facilities.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the judicial commission probing the memo scandal could record Husain Haqqani’s testimony via video link from London, DawnNews reported.

A three-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, heard Haqqani’s petition urging it to allow him the video link facility on security grounds.

The court ruled that the commission could record Haqqani’s testimony through video link if it thought fit.

The News/Geo, however, carried a very different headline about the same hearing: ‘SC rejects Haqqani’s video link plea’.

The Supreme Court (SC) resumed proceedings on a plea of Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, seeking its direction for the judicial commission to record his statement via video conferencing that was rejected by the court.

Ironically, both of these reports can be technically true, even though they are giving very different perceptions. The Supreme Court appears to have decided that it would not interfere directly in the commission’s proceedings, so it gave its advice to the commission to comply with Husain Haqqani’s request while not actually ordering it to do so.

Unfortunately, the article in The News/Geo does not provide this information, allowing for the misperception that the Supreme Court believes that Haqqani should not be allowed to record his statement via video link when, in fact, it said the opposite. Dawn, on the other hand, gave a more full accounting of the facts. We do not know why The News/Geo reported the Supreme Court’s decision the way it did, but we are concerned that people getting their information from these media outlets may be misinformed about what the Court actually said.

In a post titled ‘Fragmented Media, Fragmented Nation’ earlier this year we asked, ‘How can we agree on how to solve the most important issues facing the nation if we can’t even agree on what the most important issues are?’ In the case of the Supreme Court’s decision on Haqqani’s video link plea, media may agree on the issue, but by leaving out certain facts, some groups are fragmenting the nation by creating confusion about what actually happened. In order for the public to make informed decisions, we need all the facts – not only those that are convenient to a particular agenda.

We would also like to give special recognition to Express Tribune who, like The News/Geo originally reported that the Supreme Court had rejected Haqqani’s plea. Realising the mistake, the editors quickly corrected the report to reflect the facts. Additionally, the editors left a ‘Correction’ notice to prevent further confusion about why the report had changed:

Correction: Express News had earlier reported that the Supreme Court had rejected Haqqani’s application. This is incorrect. The application was referred to the judicial commission. The correction has been made.

We have noted in the past that mistakes happen, and media groups can earn the public’s trust by admitting their mistake and quickly correcting it rather than becoming defensive and making excuses. Express Tribune‘s correction note is an excellent example of responsible journalism that sets a standard which other media groups should be encouraged to follow. We look forward to a similar correction by The News/Geo.