Posts Tagged ‘Imran Khan’

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Is Imran Khan victim of a media vendetta?

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Writing for Express Tribune‘s ‘Media Watchdog’ blog, Corporate Solicitor Zain Umar claims that the newspaper has a ‘Goebbel’s vendetta’ against Imran Khan. After equating The Express Tribune to the Nazi propaganda minister in the very first sentence, he goes on lambast the newspaper for allegedly “publishing literally anything against Imran Khan” while “not a single write up of his is devoid of barbed shafts aimed at Imran Khan”. This is an increasingly common claim – that Imran Khan and PTI are the victims of media bias. But is this true?

It’s certainly not true for Express Tribune‘s official Blogs where it took no effort to find pieces by multiple authors who support Imran Khan and believe PTI will be a formidable force in the next elections.

News reports in Express Tribune also include positive pieces about PTI, including some that uncritically quote Imran Khan about his party’s own exceptionalism. There are even multimedia shows about PTI.

Even editorials on Imran Khan are balanced, neither supporting nor opposing. It’s hard to consider lines like, “he will have to be taken seriously and his party’s electoral fortunes will most probably be far better than they have been in the past” as a ‘Goebbel’s vendetta’. So why do Zain Umar and many others like him believe that the media is targeting Imran Khan?

According to Imran Khan, the reason is Jews.

For those who do not understand Urdu, please allow me to explain. In this clip, Wajahat S Khan asks Imran Khan whether “the honeymoon is over” between the media and PTI since it seems that he is no longer dominating front pages as he did last year. Imran Khan begins to reply that he is fighting against two governments – the national government and the provincial government, both of which have large advertising budgets. Wajahat clarifies that he’s not talking about advertising, he’s talking about news stories. Imran Khan then replies that the problem is that the ‘Jewish lobby’ controls the global media. Wajahat reacts in disbelief, telling Imran Khan, “Don’t go there…” which shocks the PTI Chairman who doesn’t understand how someone can’t believe that the world’s media – including, apparently, The News (Jang Group), which Wajahat is holding in his hand – is part of a Jewish conspiracy against him.

Like most conspiracy theories, this one, too is made from fantasy and not fact. There may be some Jews who own some media groups in the world (Israel, for example), but there are also many Christians (The New York Times) and Muslims (The News/Jang) as well as people of many other religions as well. The fear that Imran Khan is the victim of a ‘Goebbel’s vendetta’ by the editors of Express Tribune is similarly fictitious, as is clear from the fact that the paper has regularly published pieces that were favourable to PTI and Imran Khan. Mr Umar can relax.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Express Tribune | 5 Comments »

Mubasher Lucman’s Social Media Campaign

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

A few months ago we warned Shahid Masood and Azeem Mian that Mubasher Lucman had entered the race for PTI Media Advisor and taken the contest to a whole new level. It seems that with the government’s troubles and PTI’s rising popularity, Mr lucman has stepped up his campaign using a popular PTI format – social media.

While not a prolific Twitter user, Mubasher Lucman has over the past 24 hours been quite active. The TV host notes that he is “not in politics”, but then also posts the following question about PML-N’s governance of Punjab:

Mubasher Lucman on PML-N

Now, this is a fair question for a journalist – are you satisfied with governance during recent years. But his question takes on a different meaning when read alongside his following Tweets about PML-N’s competitor, PTI:

Mubasher Lucman on Imran Khan

Mubasher Lucman on Imran Khan 2

and in case you had any doubt how Lucman saheb really feels…

Mubasher Lucman really loves Imran Khan

Mubasher Lucman really loves Imran Khan

But Mubasher Lucman does not stop at merely praising Imran Khan, he also makes a prediction about the outcome of the next elections:

Mubasher Lucman on how Imran Khan will win

That’s right. If Imran Khan doesn’t win, it’s because the election was rigged. Why even bother with elections, we wonder? Mubasher Lucman has already decided for us.

But his undying support for Imran Khan is not the only way that Mubasher Lucman is “not in politics”. Here’s his unbiased analysis of the ‘memogate’ case:

Mubasher Lucman on Memogate

All the evidence that it requires to what? Obviously all the evidence that it requires to decide the case, but with his next Tweet, the Dunya TV host makes us wonder whether the Supreme Court is even necessary since Mubasher Lucman has already decided who are “the corrupt few”. It is also telling that Lucman describes the current Supreme Court hearings as a “crusade”, and not an objective inquiry.

Mubasher Lucman is “not in politics” in so far as he has never been elected by anyone to anything. But he has also clearly inserted himself into politics by actively campaigning for his selected favourites and terming anyone he disagrees with (or just doesn’t like) as “corrupt”. That’s what political operatives do. It’s not journalism.

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Posted in Dunya | 3 Comments »

The News Attacks Imran Khan

Friday, December 16th, 2011

The News (Jang Group)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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Posted in The News | No Comments »

Ansar Abbasi, wannabe political advisor, gives himself away

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

The News (Jang Group)Ansar Abbasi is at it again with a front page column in The News (Jang Group) that offers little more than Abbasi’s personal frustration that PTI and PML-N are not joining forces against the present government. Having utterly ceased to even pretend to be a journalist, Ansar Abbasi is now fantasizing that he is political advisor to Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif. But in his advice to the opposition leaders, Ansar gives himself away.

Abbasi’s would-be political advice is especially humorous given Imran’s recent successes drawing crowds exceeding 100,000 to his jalsa in Lahore and showing legitimate growth in his party’s support since disappointing showings in past elections. Nevermind the facts, Ansar Abbasi is angry that “PTI leaders are more interested in the alleged corruption cases of Nawaz Sharif”. Abbasi is further enraged that “Imran Khan and his party did not issue any statement in support of the Supreme Court” despite the fact that later in the column he even admits that “The PTI’s spokesman Umar Cheema instead said that it was the PTI that had demanded in the very beginning to establish a commission under the Supreme Court to probe the matter”.

Meanwhile, Ansar Abbasi is also angry at Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N for focusing on allegations that “Khan’s siblings and other relatives are drawing heavy salaries from donations” to Shaukat Khanum and questions about “a residential plot allotted to the PTI chief by the then chief minister and incumbent PML-N chief on the former’s request”.

It seems that Ansar Abbasi is proposing his own NRO in which all allegations against political leaders should be set aside so long as they agree to attack the government. To begin, Ansar Abbasi would have Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif stop questioning each other and instead take the strategy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, even though both political leaders appear to know better what they are doing than Ansar Abbasi. More to the point, it appears that Ansar Abbasi is not actually interested in the success of either PTI or PML-N, but simply takes the position of “the enemy of the government is my friend”. Obviously, this raises serious concerns both about Ansar Abbasi’s ability to provide objective, fact-based reporting and analysis and also whether Jang Group is pursuing a political agenda in giving someone like Ansar Abbasi front page coverage to air his personal opinions.

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Posted in Jang, The News | 1 Comment »

Is media playing favourites?

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Meher Bokhari and Imran Khan

We’re all well aware of just how vicious the media can be, especially when it comes to politics. Whoever is in power at the time will always suffer the greatest number of attacks, but even opposition politicians are not usually spared the venom of our talk show hosts and their guests. So when a politician is given soft treatment, it’s hard not to notice.

Writing for The Express Tribune, Ayesha Ijaz Khan, a lawyer and political commentator, had noticed that the media appears to be giving the soft touch to Imran Khan.

The electronic media has undoubtedly played a large part in introducing Imran Khan as a political option. On some talk shows, Imran is a regular, appearing at least a couple of times every month. However, the frequent appearances notwithstanding, the PTI still remains an enigma in the minds of many viewers. With a few exceptions, notably an excellent “Hard Talk”- style interview conducted by Iftikhar Ahmad on “Jawab Deyh” (October 2, 2011), most talk show hosts end up chit-chatting drawing room style with Imran, allowing him to talk big on generalisations but omitting to grill him on any specific plans.

And unlike the generalisations that are being allowed to pass in some channels, Ayesha provides specifics.

Shortly after his successful Lahore rally, Imran appeared on Nasim Zehra’s “Policy Matters” (November 5, 2011). To the anchor’s credit, she had researched Imran’s declaration of assets, but when she questioned him on the discrepancy between the present market value of Imran’s assets and the far lower purchase value disclosed on the return, he dismissed her question altogether, choosing to lecture us instead on accounting principles, Imran-style. As the conversation progressed to his China trip, the fluffiness of Imran’s responses became even more apparent. When he spoke of China pulling millions out of poverty, Ms Zehra agreed, as would most of us, that this is an enormous accomplishment. But there were no follow-up questions when Imran claimed that Pakistan could use the Chinese model. How, I wondered, would Pakistan apply the Chinese model? China has certainly made giant economic strides but would these have been possible without its strict one-child policy? Hasn’t China also severely curbed religious practice and democracy? Are these measures possible, or even advisable, in Pakistan?

When some people agree to appear on talk shows, they know they will be taking a beating. Others are treated with respect to their face, only to be skewered the following night when they are not there to defend themselves. It is the rare politician who is given the soft treatment both on the air and off. We do not take a position on whether or not Imran Khan or his PTI deserve support, but we do take a position on whether the media should treat some politicians differently than others based on their own political preferences and personal biases.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The News, or PR for Rent?

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

The News (Jang Group)Reporting on Imran Khan’s rally has taken many forms. From the varying estimates of the crowd’s numbers which easily give away a journalist’s political leanings, to the thinly-veiled giddiness of Hamid Mir, to The Nation‘s tasking Imran with “declaring his own assets first”, many of the media reactions to Imran Khan’s rally on Sunday were to be expected. One piece, though, stands out for mention.

In Monday’s issue of The News (Jang Group), an article appeared with the title, ‘Imran Khan has the calculus’. The piece paints Imran as a ‘statesman’ with ‘a wise head on his shoulders’ and describes him as ‘exposing the President and his team’. In fact, the piece was a laudatory hymn to Imran’s speech the day before. All of this would be expected on the Opinion page, but this piece, once again, appeared on page 5 as ‘National News’. True, the piece was labeled as ‘News Analysis’, but here is where things take a turn for the strange – this ‘analysis’ was credited to ‘our correspondent’.

Who was this ‘correspondent’ that wrote such a glowing praise of Imran’s appearance? Readers are not let to know. This appears to be an additional step of The News that not only moves opinion pieces into the news sections, but now even leaves them unsigned so that readers cannot even judge the credibility of the author. How are we to know if this piece was written by a staff reporter, a political scientist, or a PTI media advisor? Was this a legitimate ‘news analysis’ by a neutral analyst, or a press release from PTI’s Punjab office?

There is nothing wrong with providing analysis to help readers get a broad view of current events. But this is what opinion pages are for. Presently, The News has two pages that are correctly labeled as ‘Opinion’, but apparently it is not enough since we have seen blatant opinions bearing the labels ‘commentary’ and ‘analysis’ creeping into the regular news sections. Now, Jang Group editors are not even bothering to give the name of the author. Recently, we saw similar bias in The News for Islami Jamiat Talaba (JIT). If The News is willing to print paeans to whatever party is presently holding events, one might ask if The News is a newspaper of professional journalism or a newspaper for rent.

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Posted in Jang, The News | No Comments »

Media Conspiracies and Imran Khan

Monday, October 31st, 2011

In an otherwise straightforward speech in Lahore on Sunday, Imran Khan alluded to a conspiracy theory of Mansoor Ijaz that this blog has discredited not only once, but twice already. One can give Imran Khan the benefit of doubt, though, as there is a history of examples of journalists feeding Imran conspiracies, possibly as an attempt to curry favour with the PTI chief. As we stated before, “Whether or not you support Imran Khan, all political leaders need to be given the facts, not led by their noses on a wild goose chase”. As Imran’s political influence grows, it is important that he – and all political leaders – be able to make decisions from factual information, not conspiracies. Otherwise, the consequences can be disastrous. The New York Times recently reported that Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq was very prone to conspiracy theories and, as a result, made critical errors in government decisions. Pakistan should not follow this dangerous path.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories | 2 Comments »

Mubashir Lucman Enters Competition For PTI Media Advisor

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Watch out Shahid Masood and Azeem Mian, Mubashir Luqman is up in the running for PTI Media Advisor. Last night, Dunya TV anchor Mubashir Luqman took the contest to a whole new level. Here is a part of the clip that was aired:

Pairing up with Hassan Nisar, Mr. Luqman starts off his program by giving wrong statistics once again saying that more people in Karachi have died in the last three years than civil war in Bosnia or in the 1971 and 1965 India-Pakistan wars. Although the conditions in Karachi are extremely tragic and the violence is at its peak, the number of deaths in Karachi in the last three years is not more than the casualties of Bosnian civil war.

According to the ICRC data, 200,000 people were killed, 12,000 of them children, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million were forced to flee their homes.

The situation in Karachi is terrible, but comparing to Bosnia is simply playing with the audiences’ emotions.

Same goes for comparing the violence in Karachi to the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani wars.

In 1965 war Pakistan faced almost 3,900 casualties. According to different estimates in 1971 war Pakistan faced around 9,000 casualties.

By contrast, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan claims that 267 people were killed in 2008, 291 in 2009, and the number rose to 748 in 2010. Pakistan Media Watch unquestioningly condemns the violence in Karachi, and we also condemn giving false numbers and statistics. The numbers of deaths from target killings in Karachi are terrible enough. They should not be exploited for political purposes.

To discuss the situation of Karachi, Luqman invited Hassan Nisar and Imran Khan. Imran Khan was adamant he could solve the problems of Karachi by him bringing his own police officers starting from S.P/D.S.Ps to constables. Despite this being a most extraordinary suggestion, Mubashir Luqman did not question how Imran Khan planned on doing so. Rather he acted as if this was a perfectly normal suggestion.

Imran Khan took the opportunity of Luqman’s programme to make political speeches against the government during which Mubashir Luqman and Hassan Nisar continuously nodded their heads in agreement. Hassan Nisar mentioned how he had a discussion with Imran Khan at his house and says the entire awam is behind him. Mubashir Luqman then congratulated Imran Khan for a successful dharna and wishes that media should have covered it more.

Mubashir Luqman then made his move, telling Imran Khan that if he takes a stand against the current politicians and gives a deadline or a notice to them, Mubashir Luqman himself and Hassan Nisar will be in the front line helping him out. Imran Khan smiles and says ‘I thought I was inquilabi but you two have even surpassed me’. Mubashir Luqman then offers to take justice in his own hands and says “baba hum khood police ban sakty hain” and that everyone including the PTI should take it to the streets in Karachi and carry out justice on the street if the government cant provide peace and security to the people – a shockingly unprofessional and inappropriate statement that borders incitement of greater violence.

Ironically, this is the same Mubashir Luqman who during the floods last year reported that PTI was all a drama and show, and that their supposed relief camps were nothing but empty tents with PTI flags on them to fool people about their aid work.

Of course, this was before recent polls were published suggesting that Imran Khan’s popularity is rising and the competition for PTI Media Advisor had begun.

TV viewers look to news programmes for unbiased and transparent reporting on the issues. When the issues are as serious and complex as the security situation of Karachi, this becomes even more important. Unfortunately, viewers who tuned into Khari Baat Luqman Kay Saath were provided not only misinformed statistics, but the embarrassing display of another TV anchor so openly behaving as a politician’s chamcha.

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Posted in Dunya | No Comments »

Competition for PTI media advisor

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

It seems Azim Mian may have some competition in his quest to be PTI media advisor. A dear reader pointed us to the following video clip that shows Shahid Masood interviewing Imran Khan on his programme Shahid Nama, and it leaves us shaking our heads.

Anyone watching the program can see that Shahid Masood’s famous ability to grill his guests has gone missing when Imran Khan appears on the set. Rather, Masood falls over himself to praise the PTI leader as gaining popularity. It is hard to watch the clip without feeling that Shahid Masood is trying to create a soft corner for the potential 2013 contender in public’s eyes.

Obviously Shahid Masood can support any politician he chooses, but the question is whether or not in his capacity as a journalist would Shahid Masood extend the same gentle treatment to Asif Zardari whose failure the TV anchor began predicting from day one.

Journalists and anchors have a responsibility to the audience to act as a neutral moderator. Rather than trying to become best friends with Imran Khan, Shahid Masood could have asked his guest whether the Pew poll he mentions can be reflective of national support since it was conducted in majorly urban populated areas and reflected mostly the opinions of youth and urbanites, a vote bank not completely representative of Pakistan’s 180+ million population. He could have asked for details of how Imran Khan would address the issues facing the nation.

Showing favour to one politician over another one is not journalism, it’s campaigning. Shahid Masood should not pronounce Imran Khan as not competitive, but neither should he crown him as king. The people of Pakistan will choose their leaders, not the media elites. In order to make that decision wisely, the people rely on journalists to ask tough but fair questions of all politicians.

 

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Posted in Express News | No Comments »

Journalist or Wannabe PTI Media Advisor?

Friday, August 5th, 2011

The problem of political bias in reporting is an ongoing topic of this blog and others. This is a failure of journalistic ethics and professionalism that, unfortunately, is rampant in our media. But rarely do we have the opportunity to see such a textbook example of this behaviour as we do today.

Last year, at a dinner for Imran Khan in Toronto, Canada, an attendee had the foresight to capture on video a conversation between the PTI chief and a senior journalist from Jang Group, Mr Azim M Mian.

During his pandering, Azim Mian brings up his discredited report that Asif Zardari is secretly an American. Azim Mian claims that the information on the website was changed because the all powerful “street harami” Husain Haqqani paid them off. If this is true, Azim should provide some proofs to back up his claim rather than trying to excuse his mistake by blaming the same old bogey.

But even if Azim Mian was correct and someone paid the website to change the information, what would that say about the credibility of the website anyway? If someone could pay the website to change it once, someone else could have paid the website to say something false against Zardari could they not?

When he is talking to Imran Khan, however, it is not just Asif Zardari who is secretly an American infiltrator in the highest levels of Pakistan’s government, but no less than eight ministers also are Americans! Imran Khan is justifiably shocked by this claim. Azim Mian assures him that not only are they American citizens, but they have sworn an oath to sacrifice their lives for America!

If this is true, why is Azim Mian keeping this information secret? Is Jang Group aware that their reporter has information that could be vital to nation interests and yet he is withholding it from the authorities? Will they demand that he provide this evidence to the authorities immediately?

Sadly, this is neither the first time nor is it the last time that Azim Mian has engaged in such bald faced political shenanigans under the cover of journalism. One year ago he reported that Hussain Haroon would resign his post as Ambassador to the UN before August 2010. One year later and Ambassador Haroon remains at his post.

Earlier this year, Mian was caught trying to manufacture controversies about President Zardari trying to make a war on the media by convincing the US Congress to request Secretary Clinton to cancel the visas of certain journalists. After this sensational article was published, we were able to prove that it was another ridiculous conspiracy theory that could not have happened without a time machine.

Another issue that should be considered is how such behaviour ultimately effects politics. Whether or not you support Imran Khan, all political leaders need to be given the facts, not led by their noses on a wild goose chase. By sitting and feeding Imran Khan a plate of bull in an embarrassing attempt to curry his favour, Azim Mian is making a fool out of a political leader by filling his head with fantastic tales and falsehoods.

The question we are left with is whether Jang Group is a serious media group, or a political advisory group? Though this instance involved a Jang reporter, it is not the only culprit in this game of media politics. Is is time for all media groups to show if they have any standards and if there is any accountability for the behaviour of their employees no matter how beyond the pale.

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Posted in Jang | 1 Comment »

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