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.

The report in The News is credited to ‘Monitoring Desk’ and consists of several paragraphs cut and pasted from an article by Nicholas Schmidle in the American magazine, The New Yorker. Schmidle gives an exciting and detailed account of the Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May. The account is so detailed that the American reporter even notes what is stuffed into the pockets of the SEALs as they fly to bin Laden’s compound and what they were thinking as they climbed the stairs in the house to find the al Qaeda leader.

When Schmidle’s report was published, it instantly gained international attention. With this attention, however, came scrutiny of Schmidle’s reporting techniques. Suddenly, the reporter found himself under the spotlight when The Washington Post revealed that Nicholas Schmidle never interviewed any of the SEALs involved in the operation.

Schmidle says he wasn’t able to interview any of the 23 Navy SEALs involved in the mission itself. Instead, he said, he relied on the accounts of others who had debriefed the men.

But a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.

The SEALs, he writes of the raid’s climactic moment, “instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft,” the mission’s name for bin Laden, implying that the SEALs themselves had conveyed this impression to him.

He also writes that the raiders “were further jostled by the awareness that they were possibly minutes away from ending the costliest manhunt in American history; as a result, some of their recollections — on which this account is based — may be imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.”

Except that the account was based not on their recollections but on the recollections of people who spoke to the SEALs.

Once this was revealed, other media groups began issuing public corrections. A professor who knows the reporter wrote that his article actually follows a long line of previous problems with his reporting on Pakistan including a time that he said that because he learned some Urdu, he could also understand Pashto. She goes on to note that Schmidle claims in his piece that the translator Ahmed yelled at locals in Pashto to return to their homes. She then points out that this detail caught her eye as “the majority of persons in Abbottabad, where the raid took place, speak Hindko rather than Pashto”.

How could this happen? According to the professor C. Christine Fair, Nicholas Schmidle was not an accredited journalist and had even been denied his visa due to lack of credentials. It was not until he was taken under the wing of Shireen Mazari that he was able to enter Pakistan.

Mr. Schmidle had one serious problem: he was not an accredited journalist, which meant the Pakistani government was disinclined to give him a journalism visa. He sought my advice. I explained to him that visa issues are not my bailiwick but I outlined some of the key issues he could consider if and when he sets out upon his newfound adventure. Though he didn’t know much about Pakistan, Mr. Schmidle struck me as a fast study.

In the end, Dr. Shireen Mazari (an outspoken, anti-American polemicist) agreed to host Mr. Schmidle at the think-tank she ran at the time. However, it was a bargain with the devil: he still was not a journalist and he got his visa at the behest of a dubious shill for Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

Not only did The News plagiarise a discredited article, it plagiarised a discredited article by someone who can’t tell the difference between Urdu and Pashto.

On one day, The News publishes a front page conspiracy theory based on inaccurate information the reporter heard while watching an Indian TV channel. Rather than admit the mistake and publish the correct information the next day, The News chose to publish a sensational piece that plagiarises from a discredited article in an American magazine. Is there any foreign report that is too poor for Jang Group not to repeat it if it makes good headlines? Along with credibility, Jang Group’s shame seems to be vanishing also.

Most of the piece is a list of accusations against PPP completely unrelated to the article’s main thesis which is the claim that the Sharifs held “unfaltering conviction” and “stood tall and delivered” on a commitment to see the Chief Justice restored.

The premise of the article is based on a Wikileaks cable dated 31 January 2008 that MNA Anusha Khan says proves that the Sharifs were standing strongly behind the restoration of the Chief Justice:

According to yet another leaked US embassy cable, the then US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, called on Nawaz Sharif on January 31, 2008 and “strongly opposed the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry”. But the Sharifs stuck to their principled stance and “insisted that without restoring the chief justice, there was no point to filling other slots on the bench.

Here is what the cable actually says:

5. (C) Nawaz expected both PPP and PML-N would do well at the polls if the elections were free and fair; he dismissed the Pakistan Muslim League party, saying that Pervaiz Elahi would get few, if any votes. Claiming he had no vendetta against President Musharraf, Nawaz said the PML-N had also reached out to the Pakistan Muslim League and they in turn had contacted PML-N (Ref A). (Note: He then launched into a long description of his mistreatment after Musharraf overthrew Nawaz in 1999). The PML-N’s goal in government would be to reinstate the deposed judiciary and restore the law and order situation. Without restoring the judiciary, Nawaz argued, you cannot restore law and order and rule of law.

6. (C) Ambassador said we continued to support an independent judiciary and wanted to work with the new government on this issue. It was simply too difficult to tackle before elections. We believed there should be a way to restore some of the deposed judges, but not the former Chief Justice. Nawaz insisted that without restoring the Chief Justice, there was no point to filling other slots on the bench. Ambassador disagreed, noting that many of the provincial judges could be restored for the benefit of Pakistan’s judiciary.

It is clear from this cable that the Sharifs believed that restoration of Chief Justice was important to the perception of an independent judiciary. But is this the whole story? Actually, another Wikileaks cable dated 14 March 2009  tells a completely different story.

4. (S) On the issue of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Shahbaz claimed that the PML-N was open to negotiation, provided that Chaudhry was symbolically restored as Chief Justice of Pakistan. Shahbaz stressed that his party could not afford the political humiliation of abandoning what had become a long-standing principle in favor of Chaudhry’s restoration. At the same time, Shahbaz claimed to understand that Chaudhry was a problematic jurist, whose powers would need to be carefully curtailed. Shahbaz underscored that the Sharifs were prepared to adopt any safeguards that President Zardari desired prior to Chaudhry’s restoration, including curtailment of his powers to create judicial benches, removal of his suo moto jurisdiction, and/or establishment of a constitutional court as a check on the Supreme Court. Shahbaz also stated that following the restoration, the PML-N was prepared to end the issue and remove Chaudhry once and for all by adopting legislation proposed in the Charter of Democracy that would ban all judges who had taken an oath under a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) from serving.

To borrow MNA Anusha Khan’s own words, “only cynics who have become embalmed in their own cynicism and detached from all norms of reality” will ignore the fact that politicians make back room deals, and that long marches and street-level political dramas are not always what they seem. While the Wikileaks cables do show that the Sharifs insisted on the reinstatement of the Chief Justice in January 2009, a year later their demands had changed and the “unfaltering conviction” had transformed into a request for “face saving” as “the PML-N was prepared to end the issue and remove Chaudhry once and for all”.

The problem with selectively quoting documents like Wikileaks is that they are openly available for the public to fact check. It is natural that Anusha Khan wished to paint her party leader in a flattering light, but it is the responsibility of The News to fact check the pieces before they are published. Perhaps if The News would have upheld this responsibility, they would have saved everyone some embarrassment.

According to them, during the questions and answers session in post lecture time, Ambassador Haqqani stopped to ask the audience, “How many of you think that India is Pakistan’s enemy number one?” Reportedly, less than half of the audience raised hands in response. The insiders quote Ambassador Haqqani as rephrasing this question with slight replacements. “How many of you think that Pakistan’s enemy number one comes from within?” This time, some of the audience raised hands.

Perhaps disappointed with these ‘unsatisfactory’ answers, the ‘curious’ envoy, made a hat-trick of his queries by repeating the same question in the same tone with a final ‘modification’. “How many of you think that the US is Pakistan’s enemy number one?” he asked.

The ambassador was shell-shocked to see the ‘overwhelming’ response coming from the audiences in a reflection of anti-US sentiment.

Majority of the audiences, this time, raised hands in response to what Haqqani has asked. Stunned for a few moments, the speechless envoy than gathered his nerve to make this brief utterance. “Then I’m afraid you have lost already. The US will do whatever it wants to and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said to wind up the lecture.

Pakistan Media Watch has obtained video footage of the lecture from National Defence University Islamabad that proves this report is false and possibly defamatory.

After viewing the video of the lecture, it is clear that The Nation report is a mischaracteristion not only of the Ambassador’s question his reaction to the response also, but also misquotes his statement following the audience answer.

Ambassador Haqqani never said, “The US will do whatever it wants to and there’s nothing you can do about it”. Rather he said clearly that “If [the biggest threat to Pakistan's security] really comes from the United States then we’ve already lost, Ladies and Gentlemen, because you can’t beat the United States in a military confrontation and that is the reality which we have to accept whatever our emotions. Because, let us be honest, we do not have the means to take on the one military power in the world that spends more on defense technology than the next 20 nations in the world. So that is where I think we sometimes end up having what I call ‘emotional discussion’. I see it on Pakistani television all the time”.

The Ambassador then went on to continue speaking for the next 7 or 8 more minutes about the need to embrace a logical, reality based foreign policy to advance Pakistan’s interests and to focus on education and growing Pakistan’s economy as a realistic way to secure Pakistan’s interests for the future. After continuing his speech for this time, he then turned over the microphone and took questions from the audience as part of a longer discussion.

Nowhere in the video does one see a “shell-shocked” or “speechless” Ambassador. Also, he does not wind up his lecture following this question. Rather, the video clearly shows that the exchange was part of a broader, friendly discussion with NDU students about how foreign policy and specifically Pak-US relations should be considered with logic and reason and not emotions driving the debate.

Now that the facts are public, will The Nation publish a correction?

UPDATE

Dear reader @shahpak78 correctly notes that the report by The Nation may have violated NDU’s non-attribution policy which is stated:

“Presentations by guest speakers, seminar leaders, and panelists constitute an important part of University curricula. So that these guests, as well as faculty and other University officials, may speak candidly, the University offers its assurance that their presentations at the Colleges, or before other NDU-sponsored audiences, will be held in strict confidence. This assurance derives from a policy of non-attribution that is morally binding on all who attend: without the express permission of the speaker, nothing he or she says will be attributed to that speaker directly or indirectly in the presence of anyone who was not authorized to attend the lecture or presentation.”

On 18 May, Ansar Abbasi wrote a piece for The News that claimed “the military establishment have moved to thwart the will of parliament by feeding the media with distorted information”.

In fact, another journalist – Omar Waraich – noted in a piece for the American news magazine TIME that the military was holding closed-door briefings with select journalists to manage the way the Abbottabad raid was being discussed.

After three days of sedulous silence on the matter, the military and intelligence leadership on Thursday shared its perspective on the Abbottabad debacle with a select group of senior Pakistani journalists – no foreign news media were invited. The rare closed-door briefing was prompted by a desire to challenge an emerging global narrative that incriminated Pakistan’s security establishment in bin-Laden’s ability to elude capture, according to some of those present.

The day after his first piece claiming interference with reporters, The News carried another piece by Abbasi that claims that the military is telling media to “stop exaggerating the crisis” and fanning the flames of anti-Americanism. This request ran counter to Ansar Abbasi’s own political agenda, though, since he has termed America as the nation’s number one enemy. So Abbasi used his column to debate with the military by saying that despite military’s call for unity, “None of the Pakistani authorities discussed with Kerry how the so-called war on terror is in friction with the faith of the Muslims, including Pakistanis”.

Following this week’s attack on PNS Mehran, Ansar Abbasi has changed his tune on military influence of media. Now Ansar Abbasi is back to quoting unnamed “sources in the military establishment” who supposedly have concerns that the attack in Karachi is part of a conspiracy to de-nuclearise Pakistan.

Alarm bells have started ringing in Pakistan’s security establishment with the latest terrorist attack at the PNS Mehran in Karachi, with many fearing that as part of any so-called “Great game”, a sponsored “terrorist attack” could be launched on any of the country’s nuclear sites to pave the way for a UN (read US) takeover of our nuke sites.

As the nation looks to understand events affecting the national security, answers are contradictory and confusing. Unsure of the facts, people continue turning to conspiracy theories to understand what is happening around them. A truly independent media would help eliminate conspiracy theories and confusion by providing the people with facts rationally and objectively through investigative research and diligent reporting. Though we like to say we have a free and independent media, what we are seeing more and more is the media used as a pawn by different interests to promote their own individual agendas. The result: conspiracy theories and confusion flourish.

Whether it is Ansar Abbasi fanning the flames of anti-Americanism or “sources in the military establishment” directing journalists on how to write their reports, the independent media is exposed as a mere illusion. And the agenda not being promoted is that of the national interest.

On Monday, international news agency AFP reported that ‘US drone attacks kill seven in Pakistan’. Later that same day, Geo reported that US drone attacks kill nine in NWA. The articles are nearly identical.

In fact, the only difference between the two articles is that Geo removed paragraphs from the original story that note the body count from the attack. The original AFP article contains the following paragraphs:

“At least seven militants were killed in both the US drone strikes. The vehicle was completely burnt and the compound was also destroyed,” a security official in Miranshah told AFP.

A second security official in Peshawar confirmed both the drone strikes and the casualties.

“We don’t know their exact identities but we were informed that there were foreigners inside that compound,” one intelligence official told AFP.

The US strikes doubled last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people, according to an AFP tally, and the CIA has said the covert programme has severely disrupted Al-Qaeda’s leadership.

The raid also rocked Pakistan’s seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden close to a military academy.

As you can see, each of the paragraphs Geo removed from the original article contain either mentions of the news agency that originally published the report, AFP as well as paragraphs that mention the death count and references that might be considered as critical to the establishment.

The action by Geo was noticed and reported as “strange” by US think tank AfPak Channel on their Twitter account.

How strange that Geo http://ow.ly/4VOcS took this AFP story http://ow.ly/4VOf2 and just changed 7 to 9, without attribution

US media groups were rightly criticised heavily for covering up the identity of CIA contractor Raymond Davis earlier this year. If Geo is also found to be removing paragraphs from reports that could be seen as critical of the military and intelligence agencies here as well as changing facts such as death counts and plagiarizing reports from other news agencies, it must be asked whether other reports from Geo have been censored, changed, and plagiarized.

Geo has been on the front lines of calls to protect and defend the freedom of media. But if Geo is censoring and editing reports to protect the establishment from criticism, it must be asked how free their media really is.

Actually, the claim comes from an opinion piece in American newspaper The Wall Street Journal of Friday. The News repeats the claim as if it is a fact because it appeared in this column. But other claims were made in the column also, does The News accept that they are also true?

For example, the same opinion piece says:

Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has longstanding links to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network.

Will The News publish this as a front page headline?

The same article also said:

The Pakistani army was also happy to cooperate with the U.S. when the targets of the strikes were members of the Pakistani Taliban who had their sights set on Islamabad. But the army has been less cooperative when the targets were the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan or the ISI’s terrorist partners.

The same article also said:

Still, if the CIA doesn’t trust the ISI, that’s because it has demonstrated repeatedly that it isn’t trustworthy. The Pakistani army has yet to reconcile itself to the idea that Afghanistan should be something other than its strategic backyard, preferably under the control of clients such as the Taliban, and it harbors paranoid illusions that India will encroach on Afghanistan to encircle its old enemy.

Why The News features a front page headline about Zardari who is mentioned only once and not military/ISI that is mentioned several times in the same piece?

Two observations must be made. First is that The News is quoting an opinion piece in a foreign newspaper as if it is a factual report and doing so in a bold front page headline none the less. This is inappropriate and misleading. Second is that The News is quoting the opinion piece selectively and not in full which suggests a political motive to embarrass the president and not to inform the readers.

It should also be noted that President Zardari recently condemned drone strikes and clarified that the US should end the program. Why this did not receive a front page headline in The News? The ongoing tension between Jang Group and the government is well known. But this tension should not affect the headlines. News reports should be based on verifiable facts, not selective quotes to support a political agenda.

According to Ansar Abbasi,

The HEC is facing the wrath of the parliamentarians after it had refused to accept any pressure for the verification of the MPs’ degrees, more than 50 of which have already been declared invalid whereas above 200 degrees were termed suspected.

Though holding the title ‘Investigative Editor’ of The News, Ansar Abbasi produces no investigative research or evidence to support his claim that somehow 342 parliamentarians have overcome all political difference in a united conspiracy against HEC .

According to MNA Raza Rabbani (PPP), changes to education funding come as a result of devolution required under the 18th Amendment.

“The HEC act will be revisited and reframed to shed its role as centralised funding authority because under the ‘new state structure’ emerging in the aftermath of the 18th Amendment, there is no room for such a role,” the commission’s chairman, Senator Mian Raza Rabbani, said at a press conference here on Tuesday.

Actually, it is not only HEC that is being affected by devolution. According to the report in Dawn

The ministries being devolved are: education, social welfare and special education, tourism, livestock and dairy development and culture. The portions include lotteries, capital gains tax and GST on services from the finance ministry, navigation and inland water wing from the ports and shipping ministry, arms act (issuance of arms licence, except banned bore) from the interior ministry, wills and testaments, trusts, arbitration, bankruptcy and insolvency from the law and justice ministry and a portion of the commerce ministry.

Ansar Abbasi further claims that devolution of the 18th Amendment threatens $250 million assistance under the Kerry-Lugar Act. His only evidence comes from anonymous “informed government sources”. It should be noted that earlier this year a three member Judicial Commission termed Ansar Abbasi’s sources ‘incorrigible liars’.

Former Federal Minister for Education Ahsan Iqbal (PML-N) is now serving his third term representing the people of Narowal as a Member National Assembly. In a paper published last month as part of the ‘March for Education’ programme, MNA Iqbal describes the problem of funding education – including the HEC – as a complex set of challenges involving devolution under the 18th Amendment, the need for a national education policy that serves all parts of society, and a number of ‘structural deficits’ in the budgeting system. In addition to these structural challenges, the role of international aid is also termed significant, but “what that role is has never been fully or clearly articulated”.

Article 25a of the Constitution terms education as “a fundamental right”. It is imperative, therefore, that the government work transparently and honestly towards the goal of developing a revitalized education system that serves all the people. In a democratic system, it is required that both ruling party and opposition MNAs must work together to develop this system for the good of the nation. In order for this to happen, media must inform the masses with the facts and not use this fundamental right as a weapon to score political points.

1. He has run the country as a one-man show…

President Zardari’s one man show includes highlights of reinstating Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry, also signing 18th Amendment to return more power to the National Assembly, and asking for open discussions and negotiations about difficult issues. He has gone to war with the opposition by consulting them on important issues – how else was the 18th Amendment passed unanimously? And he has isolated the PM by handing over powers to him.

2. His failure to become a respected national leader with credibility, depth and vision has turned Pakistan almost into an intolerant, wayward and undependable pariah state…

Holding Zardari responsible for intolerance in the nation is shameless, especially while Sehbai’s friend Ansar Abbasi is playing the part of religious jurist for the country. Worst, though, saying Asif Zardari “has turned Pakistan almost into an intolerant, wayward and undependable pariah state” is to ignore the decades of support for extremism and militancy by dictators while placing all the blame on those left holding the bag. This is not analysis but is willful ignorance.

3. His style and pettiness in politics has earned him no new friends…internationally he has not been trusted with any aid money. Even the Kerry-Lugar dollars are tied to strings because of lack of trust.

One wonders if the second bit was added on at the insistence of an editor worried about the sheer ridiculousness of claiming that Zardari has been entrusted with no aid money. Yes, Kerry-Lugar bill includes conditionalities, but similar conditionalities were present in most US aid bills since 2001, so it would be a far cry to blame Zardari for this. One might also wonder how badly the president’s “style in pettiness in politics” can be since he has managed to hold together the coalition even during the most trying times. Even PML-N has said it wants to see the government complete its term.

4. His domestic politics is in shambles.

Again, domestic politics is messy, but despite the predictions of devastating storms from ‘journalists’ like Shaheen Sehbai, most have turned out to be storms in teacups, and all so far have resulted in strengthening the democratic process through the recognition of opposition and coalition demands. Far from being in shambles, domestic politics seems to be maturing.

5. …rule of law is being buried day by day and Asif Zardari is leading this mission to demolish the courts.

Again, far from following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Asif Zardari has not made any move to sack the Chief Justice or to ‘demolish the courts’. This hasn’t stopped certain voices in the media from incorrectly predicting an executive-judiciary death match every few months, but neither have these media predictions managed to drive a wedge into the executive-judiciary relationship.

6. His dealings with the establishment are reduced to blackmailing and threats of using the Sindh Card.

The same government that has extended appointments for both COAS and DG ISI is blackmailing the establishment? Actually, this government seems to have one of the healthier relationships with the establishment. The last time we had democratically elected governments under Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (PPP) and Mian Nawaz Sharif (PML-N), both were overthrown by the establishment.

7. His relations with the media are rancorous and based on the policy of buying or bullying.

Shaheen Sehbai has some cheek to write this. Shaheen Sehbai himself has spent the entire duration of the Zardari government pining for the president’s failure and spreading the most ridiculous of rumours about the president. Also, let us recall the false accusations that have come from the media against the government since the past three years. Clearly there is some tension between the government and the media. This is natural. But suggesting that Zardari is the one doing bullying is a bit much.

8. His attempts to survive and avoid his own accountability have just succeeded to the point of delaying the inevitable.

The fact is that Asif Zardari has spent over a decade in prison and no court has convicted him of anything. The fact is also that Swiss prosecutor Daniel Zappelli stated that “he had no evidence to bring Zardari…to trial”.

9. His tall claims of bringing billions of dollars and generating local and foreign investment have evaporated into colourless smoke.

Exports exceeded $2 billion last month and net foreign investment rose 27 percent to $1.23 billion in the first eight months of 2010/11 fiscal year. China signed $30 billion in deals just a few months ago. Economists agree that the economy is improving, though slowly. Shaheen Sehbai is simply wrong on the facts.

10. His favours to his cronies have brought him troubles, infamy and at the end humiliation. But the irony is that these cronies will not stand by him. They will be the first to run, leaving him in the dock.

This is not even a point about the past few years, rather it seems that Shaheen Sehbai cannot help himself but must include some negative prediction in his writings.

This 10-point list of Shaheen Sehbai is not ‘analysis’ it is political attacks only. And these attacks are not even based in reality, but it Shaheen Sehbai’s own willful ignoring of facts. Just because you label something ‘analysis’ does not make it so. This column could have been used to provide analysis of some of the serious issues facing the nation and made some recommendations for how the government and opposition leaders can work together to pass solutions for the good of the country. Instead, readers of The News were presented with yet another political attack consisting of misleading accusations devoid of context and reason.

The top headline story by Numan Wahab titled, ‘CIA killer walks free’, reports that there is some confusion over who has paid out the blood money to the families.

In another mystifying twist, a report in the US media has claimed within hours that the blood money of about US$2.3m was actually paid out by the Pakistan government on the understanding that the US would ‘reimburse the amount later at an opportune moment’. The report gained credence from the statements made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department spokesperson with both emphasizing that “The US had not paid any Diyat”. The questions remains, if the US didn’t pay up the Diyat as proven before the court, then who did?

However an article by Tahir Khalil on the very same page features the title, ‘Blood money paid from govt fund’.

The compensation money paid to the heirs of two slain Pakistani nationals — Faizan and Faheem — who were shot dead at the Qartaba Chowk, Lahore, by CIA contractor Raymond Davis on January 27, was paid from the government’s funds.

Unfortunately, Tahir Khalil offers no evidence to support this claim whether it is true or it is untrue. Perhaps this is why Numan Wahab did not include this in his own report? It should also be asked why both of these contradictory reports exist side by side on the front page. Does Jang Group not have editors to examine material before it is printed?

But this is not the only problem that appears on the front page. In the same article by Tahrir Khalil the reporter tells the figures of payment made, including that the widow of Faizan initially refused Rs25 million and was paid Rs50 million. But an anonymous article also featured on the same page titled, ‘Diyat payment: who got what?’ gives different figures entirely.

Here’s who got what of the blood money: Faheem’s heirs: Father Rs11.1 million, mother Rs33.3 million, two sisters Rs5.55 million each, and four brothers, a total of Rs11.1 million Faizan’s heirs: Mother Rs33.3 million, widow Rs20.5 million, three brothers Rs7500,000 each, five sisters Rs3,787,000 each.

Which is right? It is unknown at this time what is the exact figure, but it is certainly known that readers of The News will be confused on the issue as the proper fact-checking was not carried out and different articles on the same page present different versions of the facts.

Other curiousities include the statement by Ansar Abbasi that legal experts dispute the resolution in his own column titled, ‘We have sold ourselves, once again’.

A legal expert and ex-judge of the Lahore High Court recently told this correspondent that in his view and as per the Peshawar High Court decision the case of Raymond Davis did not fall in the category where it could be settled under Qisas and Diyat law.

But on the same front page of the same newspaper, another article titled, ‘Decision on Davis defended’, quotes legal experts explaining that the case was properly resolved.

Eminent lawyer Barrister Ali Zafar said the decision had been made in accordance with Pakistani law. Linguistics expert Dr Tariq Rehman said that Raymond Davis was a citizen of the US, which is an ally of Pakistan. He said if Davis was a spy, then it is not a big issue as allies often send spies to countries for information exchange. He said the issue stands resolved now after payment of Diyat to the heirs of the victims. He said the issue was between the ISI and CIA, which now stands resolved.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, in a TV programme, said the country’s laws and Shariah allowed the families of the victims to pardon the accused after receiving Diyat. He said the court had called all the heirs of the victims in person to confirm that there was no pressure on them to accept the blood money.

It is worth noting also that the legal experts who have defended the handling of the case by the court are willing to give their names and make their statements on the public record whereas Ansar Abbasi’s supposed ‘legal experts’ are as per usual anonymous and cannot be confirmed to exist.

The News on Thursday morning featured no fewer than 12 front page stories about the Raymond Davis case. Yet despite so many articles, the readers of the newspaper will actually be less informed and more confused after taking in so many contradictory and questionable pieces. Such incidents should raise immediate questions about whether The News is actually providing any value to the public or if it is only stoking confusion and division among the people. Rather than publishing every contradictory opinion and prediction possible, The News should engage its reporters to perform actual investigating and fact-checking, and then publish what can be verified only.