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

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.

Geo reported that Benazir Bhutto International Airport would be closed for two days, only to have their report followed by the Civil Aviation Authority reporting that the airport was reopened. Geo quickly changed their report without noting that they were correcting the previous report, further causing confusion as different people read the same report only to learn different things.

Gruesome images were broadcast on multiple channels. Pictures of body parts, pieces of jewelry, panicked, screaming people. Those who were holding onto their last prayer for the safety of their loved ones were forced to learn of their despair from a cameraman zooming in on a bangle, a bloody arm. Names of the victims were broadcast on TV so that some people were shocked to learn of their relatives death from an SMS before they even knew of the tragedy.

The most gruesome, however, was the way some elements of the media jumped on the opportunity to turn the tragedy into an opportunity for cheap political point scoring.

Dunya TV anchor Mubasher Lucman bizarrely criticised Rehman Malik for quickly responding to the crash “when he is not asked”, as if the Interior Minister should wait to be asked before responding to such a tragedy.

Of course, had the Minister been slow to respond, Mubasher probably would have criticised him for that, too.

The News (Jang Group) quickly followed suit, publishing a front page article reporting that ‘Political pressure allowed Bhoja Air to relaunch’. The article is based on statements of unnamed ‘sources’ who are not even being from Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) or officials in any capacity whatsoever. Another front page article in The News reported that Bhoja Air was granted a license despite being a defaulter of Rs.6.9 million owed to the CAA.

Both claims were contradicted by DG CAA the same day, suggesting that Jang Group’s reporters merely repeated the claims of their unknown ‘sources’ without taking the trouble to pick up the phone and request comment from CAA before rushing off to file their reports.

DG CAA Nadeem Yousafzai told reporters that the aircraft’s ‘black box’ could take a month to decode. While we might want answers sooner than this, the answers we want are the facts – not rumours, speculation, and cheap political points. A month is not too long to wait. If anyone is found to be responsible through either action or inaction, they should be held accountable. But until the investigation is complete, the media should restrain itself from making all manner of unfounded allegations, even those based on the statements of unknown and unnamed ‘sources’.

Following a senseless tragedy such as this, the nation is heartbroken. Healing will take time and the knowledge of what went wrong so that we know it will be prevented in the future. Through irresponsible and insensitive reporting, the media is pulling on our wounded heart strings and making a bad situation even worse.

Two recent stories in The News (Jang Group) include the statements of experts to give context to stories about complex issues. Tuesday’s paper includes a report by Ahmad Noorani about the Supreme Court’s order to the Prime Minister to write a letter requesting Switzerland open corruption cases against the President. According to Noorani, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan’s reply to the court submitted on March 19 “is a simple and huge U-Turn, experts say”.Who are these experts that have termed Aitzaz Ahsan’s reply as a U-Turn? Nobody knows. They are neither named nor mentioned again in the report.

On Sunday, a report by Usman Manzoor quotes an expert economist rubbishing President Zardari’s speech to the joint sitting of parliament. This time, the reporter at least revealed the name of his expert – Dr Shahid Hassan Siddiqui. According to Dr Siddiqui, the president’s address “comprised nothing but false figures and a misrepresentation of facts regarding the economy”.

These are serious charges, so it is worth asking just who is this Dr Siddiqui. According to Manzoor, he is “a banker and economist of international repute”, but a more thorough search reveals that he is also The News‘s go-to economic hit-man against the government.

In October 2011, Ansar Abbasi quoted Dr Siddiqi extensively terming the government as “lying” about economics and bleeding the country through corruption. Ansar Abbasi quoted Dr Siddiqi again in December 2011 as saying “the overall economic situation of Pakistan under the present regime is the worst in the 64-year history of Pakistan”.

But let’s look at the reasons why this so-called “expert” is rubbishing the president’s claims this time.

Dr Shahid said that since 9/11, the remittances have been continuously increasing because of a ban on Hundi. He said that the government is asking no question on the influx of remittances; perhaps, it is a financial NRO because people loot the country’s wealth, send it abroad and then bring it back in the shape of remittances. He said that in 2007, remittances were $5.4%; in 2008 these were recorded at $6.4 and in 2011, it were 11.12%; as these keep on increasing, there was nothing to boast about, the economist said.

Dr Shahid does not explain why a ban on Hundi would increase remittances. After all, whether money is remitted to Pakistan by old methods like Hundi or modern methods like international bank transfers, money is being remitted.

But then Dr Shahid’s “expert” commentary takes a rather bizarre turn. He says that “perhaps it is a financial NRO” and a massive money laundering scheme. His evidence for such a shocking claim? He provides none. He just says “perhaps” and we are supposed to take him seriously because he is printed in The News as an expert.

Wouldn’t it make more sense, if a crook wanted to launder money, to use a system like Hundi that leaves no paper trail? According to a report by the International Monetary Fund, the answer is yes.

Generally, the growth of [Information Funds Transfer] systems seems to be negatively correlated with the level of development of the formal financial sector. Hawala-type operations appear to have prospered in countries with inefficient financial institutions and restrictive financial policies. However, in cases where the user’s intent is of an illegal or criminal nature, he or she will use informal financial systems irrespective of the level of financial sector development.

The so-called expert Dr Shahid then proceeds to make other bizarre claims such as stating that “the worst crisis in the stock market came in 2008 during the incumbent government’s tenure”. Actually, the crisis took place in May 2008. But the government was only elected in February 2008. Does Dr Shahid propose that the government is responsible for the state of the economy as it was only three months after elections?

Later, the so-called expert simply misleads readers by claiming that agriculture sectors growth was actually a decline due to population growth. This is simply nonsense. Agriculture sector cannot “grow” and “decline” at the same time. What Dr Shahid is referring to is a function of population, not agriculture.

These are not the only strange claims made by Dr Shahid. In 2006, Dr Shahid joined Mirza Aslam Beg and Hameed Gul at a seminar in Karachi where he claimed that “the republication of [blasphemous] cartoons was aimed at widening the gulf between Muslims and Europe as the Europeans had held huge demonstrations against US imperialism and the attack on Iraq.”

And Dr Shahid claimed in an interview that privatization is dangerous because there might be a secret European-American-Indian conspiracy to buy Pakistan’s strategic assets.

A point of worry is that one fine morning we could find to our horror that the strategic assets, sold by Pakistan to foreigners during last few years, have gone into the hands of entities owned by European / US nationals of say Indian origin as these could be purchased from the new owners according to a well thought of integrated strategy.

Asking experts to help provide clarification and context to complex stories is a perfectly legitimate journalistic practice. Using unidentified or biased “experts” to dress up political attacks is not.

In his article of Monday, Sehbai accuses the government of hatching a sinister plan to hold onto power. What is this sinister plan? Apparently, the government is planning to complete its term.

According to Sehbai, the PPP leadership is hatching a scheme “to extend the present conglomerate of power-sharing at the Centre and in the provinces for so long that all threats, including General Kayani and Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, retire and get out of their way.” But wait…General Kayani and Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry both are serving terms that end in 2013 – the same year as the present government’s term ends also. So is this “sinister plan” really just the government planning to complete its democratically elected term? According to Sehbai, the answer is yes.

An indication of the plan has already been given by Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan who has candidly admitted that he saw no prospects of a general elections in 2012, meaning that the present assemblies will complete their five-year term and the pressure for early polls was no longer being felt.

In other words, Shaheen Sehbai believe that the government planning to finish its democratically elected term amounts to an “extremely dangerous plan” and “a twisted scheme”.

Actually, Sehbai’s latest conspiracy is just the latest version of Shaheen Sehbai’s worn out anti-Zardari script. If you remember, when the present government was first elected, Shaheen Sehbai was part of a vocal group of Zardari haters whose personal animosity for the president was so strong that they declared the government a failure before it even began. With each passing event, the Zardari Haters Club predicted the imminent fall of the government, and each time they were proven wrong.

As the years passed, the script began to change. No longer was Zardari an incompetent and bumbling joker, now he was an evil genius whose diabolical schemes knew no limits.

Shaheen Sehbai then proceeded to beg other political parties to “stop Zardari & Co”, only to turn his attacks on those same parties when they did not fulfill his wishes. Eventually, Sehbai’s personal hatred for Zardari was reduced to petty insults and factual errors.

For its part, the government has responded to Sehbai’s latest piece by simply stating the obvious:

“There is no sinister plan underway and the government is fully committed to the norms of democracy. All constitutional institutions will complete their term specified by the constitution of Pakistan and speculating otherwise tantamount to mockery of constitutional institutions, the spokesman has added.

“The spokesman has further said, we must acknowledge that the will of the masses is the basis of the authority of government and everyone should respect the mandate given to the government by the people of Pakistan. The civilian and democratically elected leadership of the country is working to make Pakistan as a safe, secure, democratic, modern and progressive country where there is respect for the rights of the people and an assuring environment for the citizens at large to progress and develop their skills and passions.

“Moreover the democratically elected civilian government has respect for the judiciary and will continue to do so. On the other hand the government and the national security institutions are working together to strengthen the defence of Pakistan.

“Finally, democracy is a matter of great patience. It may seem amusing to few to dislodge a government prematurely or demand mid-term elections every now and then, but true democracy lies in governmental stability between scheduled national elections.”

In response, Sehbai has said that it would be better if the government focus on important issues rather than “what I write”. We agree. We also think it would be better if The News and Jang Group would focus on important issues rather than continuing to run repeats of worn out conspiracy theories and petty political attacks.

In his spoken testimony at the US Congress, Ali Dayan did allege the military of forced disappearances and target killings. Though PMW has no way to know whether military personnel have or have not been involved in such acts, it is hardly a novel claim. Actually, it is not uncommon to see protests about this very claim.

It should also be noted that the Supreme Court is currently hearing a case about the issue of missing persons possibly detained and abused by security forces also. This does not mean that allegations are true – that is for the court to determine. But it does mean that Ali Dayan’s claim is not unheard of.

Despite Ahmad Noorani’s characterisation, Ali Dayan did not offer a one-sided view or hold security institutions “solely responsible for the whole crisis” as claimed by Ahmad Noorani. In his spoken testimony, Ali Dayan told the hearing that “there are abuses that we have documented by Baloch nationalist militants, particularly against education personnel and against other non-Baloch residents of the province”. He went on to note that “Non-Baloch, particularly Punjabi settlers and Urdu-speaking settlers in Balochistan, are living equally in fear of their lives because of fear of attack from Baloch nationalists”. And it was not just the military and Baloch militants who took criticism from Human Rights Watch. Ali Dayan also pointed out attacks by sectarian militants against Hazara Shia in Balochistan.

In his longer written statement, Ali Dayan goes into more detail about “non-state groups” responsible fore human rights abuses in Balochistan including attacks against “police and security forces and military bases”.

Armed militant groups in Balochistan are responsible for targeted killings and destroying private property. In the past several years, they have increasingly targeted non-Baloch civilians and their businesses, as well as major gas installations and infrastructure. They have also struck police and security forces and military bases throughout the province.

Three distinct non-state groups are responsible for violence against civilians in the province: militant Baloch nationalist groups seeking separation or autonomy for Balochistan that target Punjabis and other minorities; militant Sunni Muslim groups such as the Lashkar-eJhangvi that attack members of the Shia community; and armed Islamist groups that have most recently attacked those who act contrary to their interpretation of Islam.

Militant nationalist groups such as the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) have claimed responsibility for most killings of non-Baloch civilians, including teachers and other education personnel. They attempt to justify these attacks as a nationalist Baloch response to grievances against the state, and retaliation against abuses that state security forces have committed against Baloch community members.

Amidst the violence, Balochistan’s long-term problems of governance and the stand-off between the Pakistani military and Baloch militants have deepened a general perception in the province of neglect, discrimination, and denial of rights. These are exacerbated by the continuing tribal system and its archaic social structures, the influence of the tribal chief on the justice system and police, and the consequent denial of citizens’ fundamental rights.

The poor and marginalized, particularly women, are adversely affected by traditional forms of dispute resolution and lack of access to other redress mechanisms. They lack assets and opportunities, have no social safety net, and are bound by practices that affect their welfare. There are frequent reports of both state law enforcement agencies and local power-brokers committing abuses against marginalized populations. Labor conditions are abysmal, and there is no single system of justice despite a uniform civil and criminal code. The widespread use of tribal jirgas (councils) and other informal forums of justice increase the difficulty of seeking redress and obtaining justice, devaluing its quality.

Finally, the violence has denuded the already thinly spread provision of public safety. Organized police services cover only a fraction of the province’s territory (about 4 percent of the land area), while the rest is covered by tribal recruits forming levies.

Unfortunately, readers would not know the facts about Ali Dayan’s testimony because Ahmad Noorani failed to report them in his piece. Ahmad Noorani claims in his article that Ali Dayan presented ‘wrong facts and figures’, but he addresses no facts or figures in his piece. He did, however, give significant space in his article for political statements against the government by Senior PML-N leader Khawaja Asif, which has nothing to do with the subject of the article.

Instead of reporting what Ali Dayan actually said, Noorani implied that Ali Dayan blamed the military for all abuses and then reported his phone numbers including his international cell number which serves no legitimate journalistic purpose and only invites abuse and harassment.

Neither is this the first time that Ahmad Noorani and The News have attacked Human Rights Watch. Last month during the ‘memogate’ hearings, The News published multiple hit pieces targeting Human Rights Watch, even accusing HRW of being ‘a foreign organisation working in Pakistan under the cover of human rights’.

Human Rights Watch is an internationally respected NGO, not a political activist group. And Ali Dayan Hasan is a respected human rights advocate, not a Baloch militant. The responsibility of professional news journalists and media groups is to report facts, not hit pieces.

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:

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:

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

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

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:

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.

In a detailed front page story of The News on Sunday, Ansar Abbasi asks, ‘How did Musharraf become a billionaire?’ While questions about the source of Gen Musharraf’s personal fortune are legitimate, they typically focus on public information – how was he able to afford his London home? What is his current source of income? But Ansar Abbasi points to new information about Musharraf’s personal wealth, and it is not only the information, but how Ansar Abbasi was able to access it that raises troubling questions.

In his article, Ansar Abbasi spends no less than nine paragraphs listing details of Gen Musharraf’s personal accounts with banks and trading accounts in UAE. Not only does Ansar Abbasi list the amounts each account contains, but the account numbers themselves. All of this information is attributed, as usual, to “a source”.

Musharraf has announced that he will return to Pakistan this month to participate in the next parliamentary elections. The question must be asked who would have access to such private financial information as overseas bank accounts, including their account numbers and amounts? And why would those with access to this information be interested in revealing it to Ansar Abbasi? Is it merely a coincidence that Ansar Abbasi’s “source” has revealed this information at this time? Or is Abbasi’s article intended as blackmail to prevent a politician from participating in elections?

This blog has no way of knowing whether the information provided by Ansar Abbasi is true or false. If it is true, we also have no way of knowing where the money came from – whether from looting the national treasury as seems to be implied by the article, or from legitimate sources such as book sales and speaking fees. It is in the public interest to know that politicians are not building personal wealth through corruption, but it is also in the public interest to know how such private information becomes public. Ansar Abbasi does not need to reveal the name of his anonymous source, but it may be in the public interest to know whether his source is an employee of the bank – which is the bank’s concern, or an employee of some other organization – which may be a concern to democracy.

Nadeem Ul Haque was not scheduled to speak against the nuclear programme at NDU. Actually, he wasn’t scheduled to speak at all. He had been asked to speak on the Planning Commission’s (PC’s) New Growth Framework (NGF), but the event had been cancelled due to lack of interest. This interaction raised certain questions for Nadeem Ul Haque about the role that media plays in improving the status of the country – or impeding it.

I also told him that society at large and the media seem to be uninterested in reform, economic development and growth. The media needs to give more attention to these issues alongside security and other issues. Unless a society takes interest in reform, it will not happen. Pakistani intellectual space, which is fuelled daily by the media, is too preoccupied with issues other than economic development. Because of this, economic reform remains little understood. Unless this changes, there will be no economic development in the coming years.

Despite the need for investigative journalism and informative articles on issues of development and economic reform, the media appears fixated on headlines against the government, he wrote. If there are problems with policies or reforms, why not write about those problems so that they can be fixed? Rather, the media only takes the issues as the basis for political attacks against whoever happens to be in government at the time.

I keep telling the media that our mindset is not the result of the policy or views of any one government. I know they want a headline against the current establishment. Consequently, I tell them that all governments regardless of creed and origin have avoided serious governance/civil service reform. All have failed to change the paradigm on market competition. No government has attempted to use public service delivery to underpin our governance approach. No government has reviewed our current approach to urban development that produces a sprawl. This government has adopted the NGF, which is taking up these issues. Let the media review the NGF! But then why blame governments? Society also unveils its preferences through discussion and debate. Our intellectuals’ efforts, evident in the media, display little interest in these crucial issues. Countries seeking development spend a far larger proportion of their public debate on crucial development issues than we do.

As we wrote on Sunday,

“The media serves a function in a democratic society other than simply ‘infotainment’. We rely on the media to inform us of facts and developments related to the most important issues of society so that we can make informed decisions about how to transform the country.”

If reporters are hunting for headlines against the government with utter disregard to whether their stories are factual or in any way useful to the country, they are failing in an important responsibility as journalists. Issues and policies should be investigated and reported, but that is not mean that such reports should be turned into political attacks. Media needs to focus its energy on helping the nation achieve reforms and stop selling it for sensational headlines.

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.