Posts Tagged ‘Propaganda’

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Visas, Conspiracy Theories, and Propaganda Rings

Friday, March 4th, 2011

When the US under President George Bush decided to invade Iraq, a well documented propaganda campaign was undertaken in which the American people were convinced that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 attacks – a piece of misinformation that was necessary to justify the invasion of Iraq. The propaganda tactic used was a simple one – repeat the misinformation enough, even after it is disproven – and enough people will either believe the lie or be confused about the issue that space will be available to promote a political agenda.

Ahmed Quraishi’s latest column for The News uses this same neocon propaganda tactic of repeating a claim even after it has been disproven.

A third issue is the role of President Zardari, his interior minister and his Washington envoy in facilitating the entry of hundreds of US operatives into Pakistan over the past months. It is clear that the US government and CIA rely on proxies to further its agenda in Pakistan. This must come to an end. The personal interests of individuals in the Pakistani government must never trump national interest. The Oman meeting indicates the goal now is to sweep all these urgent issues under the carpet in the name of saving Pak-US relationship.

This is a continuation of visa conspiracy that was disproven a few weeks ago when Ambassador to USA Husain Haqqani opened the books and revealed to legitimate journalists that there was no conspiracy and that all visas were issued following the proper protocols.

But Ahmed Quraishi does not stop with simply repeating disproven conspiracy theories, he goes a step further by making unfounded smears against unnamed government officials. Suggesting that “individuals in the Pakistani government” are putting personal interests above national interest is a straw man type of argument. If Ahmed Quraishi has some evidence of a government official putting personal interest above national interest, why does he not name the individual and the instance so that it can be investigated? Actually, this appears to be nothing but an attempt to smear the names of individuals while side-stepping liability for defamation lawsuits.

Ahmed Quraishi is not the only person repeating this misinformation. The claim is also repeated by Dr Raja Muhammad Khan in a piece that was published in both Pak Observer and Daily Mail on the same day. But this “Dr Khan” does not even get his facts right from the first two sentences. According to Dr Khan’s column, Raymond Davis, “now works for Xe, commonly known as the Blackwater”. This is false. It has been reported that Raymond Davis was once a special forces soldier who then worked for Xe and left some time ago. He now works for Hyperion Protective Consultants.

But this is not the only error in Dr Khan’s column. He raises the common talking point that the Embassy in Washington issued 400 visas to US nationals in two days, but he does not explain that the majority of these visas were issued for a state visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff and security before a July 2010 visit. According to the Embassy, these American officials were only in Pakistan for 2-3 days.

Dr Khan quotes the number per the Embassy that “approximately 3,555 U.S. diplomats, military officials and employees of allied agencies were issued visas in 2010”, but as it was explained last month, most of the US officials and contractors were only in the country for three months each, so the total number of US nationals in Pakistan would be 1/4 to 1/3 of the total number of visas issues during the year. This means that at any given moment there are probably 1,000 or fewer US officials in Pakistan.

This number should also be viewed in context. Since the 1980s the number of US diplomatic visas has been roughly the same. During the Cold War when the CIA and ISI were working together to support the Afghan mujahideen, the largest CIA station in the world was in Pakistan. During this time under Gen. Zia, as many as 780 US diplomats were listed in the Islamabad Diplomatic List. Dr Khan claims that “there have been no worthwhile voices on these expansionist designs of US in Pakistan from various circles”, but the truth is that there are no signs of expansionist designs.

In addition to the factual errors of Dr Khan, it is also curious that he concludes his article with the same smear that Ahmed Quraishi uses. Dr Khan says, “The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan.” Was this some mere coincidence that both Ahmed Quraishi and Dr Khan are writing the same smears, or is this a case of talking points being provided to guide the writers?

It seems there is even more to the story. After some additional searching based on phrases used by Dr Khan, some very curious facts came to light.

On 28 February 2011 at 1:10PM the following comment was posted to an article on the website of Express Tribune by someone named ‘Abdul Rauf Hashmi’:

Who is Spying on Whom?
Let there be end to the era of special protocol for US spying network in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan must investigate all those responsible for the flaws in the visa issuance process and reprimand them on their act. The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan. The sovereignty, integrity and national pride of Pakistan should be kept in the forefront, while developing our relationship across the national frontiers.

The exact same paragraph appears in the column by Dr Khan today.

Let there be end to the era of special protocol for US spying network in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan must investigate all those responsible for the flaws in the visa issuance process and reprimand them on their act. The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan. The sovereignty, integrity and national pride of Pakistan should be kept in the forefront, while developing our relationship across the national frontiers.

Further searching reveals that this same article by ‘Dr Raja Muhammad Khan’ first appeared on the website Opinion-Maker.org, the website of “virtual Think Tank” named ‘O.M. Center for Policy Studies’ which chaired by Major Raja Ghulam Mujtaba.

Major Raja MujtadaMajor Mujtaba also serves as Islamabad Editor for VeteransToday.com, which is the website of one Mr “Gordon Duff”. Mr. Duff describes Major Mujtaba’s relations with the ISI in an interview of September 2010.

Well, I only knew one group in the world that I could con into reading (chuckling) 90,000 pages of documents. So, I called our editor in Islamabad, Major Raja Mujtaba and had him forward my request to Brigadier General Asif Haroon Raja who forwarded it to the head of Pakistan’s ISI, and the ISI assigned a group of analysts who, going through the 69,000 pages of documents — I would almost rather have Brigadier Raja on the phone with us here — and that can be arranged and probably should.

Another connection to propaganda and intelligence agencies is the fact that former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gul is on the Editorial Board of Directors of this website VeteransToday.com which Major Mujtaba is also an editor.

But one does not even have to go that far. Just look at the Board of Advisors for Major Mujtaba’s own ‘Think Tank’ called “Opinion Maker Center for Policy Studies.”

  • Dr Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema of National Defense University who founded Defense & Strategic Studies department in Quaid-i-Azam University
  • Mr Tarik Jan author of books including Universalizing the Abrahamic Tradition, Towards the Universal Islamic State, and the editor of Pakistan’s Security and the Nuclear Option
  • Dr Tahir Amin of Quaid-i-Azam University
  • Brig Asif Haroon Raja
  • Maj Gen Parvez Akmal (Retd)
  • Maj General Muhammad Tahir (Retd)
  • Dr S. M. Rahman is Secretary General FRIENDS founded by General Mirza Aslam Beg
  • Mansoor Malik who worked on F-16 Aircraft Weapons System for PAF
  • Col Bakhtiar Hakeem
  • Air Commodore Khalid Iqbal

Also, who else should show up on the ‘About Us’ page of Opinion-Maker.org but Ahmed Quraishi himself. Perhaps there is no coincidence that he and Dr Khan have reached the same conclusion?

According to his bio on this website, Mr Quraishi “has been commissioned for public policy outreach projects as a consultant, serving mostly government clients in the larger Middle East region”.

UNKNOWNBut all of this information only raises further questions. Who is this “Dr Raja Muhammad Khan”? His bio on the Opinion-Maker.org website says he is Associate Professor with National Defence University Islamanad. Now he is also writing for websites with links to military and intelligence officers. Was this investigated by Jang Group when they published over 20 stories by him since 2009? The same question must be asked of The Nation which has published columns by him as well. Why did these newspapers not inform their readers of the author’s associations?

It also raises the question whether journalism has become the favourite retirement hobby for our military and intelligence officers. It seems that there is virtually no end to the number of “Think Tanks” that are paying retired officers to write ‘analysis’ that ends up spread in newspapers and websites. Also, who is funding all of these websites and newspapers that are proliferating throughout the country? Surely all of these Generals are not donating their time for free.

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions must wait until another day. But one thing is clear, Pakistani media is infested not only with conspiracy theories, but with propaganda rings that seek not to inform but to manipulate. As long as this is the case, media freedom is only an illusion.

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Posted in Blogs, Conspiracy Theories, Daily Mail, Pak Observer | 14 Comments »

How Propaganda Gets Into Foreign Media

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Proper investigative journalism is severely lacking and this is effecting not only our own media but international reporting on Pakistan as well. As reporting on Pakistan becomes more and more dangerous for foreign journalists, often accused of being ‘spies’ by certain right-wing elements, the international press becomes reliant on our own journalists to feed them information. In turn, they are fed propaganda, not actual reporting, which is then added in their own reporting. Once this happens, Pakistani media refers to the international press as a way of legitimising their own inventions, even though it is their own words that have been repeated.

Declan WalshAn example of this problem was made clear in The News of yesterday. A front page article titled, ‘Raymond Davis was CIA spy: UK paper’, is actually a re-published article from the UK newspaper The Guardian. The article, by Declan Walsh and Ewen MacAskill, was originally published over the week end. The News re-published the article on Monday without changing a single word or giving proper attribution.

Ansar AbbasiThe article concludes with by citing ‘press reports’ about a rather peculiar speculation: “that the authorities worry the US could try to spring Davis in a “Hollywood-style sting”. If that phrase is not familiar to you, let me explain its origin. The threat of a ‘Hollywood-style sting operation’ is an invention of one Ansar Abbasi who works for The News. He introduced the phrase in an 11 February article titled, ‘Multiple security layers erected for Raymond Davis’, a piece that also threatens ‘some subversive act from India to get the double-murderer to embarrass Pakistan’. As always, the sources for Ansar Abbasi’s supposed conspiracies by American and Indian forces are unknown.

Ansar Abbasi may have invented from thin air these conspiracy theories, or they may have been fed to him by intelligence agencies. But the trick has worked because The Guardian has now repeated the claim on their respected pages, only attributing the claim to ‘press reports’ and not mentioning the name of Ansar Abbasi which would have alerted readers to the questionable origin of the claim. These conspiracies can now be repeated by our own media manipulators as reports of a preeminent UK newspaper, no need to mention their birthplace in the work of Ansar Abbasi.

Media reports on Raymond Davis are already filled with confusing and contradictory articles in Pakistan. Now our own propaganda has made its way into the international press. Whether this is by chance or by design is not known. What is known is that in a case as sensitive as Raymond Davis, the media has a responsibility to provide neutral reporting of facts and not to play the sensationalism card. That may be too much to ask of certain quarters in our own media, but we hope that the international press will not be so easily manipulated.

Unfortunately, as foreign journalists are threatened and labeled as ‘spies’ by certain elements that do not want the truth to come out, these foreign journalists rely on Pakistani journalists to provide them with research and analysis. When that research and analysis is filled with planted conspiracies and misinformation, it only serves to hide the truth. We pride ourselves on our free media, but can the media be truly free when it is so easily and so often manipulated for political ends?

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Posted in Foreign Media, Jang, The News | 2 Comments »

Urdu Media’s Jihadi Propaganda

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

by Farhat Taj

Some people in Waziristan have requested that I write about a column published in the Urdu daily Mashriq on January 2, 2011. Following is the summary of the column, titled ‘Hakeemullah Mehsud’s lover’.

A senior female French journalist contacted a tribal journalist form Waziristan via Facebook. The French lady requested him to help her with some research on Waziristan. The tribesman agreed and the French journalist landed in Pakistan. During their meeting, the French lady said that she was madly in love with Hakeemullah Mehsud, a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander and that she wished to marry him. She also said that one of her friends wanted to marry Qari Hussain, the Ustad-e-Fidayeen or master trainer of suicide bombers in the army of the TTP. She further said that another four of her friends also wished to marry some Taliban commanders from the TTP. Out of utter surprise, the tribal journalist wondered how that could be because people in Europe believe that the Taliban are brutal beasts. The lady blatantly responded that, in actuality, the Europeans are the brutal beasts, not the Taliban. She said that no one in Europe had the courage to speak the truth when it came to the Taliban. Everyone who had the opportunity to closely interact with the Taliban had been deeply impressed by them. Take, for example, the lady journalist, Mariam, who had been imprisoned by the Taliban. She became so impressed by the Taliban that she converted to Islam. People who care so much for their prisoners would certainly be much kinder towards their wives and children. In Europe, the family system has collapsed. Children do not know who their fathers are. Wives have no clue about the whereabouts of their husbands. My friends and I have studied Islam and now we wish to know about the Taliban. This is, therefore, why we wish to marry them. We will burn our French citizenship documents in front of the media in Waziristan to terminate our ties with our native land. We will become tribal women forever. The lady also said that she was madly in love with Hakeemullah and would marry him come what may. “What if Hakeemullah refuses?” asked the tribal journalist. The lady’s response was: “The heart speaks to the heart”. The tribesman warned her that, under Pakistani law, she could not go to Waziristan. The lady said she would plead to Allah to punish Pakistan for having laws that stood in the way of her and her friends’ marriages with the Taliban. The lady was crying uncontrollably. Finally, the tribal journalist, who had full sympathy for the woman but had no means to help her, agreed to spread her story through a newspaper column.

The tribesmen who brought this story to my attention said that the story had been planted by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan to romanticise the beastly Taliban in the eyes of young tribesmen. One of them said that he saw a group of teenage tribesmen discussing this story with keen interest. He tore into pieces the newspaper copy being held in the hands of the teenagers and had a two-hour long counselling session with them whereby he explained to them that such fake stories were planted in Urdu newspapers to lure young tribesmen into terrorism, and that it had nothing to offer but only death and destruction for FATA and its people. The young men seemed convinced, but the tribesman expressed the apprehension that there must be many teenage tribesmen out there who might have been misled into jihad by the story. The tribesmen have no hope in the Pakistani media. One of them even said that the Urdu media was capable of prostituting its conscience to spread malicious information about FATA. They, therefore, request the journalistic community in France to take note of the fake story and remain on guard so that their name is never again misused in misleading the tribal youth into a so-called jihad that clearly threatens the western streets with violence.

The tribesmen also guess that perhaps the journalist Mariam, referred to in the fake story, is Yvonne Ridley. They complain that Ridley has been at the forefront in defending Aafia Siddiqui. If the journalist Mariam is indeed Ridley, they expect her to come forward and condemn those who misuse her name and conversion to Islam — which is her sovereign right — for dirty tricks to lure innocent tribal youth into the fold of terrorism that has devastated FATA and threatens Ridley’s own country with violence. For once, Ridley should show that she stands with the victims of Pakistani state terrorism, like the people of FATA, rather than terrorists who enjoy covert state support.

The reason I wish to write about this planted story in Urdu daily Mashriq is to give to the sane-minded Pakistani English readership a glimpse of how the Urdu media has lowered itself in perpetuating the military establishment’s inflicted terrorism in FATA. I also understand that the forces of sanity in Pakistan have been reduced to a frightened state of mind by the religious extremists. They could not even rise to the occasion upon the assassination of Salmaan Taseer and the threats to Sherry Rehman. How can one expect them to stand up to the military establishment — the original force behind all terrorism in Pakistan — in support of the people of FATA, the people whose sufferings do not mean anything significant for the wider Pakistani society? I just wish to bring to their notice that disappointment and even hatred against the military is accumulating in FATA. The cowardice of those who should speak up for what is right will also be a factor in the case of any future catastrophe in Pakistan.

This piece was originally published by Daily Times on 19 February 2011. The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban

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Posted in Daily Times | 26 Comments »

The Nation’s Jihadi Propaganda

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

The Nation has long held onto the Nazariya-e-Pakistan philosophy of the Zia years, Majid Nizami even going so far as to brag in his official biography that “General Zia-ul-Haq recommended him as a nominee to the Shura”. (It should be noted that Nizami incorrectly says that the Shura was the parliament, when in all actuality it was Zia’s hand-picked group of advisors.) But The Nation of 16 February was like a time capsule left over from the Zia era and shows that sections of the media remain more focused on ideology than news.

Gen. Zia ul HaqIn Wednesday’s newspaper, The Nation‘s Opinion page was dominated by a piece by the late Brigadier General S.K. Malik – a favourite of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s and the author of jihadi field manual, The Quranic Concept of War. Most Opinion articles are used to explain or analyse current events. The Brig (R) Malik piece published by The Nation, “Holy Prophet’s Defence Policy” was noticeable because it does not appear to address any specific current issue. But this piece of Zia-era propaganda did not appear in a vacuum. Rather it appeared on the same page as two editorials that were over-the-top in their bald face anti-India stance.

The first editorial about Law Minister Babar Awan’s statement against  the arrest of Rahat Fateh Ali goes beyond what the Law Minister said and claims that the arrest shows that India is “inimically opposed to the very existence of Pakistan and to Pakistanis”. Nawa-i-Waqt even takes a direct swipe at competitor media group Jang Group by saying, “those who propounded the Aman ki Asha had carried out Aman ki Nirasha”. This editorial quotes from Law Minister Babar Awan’s own statement to media on the subject from Monday, but it is expanded on his statement by even criticising Awan for not taking “the same position with the elements in government who are eager to engage in a dialogue with India”. The Nation uses the arrest of Fatah Ali Khan to request the government to cease talks with India until Kashmir is settled, even though these are unrelated issues.

This was followed by a second editorial that again refers to “New Delhi’s deadly machinations on our soil”. Most irresponsibly, The Nation even goes as far as threatening ‘nuclear clouds’ if India does not settle the Kashmir issue ‘as early as possible’.

The next page which claims the headline of ‘Analysis’ includes two pieces by General (Retd) Mirza Aslam Beg and S.M. Hali which are virulently anti-American and anti-British in their content by claiming that these Western countries are anti-Muslim in their policies. In the case of Gen (R) Beg’s column it also takes the tone of pro-Islamist sympathies and supporting Zia-era policies of propping up a puppet Islamist regime in Kabul as a policy of ‘strategic depth’.

Gen. Mirz Aslam BegNevertheless, the US and its allies are allergic to Islamists coming to power. For example, Hamas won the elections in Palestine, but was not allowed to form the government, and thus the Israelis are now facing the consequences. Similarly, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, who fought the war to expel the Soviets, were not allowed to form the government and were pushed into a contrived civil war. And now, as they emerge the winner, efforts are afoot to deny them their due share in power. This obsession, in fact, has been the cause of the American defeat in Afghanistan. They have lost the war in Afghanistan, but find it difficult to rationalise the defeat without hurting their ego and pride as a superpower.

Gen (R) Beg also praises “towering personality like Imam Khomeini of Iran” and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, but he ignores the fact that the people of Iran are rising up to protest the Islamic regime. Gen (R) Beg also praises Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood for the revolution that overthrew the dictator Honsi Mubarak, even though that was a revolution of the people, not Muslim Brotherhood and protesters there told journalists that “The Brothers have been effectively sidelined”.

Gp Capt (Retd) Air Force S.M. HaliThe article by S.M. Hali criticises UK PM David Cameron for speaking against Islamic militancy even though the British PM clearly stated that it is not Islam or the Ummah which is committing acts of terrorism but only a small group of extremists. S.M. Hali admits this point, but then says that Cameron’s proposal for “greater integration of Muslim minorities” into British culture. Hali accuses the PM for stirring ‘a hornets nest’, but is he not doing the same with a provocatively titled piece, ‘Cameron targets Muslim community’? It would be pertinent to note that S.M. Hali is the same ‘defence analyst’ who termed the cricket scandal a RAW conspiracy. Neither did The Nation inform readers that S.M. Hali is also a military man since he is Group Captain (Retd) of Pakistan Air Force.

Any one of these pieces by itself may not be worthy of notice, but taken together as the complete package of opinions and analysis by retired military in one issue of The Nation must raise eyebrows. It is a demonstration that far from being an ideology of the past, Zia’s manipulation of religious sentiments is being used again to hypnotize the masses. Obviously The Nation can take whatever position they choose on issues, but when a package of clear ideological indoctrination surfaces, it is proper to ask whether Nawa-i-Waqt is serving the cause of informing the people or promoting pro-jihadi ideologies left over from the Zia era.

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Posted in The Nation | 4 Comments »

Funhouse Mirrors

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Media is ofter termed a ‘watch dog’ and indeed this is one important role of the media. Personally, I think this is a poor metaphor. For one thing, ‘watch dog’ assumes that there is an outside threat and that its master must be protected and never questioned. In the case of media it is too often the government which is seen as a threat only and the civil society never questioned. But government is not inherently a threat, and civil society is not without its own faults also.

Funhouse mirrorAnother view is that media’s role is a mirror held up to society reflecting what is good and bad both so that people can see the good and know where there are some improvements needed. In this case, media would show both the problems in government that need to be fixed and the good things that government does also. Media would do the same for civil society, showing the good of the people but also reflecting the blemishes in popular beliefs so that they can be mended and society improved.

But what happens when the mirror becomes warped?

In an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News on Sunday night, American President Barack Obama described the American media as a ‘funhouse mirror’ that gives people a mistaken impression.

While questioning Mr Obama on domestic issues; Mr O’Reilly, a strong opponent, abruptly asked him: “Does it disturb you that so many people hate you?” Mr Obama laughed a little and then responded. “You know, the truth is that the people — and I’m sure previous Presidents would say the same thing, whether it was Bush or Clinton or Reagan or anybody — the people who dislike you don’t know you. “But they hate you,” Mr O’Reilly stressed.

“The folks who hate you, they don’t know you,” said Mr Obama. “What they hate is whatever funhouse mirror image of you that’s out there and they don’t know you. And so, you don’t take it personally.” “You don’t ever?” prodded Mr O’Reilly one final time. “Doesn’t it annoy you sometimes? “I think that by the time you get here you have to have had a pretty thick skin. If you didn’t, then you wouldn’t have got here,” said Mr Obama.

For a variety of reasons, the media mirror has become warped not only in America but in Pakistan also. Mosharraf Zaidi brilliantly describes the state of things in his column, Drowning in our delusions:

The starkest revelation in the post-Taseer scenario is that the quality of journalism in Pakistan is in grave danger of becoming entirely hostage to ratings, profits and fear. For staunch defenders of the Pakistani media, this is not a pleasant reality to come face to face with. There is very little, however, to mitigate the cold hard facts.

Taseer’s position was pretty simple. He believed and stated that the Pakistan Penal Code provisions on blasphemy cause procedural lapses that endanger the lives of innocent Pakistanis. He believed and stated that there are skewed incentives, built into the provisions, for people to misuse them. Finally, he believed and stated that procedural change is required to give greater functional fidelity to the legal regime dealing with blasphemy.

This is not a particularly sophisticated position. It has long been shared by reasonable Pakistanis on all sides of the faux ideological divides we create in this country. It is a position that human rights advocates, political leaders and others have long taken.

Yet not only was this position rarely represented in the news media, it was repeatedly misrepresented. Watching young talk show hosts in their twenties make careers out of aggression is not unique. But when that aggression helps fuel paranoia and lies about someone that can then threaten their safety, we must draw a line. One such talk show host recently won the equivalent of the TV talk-show host lottery – a new job after a bidding war broke out for the host’s services. The new job is a reward for having repeatedly insinuating Salmaan Taseer’s blasphemous intent on a talk show. While one channel fired the host, it hardly matters. The new show will be even more bombastic. It will not fear facts, because facts often get in the way of ratings.

It is not only the facts that become distorted in the media funhouse mirror, though. It also makes it distorts the conversations about the problems the country is facing. And when we can’t see clearly what is wrong, how are we supposed to fix it?

Hyper-nationalist propagandists might believe that it’s better for us to lie to ourselves about the nation’s problems, but this is actually keeping us from making progress. That is also the conclusion reached by Mosharraf Zaidi.

Pakistan is being poisoned by false pride, self-pity and moral asymmetry. If we want Raymond Davis to burn, we should demand the same for Mumtaz Qadri. If the murder of three Lahori boys is unacceptable, we should be even more outraged by the untold death and destruction in Tirah Valley, in Bajaaur, in Orakzai, and across FATA that has been showered upon it by the Pakistani military. If we don’t like drones (and we shouldn’t), we must ask questions about what our helicopters and F-16s are doing in the north. If we don’t like targeted killings in Karachi, we should raise our voice against them in Balochistan too.

Pakistanis are too resilient, too beautiful and too good to drown in a sea of delusions. Now more than ever is a time for Pakistanis to be optimistic. The degree of responsibility in our optimism will make all the difference between perpetuating fantasies, or stemming the rot by promoting facts and reason.

Pakistan has the intellect and the resources to solve its own problems and clean up its own messes. We don’t need ‘patriotic generals’ or anyone else to do it for us. But before we can begin to improve things, we have to know what we’re looking at. For this, we rely on the media to be a mirror that reflects our nation clearly and accurately.

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Dear Propagandists, Keep Digging

Monday, December 20th, 2010

The Daily MailThe propagandists behind the fake Wikileaks story that was exposed by The Guardian continue trying to dig their way out of the hole they have found themselves in. What is curious is that faced with inarguable proof that they have finally been caught manufacturing stories, they only continue to protest their innocence and refuse to admit their mistakes. The more they try to justify their actions, though, the deeper the hole they are digging for themselves.

As we wrote a couple of days ago, Ahmed Quraishi’s web of propaganda has begun to unravel as more and more journalists are calling him what he really is. That has not stopped Mr Quraishi, however, and today we find him in The News actually asking with a straight face for the state “to intervene as the interim and enforce discipline” in the media. Like any would-be dictator, Ahmed Quraishi believes the media should be free to spread propaganda, but not to expose the puppeteer.

But this network of propagandists is larger than Ahmed Quraishi, and he is not the only one of the lot writing frenzied defenses of their shady practices. Today, the website of the fake newspaper “Daily Mail” features a column by one “Mohammad Jamil” that continues to offer sad excuses for their phoney reporting.

This group had carried the same news in its daily English and Urdu newspapers; later described them fake and apologized for not checking its veracity and the source before publishing. They are now trying to create ‘awareness’ among media men that they should not release news without checking its authenticity. But the problem is that there is competition in print and electronic media, especially the latter for their passion for breaking news; and they do not have the time to check the veracity of the news. However, one of its anchors in his remarks on Indian TV assured that he would investigate those behind fake WikiLeaks, which is despicable.

It should be noted here that this “Daily Mail” is the same newspaper that had planted the story that RAW was behind the spot-fixing scandal and other conspiracies that turned out to be false. Of course, as always these conspiracies are justified as defending the national honour, even though it is the culture of conspiracies that is doing more harm to the national honour than any cheating cricketer.

In fact, the last sentence of Md. Jamil’s argument appears to make up the foundation of his argument – that media should not report the facts, but should simply be a mouthpiece for the right-wing.

Secondly, one would not come across any Indian condemning Indian intelligence agency RAW. On the other hand, Pakistani media men just flaunt to prove how independent they are, they criticize military and ISI, day in and day out. There are indeed patriotic elements in Pakistani print and electronic media who are aware of their national responsibility. But others also abound who have become chivalrous and obstreperous as a result of the newfound media freedom.

The only thing that Md. Jamil writes correctly is that, “it is moral obligation of the right thinking and responsible media men to react strongly to irresponsible behavior, no matter who commits the act”. This is reason to praise journalists like Fasi Zaka, Nadeem F Paracha, George Fulton, Farrukh Khan Pitafi, and the countless others who expose the propagandists who treat media as a chess game and the common people as their pawns.

Md. Jamil closes his column by saying,

At this point in time when Pakistan is confronting challenges to its internal and external security, Pakistani media men should rise to the occasion and play its role to counter hostile Indian propaganda and protect national interests.

The best way to counter propaganda and protect national interests, of course, being to report the facts without bias or opinion so that the people can be trusted to decide for themselves.

It is a telling point indeed that these phoney reporters who have created a business misleading Pakistanis would term any honest journalist as Mir Jafar. That this occurs while Ahmed Quraishi is writing in The News that freedom and honesty should be sacrificed for ‘discipline’ shows just what contempt With each of these arguments, these petty propagandists may believe that they are digging their way out of the hole that they fell into thanks to their fake Wikileaks documents. But what they’re really doing is digging the grave of their own propaganda.

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Posted in Daily Mail | 2 Comments »

Ahmed Quraishi’s Web Continues to Unravel

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Ahmed Quraishi is back in the news again, but not for the reason he might like. Rather the prolific consipiracy theorist has caught the attention of actual journalists and commentators who are exposing his antics.

This is not the first time that Quraishi has been criticised by real journalists. One year ago he received a black eye when a prominent American foreign policy journal wrote that he misrepresented their reporting in order to make a political attack against a government official.

Shortly after he was embarrassed by magazine Foreign Policy, we showed that Ahmed Quraishi is registered as an American political consultant. Earlier this year we reported that Ahmed Quraishi admitted on his Facebook that he was not a real journalist but actually a propagandist – he even called himself “clean shaven Taliban”. We have even shown that Ahmed Quraishi is willing to contradict himself when it is necessary to promote his political message.

With the exposure of the fake Wikileaks story, however, Ahmed Quraishi’s web of propaganda has continued to unravel. It was only a few short weeks ago that Cafe Pyala exposed the Internet propaganda ring that was responsible for the fake story. And to no one’s surprise, Ahmed Quraishi’s name was all over these propaganda websites.

Following the exposure of the fake Wikileaks story, Ahmed Quraishi responded in a most extraordinary way. Rather than admit a mistake, Ahmed Quraishi wrote a bizarre defense of the practise of using the media to mislead the people in efforts to promote a political agenda. This has been the final nail in the coffin of his credibility.

Ahmed Quraishi’s crude justification for misleading his own countrymen raised the blood pressure of freelance journalist George Fulton, who wrote for The Express Tribune earlier this week terming Quraishi a ‘purveyor of fiction’.

For those who don’t know Ahmad Quraishi, according to his website — ahmedquraishi.com — he is “a public policy writer, commentator and broadcaster”. In reality, he is widely known to be a crude propagandist for the army/intelligence nexus. At least Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films had artistic value. Noxious, yes, but art nonetheless. Sadly, no such claim can be made of Quraishi’s leaden prosaic prose.

He is also “one of the founders of PakNationalists, a supposed forum focusing on shaping Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policy options”. Actually it’s an anti-India bile-spewing machine that spreads untruths, smears and uncorroborated stories. His most recent article on his website, entitled “Guardian uses WikliLeaks for Propaganda, Pakistani Media Can’t?” is an astonishing convoluted defence of the fake cable that was exposed by Cafe Pyala and subsequently picked up by the Guardian correspondent, Declan Walsh and this newspaper’s blog section. The phrase ‘twisting in the wind’ comes to mind.

Quraishi begins by attempting to undermine the original story of the fake cable: “(The) Guardian’s Islamabad correspondent Declan Walsh claimed the stories were ‘credited to the Online Agency, an Islamabad-based news service that has frequently run pro-army stories in the past. No journalist is bylined’. Fabulous, only that it is not accurate. The story was published by the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’, a newspaper launched recently and staffed by journalists coming from the newsrooms of Pakistan’s frontrow newspapers.”

He goes on to say: “A large part of the original Pakistani report is credible. It was published by a prominent news organisation and the story has four names in the byline. The Guardian unethically tried to link the story to Pakistani intelligence agencies by suggesting the story comes with ‘no byline’ and can’t be sourced. The Guardian’s Mr Walsh compensated his lack of investigation by offering his own conspiracy theory that the report was planted by Pakistani intelligence agencies.”

Let’s state some facts. All the newspapers that ran the story did credit it to the Online news agency. No byline was given by any newspaper. It cannot be sourced. Ah, but what about this ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ that he quotes. Unfortunately, this is not an authentic newspaper but one that peddles propaganda. (It was ‘The Daily Mail of Pakistan’ that planted the bogus story that the Pakistan spot-fixing scandal was orchestrated by the Indian intelligence agency RAW.)

What about the bylines Mr Quraishi mentions on the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ website? It’s true that the fake cable story is bylined “From Suzie Wang in Washington, Christina Palmer in New Delhi, John Nelson in Kabul and Ahmad-Almurad in Cairo”. The only problem is that these people don’t exist. They are figments of his imagination. I would love to meet Suzie Wang from Washington and Christina Palmer who apparently works in New Delhi.

Yes, it’s highly likely that the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ — and all these other bogus websites (again Cafe Pyala has done a brilliant expose of these bogus sites) — are probably paid for by a budget that we, as taxpayers, and our elected officials do not have permission to scrutinise. Good to know, isn’t it.

So the question that comes to mind is: what is the point of Ahmed Quraishi’s article? He has been proven to peddle half-truths and misinformation on some rather shady websites. As a self-described nationalist, I am sure he would defend what he was doing as being for the greater good of Pakistan and its people. But I subscribe to Charles De Gaulle’s view of nationalists and nationalism: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.” Mr Quraishi is a hate-monger. One must also wonder how much Mr Quraishi really loves the people of this country since he seems to make a living peddling half-truths to them.

As revealed by Cafe Pyala’s expose of the Internet propaganda ring responsible for the fake Wikileaks story, Pakistan’s media is infested with political operatives who are engaged in influencing, not informing the public. A free media in a democratic society airs the views of differing sides in order to fully inform the public and let the people come to their own conclusions. But media is not free if it is manipulated by political operatives who treat the newspaper editors and talk show hosts as puppets on a string. These would-be puppet masters must hide behind the scene in order to fool the public, therefore the best way to resolve this problem is to shine the spot light on those who would be puppet masters so the public can see them for who they really are.

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Posted in Blogs, Express Tribune | 6 Comments »

Conspiracies, Media and a Willing Public

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

I’m glad that the discussion of these fake Wikileaks cables has not ended with the apology of some newspapers. I’m truly disappointed – no, I am truly depressed – that even after the story is admitted to be fake, some newspapers and TV networks continue to peddle the story. If it is unknown to be a forgery, the story is a mistake. Once it is known, it is simply lies. So, why do these lies continue? Unfortunately, the answer is too complex for some simple conspiracy theory. But reading several writers today, you can begin to piece together the answer.

Nadeem F. Paracha calls them ‘The liars collective’, a media that is used by agency men to protect the vested interests of an establishment whose irrelevance threatens its very existence.

Each time any of these institutions is rocked by a scandal or an exposé, certain newspapers and TV channels suddenly start teeming with loud deniers who would go to absurd lengths to divert the public’s attention towards something more ‘substantial’, such as of course, the ‘record-breaking corruption’ of this government, the fantastic job the free judiciary is doing, or how India remains the greatest threat to Pakistan. Or some feel-good lectures by a crank or two, usually crammed with airy myths presented as historical facts, are unleashed.

This has happened so many times that one wonders whether what many journalists and politicians on the other side of the ideological fence say, is true. Whether most of the media personnel we see on our TV screens or read about in the newspaper, who are always so passionately waving the flag of Pakistan and spouting contempt against corruption (especially when a narrative by the establishment comes under stress), may very well be the proverbial ‘agency men?’

NFP, as usual, is on to something. In fact, his thesis is at least partially confirmed by one of these ‘agency men’ himself, Ahmed Quraishi, who admits using media to spread propaganda, even when it is not true.

Just like the Guardian and NYT, the Pakistani media retains the right to manipulate and highlight WikiLeaks documents that serve our interest. This could involve some exaggeration in some parts of the media. But not everything is ‘incorrect’, as the Guardian claimed.

The Pakistani story shifts the focus to India, and shows we too can use WikiLeaks for propaganda like everyone else. The Guardian and the other two journals have been doing the same for the past two weeks. I am not saying Pakistan did use WikiLeaks for propaganda but it certainly can, like everyone else.

This is not journalism, but psychological warfare by manipulating an unsuspecting public. It is not right for the CIA, and it is not right for RAW…and regardless of Ahmed Quraishi’s perverted justification – it is not right for him and the ISI to do either.

But even this is only part of the story. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. There is also the news agencies who have a perverse incentive to publish the craziest headlines without checking their facts. Cafe Pyala describes this situation in their post today:

The defence that “if anyone goes on Goggle [sic] and writes: Wikileaks Leaks About India, Israel and Afghanisan” one would be able to get the same news we got” would be uproariously funny were it not simultaneously so appalling. That’s your defence Online??? So tomorrow, if you go on the net and search for “Conspiracy Theories About Moon Landing Being Fake”, you would pass that along to news organizations as valid news? Second point: why exactly then do news organizations need you? I mean all they need to do to get their ‘news’ is Google (or Goggle, if that’s your thing), right?

Of course none of this takes away from the news organizations’ own responsibilities to verify stories they take on. Are we to gather from this that the news sense of the staff at these papers and channels has deteriorated to such an extent that NONE of them saw anything remotely strange about the story?

There are a lot of news researchers, producers, and editors out there who are not on the payroll of any intelligence agency. But they have their own vested interest, which is the public which consumes the news – us. As Nadir Hassan makes quite clear today, we also share responsibility for all this mess.

The media was only the vehicle for delivering the WikiLeaks-that-weren’t. The ultimate responsibility lies with us, the consumers. That the news stories based on the falsified cables were believed by so many people shows that they only told us what we so desperately want to be true. For a story to pass muster, it must ring true. And a heady brew of inflammatory textbooks, government sabre-rattling, media sensationalism and, it must be admitted, our own prejudice, have convinced a large percentage of the population that a hidden Hindu hand must be behind every local problem. Any media organisation which claimed, for example, that the slippery Swiss were behind the Baloch separatists, would be laughed into bankruptcy. Since we have so successfully demonised India, for many its involvement doesn’t so much as merit an arched eyebrow.

Since self-congratulation is easier than reflection, there will also be a lot of chatter in the coming days about the burgeoning photosphere. True, the fraudulent cables were first exposed as such by blogs and Twitter users. Inevitably, this will be used as proof that the Pakistani population is too sophisticated to fall for such hoaxes. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking a few liberal journalists are representative of a country that is all too willing to believe the worst about its neighbour.

Fake stories are not published because of one sinister villain sitting in some hideout like in the movies. If it were so simple, we could simply find him and throw him behind bars. Problem solved. Unfortunately, there are complex reasons and complex motives behind media propaganda and lies. The good news is, there is a solution – it just takes a little bit of work. Just as word-of-mouth and ‘word-of-Twitter’ can be used to spread misinformation, it can also be used to expose it. It is said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Therefore, let the sun shine on these cockroaches and we will watch them scurry away.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Lessons From Forged Wikileaks Story

Friday, December 10th, 2010

Wikileaks Forgery

I don’t want to spend too much time on the forged Wikileaks story that was exposed by The Guardian yesterday as it has been covered fairly extensively already. But there are some important lessons that should be discussed, and so I will spend a short time on those.

Some have laid the blame squarely on Jang Group, but that’s not quite fair. While Jang certainly shares some fault, they were not the only media group to run the story and neither were they the originators. Actually, the story was also run by The Nation and Nawa-i-Waqt as well as Express Tribune. That this story was not carried by one media group only but by a wide selection suggests that the mistake was not intentional but the result of two common media problems.

The first problem that is highlighted is the rush to ‘scoop’ other news organizations and be the first to publish headlines – especially if those headlines will get attention – without doing proper background checks to confirm the facts. We see this far too often. In the case of a bomb blast, news programmes will report a certain number of deaths before their reporters have even arrived to the scene, only to change their reporting several times until the facts are known. There must be a balance between reporting news quickly and reporting it factually. It is better to be second to break a story and have it correct than to be first and be incorrect. In this case, Dawn did not run with the original story, and comes away looking more reliable because of it.

The second problem is the habit of relying on questionable sources. This story appears to have been first broken by the website dailymailpost.com, a website that has previously been exposed as part of a propaganda ring. According to today’s The News,

A check on the Internet as well as The Guardian report showed that the story was not based on Wikileaks cables, and had in fact originated from some local websites such as The Daily Mail and Rupee News known for their close connections with certain intelligence agencies.

This blog and others have been trying to bring to light the question of intelligence agencies and other vested interests using journalists as puppets. Perhaps some times there is money changing hands, perhaps other times a reporter is awed by access to a well-connected source, perhaps the reporter simply believes the story is too good to pass up – whatever the reason, we see too many incidents in which news reports make claims based on statements by ‘reliable sources’ that never come true and then fade away. This is not to say that journalists should ignore their sources, but perhaps they should do a little more investigation to verify the story.

Both of these lessons center on the same point – the need for better fact checking.

Express Tribune has published a retraction and public apology letting readers know that the story was a mistake. Jang Group has also been forthcoming and published front page stories explaining that the story was a mistake and revealing the source for the material as some questionable websites. These media groups should be commended for their honesty in retracting the story and admitting the mistake. Unfortunately, today’s issue of The Nation continues to peddle the story even after it has been shown as a forgery.

In journalism, mistakes are made. This is why many newspapers include a ‘corrections’ section where they can let readers know in the event of a mislabeled photograph or some details that have been reported and later learned to be incorrect. For larger incidents like these forged Wikileaks documents, a full article such as published by Express Tribune and The News is appreciated. We hope that the lessons will be taken and all media groups will use the unfortunate incident to remind their editors and reporters of the importance of getting the story right.

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Posted in Daily Nawa-i-Waqt, Dawn, Ethics, Express News, Jang, The News | 6 Comments »

Web of Deceit: Cafe Pyala's Expose of Internet Propaganda

Monday, November 29th, 2010

The blog Cafe Pyala recently published an incredible expose of the tangled web of deceit an Internet propaganda ring being run by a group of supposed journalists (original in full below the jump). Far from the conspiracy theories that are relentlessly promoted on several of the blogs that have been exposed, the work of the bloggers at Cafe Pyala shows what investigative journalism is all about – looking at the facts and connecting the dots. It also serves as an important reminder that readers must always consider the source of news, and whether the journalists or publication are reporting facts or simply political talking points.

According to the independent research of the bloggers at Cafe Pyala and their readers, there is a long list of blogs and Internet news sites that appear to have been set up by at least two individuals – Moin Ansari and Ahmed Quraishi – under false addresses and company names for the purpose of spreading a particular political message and attacking those with whom they disagree. Many of these websites appear to have been taken down following their exposure, more evidence that Cafe Pyala’s findings were correct. The list includes:

Ahmed Quraishi is relatively well known to Pakistan Media Watch readers, as he has been exposed several times by this blog for his pseudo-journalistic work as a political consultant – a fact that Quraishi himself does not dispute. And while some of the other pseudo-journalists exposed by Cafe Pyala like Moin Ansari are less well-known outside of conspiracy blog circles, the practice of using journalism as a cover for political operations extends well beyond these exposed websites. Connections with intelligence agencies run deep in parts of the media, and it is often difficult to decipher what is true and what is merely propaganda.

The lesson here is one that applies not only to Internet journalism, but to all forms of media. As readers of Pakistan Media Watch have commented previously, there are times when sources should be anonymous or can justifiably use a pseudonym to protect their security – especially when criticising authority. This works because the facts should be able to speak for themselves. Individuals are entitled to their own opinions, but no one is invited to his own facts.

(more…)

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Posted in Blogs, Conspiracy Theories | 2 Comments »

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