What's with the news these days?
Is the media in Pakistan focusing on the right issues?
Dunya News Reports (Yaruq Malik)
The Pakistani media is usually under scrutiny for ‘sensationalism’. It is quite obvious from the various television channels that we scroll through at any given time. The stories that are shown on these TV channels contain an extra effort put up by the reporters to alarm our senses and halt everything else we are doing as we seize our sight towards the TV screens.
From Aseefa Bhutto Zardari’s cats to Ali Adil’s project of gaining the media limelight by sewing his lips and directing his own abduction footage, from Reham Khan’s twitter account to the ‘hat-trick-ring’ worn by Imran Khan in a recent press briefing, the Pakistani media always creates a buzz around things that are either not important or distract us from the real issues that we currently face.
Let’s look at Ali Adil’s case for instance. It was reported that Ali Adil was abducted, tortured and thrown outside Lahore’s Mayo Hospital while he was unconscious. The 40 year old victim revealed that his landlord named Ahmed with his accomplice Tipu had allegedly sewed his lips with a copper wire and tortured him for 20 days over a land dispute in Sangla Hill.
It was also reported that the victim’s family received a USB from a local courier after Adil went missing for several days. The USB contained a graphic video of the victim being tortured by five people including the landlord.
A case was filed against the landlord and his accomplices at the City Police Station and an investigation was ordered to further dig in to the case.
The victim was successful in gaining the sympathy of people around the country as tweets started flooding into the social media about the dreadful incident.
On January 12, 2016, results from the polygraph test conducted during the investigation revealed that Ali Adil had sewed his own lips and had falsely accused the landlord for alleged torture. The victim also changed his testimony twice during the investigation due to which the polygraph test was conducted.
Indeed, this was a shameful act on Ali Adil’s part to attain media’s limelight and to settle the issue of the disputed land but was the media responsible enough in this case? Is the media correct in creating ‘breaking news’ stories out of Aseefa Bhutto Zardari’s cat not feeling good?
Unfortunately, our society enjoys such petty incidents where they can get a ‘glimpse’ into the personal lives of the people, especially the political leaders.
This makes sense because in Pakistan people have absolutely nothing else to do! It is quite normal in various local ‘dhaabaas’ where dozens of people are watching TV and commenting on various issues as if they were right there when it all happened. It is also common for the media to display issues that have zero credibility which has taken people away from reality and have dragged them into a ‘gray’ area which has no clarity of information.
Recently, the Institute of Business Management (IoBM) in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has released a study which provides an index on media responsibility versus media independence. The analytical scores gave a result of 5.46:5.75 which means that the media in Pakistan enjoys the ‘freedom’ it so desperately asks for but as a consequence, lacks responsibility.
The study’s result is contrary to what the journalists claim in Pakistan that there is a lack of freedom, independence and liberty in the world of journalism in this part of the world.
The media sometimes, through its stories, provokes public interest in way which creates anarchy in the society. The media has a sensitive responsibility of shaping public opinion and awareness which requires more attention from news channels, newspapers and social media activists so that people get educated on issues that are important and contain some form of credibility attached to them.
