It is a few months back that I heard this charge. It was made very seriously by Mr Talat Hussain, anchor at one of our TV shows.
Since I did not notice this censorship in any of our papers and journals or the TV, as I saw the government roundly being taken to task, I asked around.
I was told that many media persons were mad at the government, and each had his own reasons. Mr Hussain, I was informed, was livid because the PMLN government had promised to make him ambassador to France, which was degraded to Uganda, which was degraded to nowhere. Mr Hussain took this continual “degradation” hard. Laying the charge of censorship was his way of hitting back at the government. which was understandable.
But as one looked deeper, one found that a handful of others, whom one puts into the category of our “liberal” intellectuals, were also seated on this “censorship” bandwagon, the driver of which is Hussain Haqqani and the foul Tarek Fatah, the sometime resident of Canada, who now mostly spews hate against Pakistan from India.
To this august company belong Hamid Hussain of Dawn, cuddly Ayesha Siddiqa and Nasir Abbas of London, Ahmad Rashid of Afghanistan, Sethi Sahib of Qaddafi Stadium, Babar Sattar of EOBI wealth management group, and some others.
Two things that are common among these distinguished media personalities are:
- As they stood on the sidelines while Pakistan was being stripped to the bone, it was beneath them to bring to public attention the reality of what was afoot in Pakistan, and the straits to which Pakistan was being driven. Their silence on the most important issue of the day put them squarely in the ranks of the trojan horses undermining Pakistan from within.
- When they accused the government of censorship, often given to hyperbole by saying that never was censorship so brazen even in the worst days of dictatorship, they failed to point out the victims of this censorship i.e who were the writers or TV anchors, who were being blanked out. You ask them this and there is no answer.
The ranks of such media persons have swelled in recent days, as the government has stopped paying handouts, either directly to them, as was the case with the previous governments, or to the owners of their media houses in terms of advertisements. With falling personal fortunes, it is their dander which has risen. And this is directed towards the government. Hell indeed hath no fury as a woman scorned!
As the unsubstantiated charge of censorship is leveled, it is forgotten by them, that what is printed is a matter of record, and so is that which is broadcast. And I have since gone back to browsing literally hundreds of old TV shows and found that there is hardly any in which the government is not roundly condemned and excoriated by at least one person on every program. So much so that nearly every TV channel gave uninterrupted coverage to Maryam Safdar’s press conference during which she peddled the infamous doctored video of Judge Arshad’s attempt to make friends with a woman when both of them were inappropriately dressed!
If this is the “liberal” idea of censorship, those making the charge must be extremely sensitive souls indeed.
There was to be a surge in the movement to condemn the government on this charge, which was to be led by Hamid Mir, the anchor most beloved of those who revel in the gutter.
First he flew to the defense of Rana Sanaullah. The most cogent argument he had to offer in defense of the Rana was that he could not be so “stupid” as to be driving about with a ton of heroin. This was the “imbecility” defense driven to the extreme i.e that only an imbecile could be expected to be driving about with a ton of heroin. But if the Rana was indeed caught with this huge haul of heroin, this would be enough to prove that he was an imbecile. And being an imbecile, he could not obviously be held guilty for what he had done!
Whether the Rana will find exoneration on the grounds of imbecility or not, it is too early to say. But Hamid Mir has certainly laid a stronger claim to idiocy than the Rana.
Next, Hamid Mir began to rant against his own impending arrest while daring the government to go right ahead and arrest him because, as he repeatedly declaimed, he was quite unafraid of being a incarcerated.
He then announced that he was inviting all media people to join him to address press conferences all around the country to expose the measures taken by the government against the media.
Poor Mir had not yet been able to quite gather and organize his thoughts when he was left foaming at the mouth, when Maryam Safdar’s “Judge” video buried both the protest wave which was to have rescued Rana Sanaullah, but also killed Hamid Mir’s “movement” before its birth.
I do think though that a part of the media has good reasons to fear what lies ahead. They do belong to the fourth estate, but what is intolerable is that there is a clearly marked segment among them that more notoriously and unforgivably may belong to the fifth column as well. There will be no tears for them when they are marked out and dealt with.
But for the moment all else has been drowned out by the PM’s triumphant tour of the U.S. The reception he got from the Pakistani American community, his reception by Donald Trump in the White House, and his conduct there, raised the hope and pride of every Pakistani who is not irretrievably tied down to running down Pakistan and its government.
When Imran Khan concluded his speech to a huge gathering of Pakistani Americans amid wild applause, I could not help but recall Gen MacArthur’s brilliant farewell speech to the joint houses of Congress which, it was said, left his supporters with wet eyes, and his opponents with wet pants!
Leading the pack of wet pants must be Hussain Haqqani, whose services were engaged by Bilawal Bhutto to drown out Imran Khan’s visit to the U.S. This effort was left floundering in a sea of embarrassments, and must be a double whammy for him since just a week ago BLA was declared a terrorist organization, which means Haqqani has lost half his pay package, since BLA was one of the charges this traitor was being paid by.
The pants of Maryam Safdar and Bilawal could not be in good order either since their “selected” PM seems to have proven that he is hugely popular. So much so, that Trump was forced to make a point of mentioning this.
PS. Many have fallen in the last few months and many exposed. For me personally, the fall of Mohammad Hanif, whose mangoes exploded in 2008, was truly sad.
He has a felicity with words and there is a lyrical element to how he strings them up together. With a little more work, he could become nearly as good as our Ayaz Amir.
It was thus my hope that in time he will become a public intellectual at world stage, like India’s Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra, and Vijay Prashad.
But then a week back I read his article in the New York Times. I have read poor articles before, but this was a truly scurrilous effort. It was blanket condemnation of everything Imran. The motivation was quite obvious–to run Imran Khan into the ground. The timing of the article, published a week before Imran Khan’s U.S visit, clearly hung a pedigree around the author’s neck.
It was so sad to conclude that one of Pakistan’s promised lights was so obviously grovelling to displace the dishonourable Hussain Haqqani to take his place.