Gutter ki Dunya

On January 9, three young women were killed and several injured in a stampede at Alhamra Cultural Complex, Lahore, where Atif Aslam performed to a hall overcrowded with female students of Punjab Group of Colleges, run by Mian Amir Mehmood, who also owns Dunya TV.

The families of two of the deceased women – Maheen Naseem and Farah Nawaz – addressed media on Tuesday 7^th February, at Lahore Press Club, to demand a judicial inquiry into the incident to ‘punish the culprits and recommend measures to avoid such tragedies in future’. Maheen’s father, Naseem Abbas who is a veteran stage and TV actor, lamented that the chief minister had ‘as usual ordered an inquiry and then forgot all about it’, and that the news media had deliberately suppressed the story to spare the organizers – the college management – because of their links with Mian Amir Mehmood and Dunya TV.

As if to validate Mr. Abbas’ allegations, none of the mainstream TV news channels reported the news conference. Today’s newspapers do carry the story but Dawn only identifies the college, The News has no names at all, and neither does the two-inch single column report in daily Express. ‘Influential owner of a private TV channel’ is the nearest any newspaper has come to identifying Mr. Mehmood and Dunya. It was the same, when the story broke – no names, not even the colleges' the students came from, and no follow ups after the initial report. Even the local channel C42 that doesn’t even let an overflowing gutter in the city go unreported, chose to stay quiet on this incident. The ‘conspiracy of silence’ Mr. Abbas sought the help of public representatives, parents and student bodies to end, continues shamelessly.

The conduct of Dunya TV over yesterday’s news conference is particularly shocking, even for a media as brazen in its flouting of professional ethics as the Pakistani television is. The channel went on the offensive against the families of the deceased students. It sent three senior reporters to the news conference it was not going to run a story about. The trio – Liaqat Ansari, Zeeshan Baksh and Arsalan Bhatti – led a pack of journalists who pounced on Mr. Abbas and Mazhar Nawaz, the brother of another deceased student, Farah Nawaz, as if they were criminals and not bereaved family members seeking justice.

Here is the audio sampling of some of the questions and comments – mostly bythe Dunya reporters, but joined by others too – the two men had to face:

The questions are loaded, the comments are libelous, the tone is accusatory and the mood is definitely hostile … 

Are you trying to push up the rate (of blood money)?

Do you want to disrobe the society by urging the families of other girls and boys to join you (in speaking out against the college management)?

There are allegations against you too … that you are demanding 50 lakh in blood money?

 

You also work with a private TV channel, are they pressurising you to do this press conference against another channel?

… You have all the forums available to you and you are being heard, it therefore appears you are just doing a drama here.

If you didn’t trust the management, why did you send your daughter there (to the concert)?

None of this is reported. It was just a show of strength by Dunya, aimed at not only drowning out the voice of the two men, and their hope for justice, but also at flaunting the ‘right’ of news media to plumb the depths of lowliness in protecting one of their own. Mind you, it’s not a case of homicide and no one is demanding eye for an eye; the families are only blaming the college management for negligence, for which ‘even an apology hasn’t been offered’. But Dunya has chosen to defend the management by removing the issue on ground and fighting it out in the gutter.

In the last couple of minutes of the recording above, you can hear raised voices of journalists accusing Mr. Abbas of hatching conspiracies against Dunya (without naming it) and a subdued Mr. Abbas profusely apologising and muttering in disappointment: ‘Are you people here to listen to me or to protect the channel?’

After Maya, what?

The social network community is rightly feeling smug at winning a battle against a particular TV show featuring Maya Khan and her troupe of sad and sexless women who chased away couples in public parks. And though the presenter, producer, and their employer, Samaa TV, behaved illegally and unethically, it was hardly an original idea, and Maya Khan – the failed actress who refuses to age gracefully – only copied what had been done several times by other TV channels.

Here is a clip from ARY News’ programme, ‘Zimmedar Kaun?’ produced and hosted by one Yasir Aqeel, who is not as grotesque as Maya but a lot more obnoxious and pestering. This clip was uploaded in April 2010 and therefore could have been the inspiration for Maya Khan’s show that got her banned, especially considering the similar plan of action and line of questioning:

And here is a clip from Metropolis TV on Karachi’s dating culture, from the good old 2009 when the only ones tormenting the dating community were beat policemen, and the only ones who had a problem with dating couples were married men who never found a date in their own time. And while this segment seems to be sympathetic to the dating couples, it nevertheless breaches privacy of many, putting them in harm’s way:

For the sake of record, Sun TV too got into the act as far back as in 2007 with a series called 'Chapa Maar' focusing on dating couples. This clip shows the Sun’s moral squad catching a boy who was, according to the host, below the age of 18 and his date, in a restaurant, in the presence of the girl's mother:

The only TV host to pick on Maya Khan scandal was Talat Hussain, on Dawn. It was a brave effort that amounted to depicting people in robes inside a public bath house. For starters, the host had concluded a recent programme on Pakistani students’ problems in UK with phrases like ‘qaumi izzat’ and ‘ghairat’ for some ‘unmarried women who have to live with men to save the cost of housing’:

And one of his guests on the show was Nadia Khan, whom he introduced as the doyen of private TV morning shows, and one with a well earned reputation for decency and respect for others’ privacy. Just to jog Talat Hussain’s memory, here is the clip of Nadia Khan taking on filmnstar Noor’s husband in Dubai. The clip ends with a very angry Nadia telling Noor: ‘… if my callers just complain to police that someone so much as stared at me, he’ll be put inside. Husband, my …’ She is awe-inspiring in her confidence with which she expects her viewers to assist her in a private and unpleasant matter. She was banned by Dubai and later, Geo, after this show:

So with the sacking of Maya Khan and banning of her show, we haven’t really removed an irritant – we have just realised it’s there. And the more you look the more you find. It runs deep in Pakistan’s media industry and requires many more battles before the citizens’ right to privacy, and right to be spared sermons by microphone wielding TV hosts, is established.