Is afghani a female Afghan?

Yeh Woh (The News on Sunday, 20-11-11)

Pakistani newspapers are not known for their reading pleasure, perhaps because the writers and editors have never sought and found pleasure in reading and therefore consider good prose and news copy mutually exclusive. Or perhaps readers only care for information and not how it is presented.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that news copy, however bland and shabby, contains meaningful information for the reader. A vast majority of the stories appearing in print are done not to inform or educate the reader but to achieve the count of stories each reporter must file. And if at all there is a point to the story, it is lost to bad language.

Consider some of the oft repeated phrases in the leading newspapers: ‘democracy may be derailed’, ‘people will soon hear the good news’, ‘the disinformation is being spread by the agencies’ and the favourite of Urdu press: ‘there will be dama dum mast qalandar’. No one including the writer knows what these phrases mean or care about how they will be interpreted by the reader. Unless democracy is equated with Shalimar Express which is taken off tracks one fine day, is resumed a few days later, and is stopped again.

The vernacular press uses the analogy of ‘folding up of chess board’ which is just as mysterious because both use an active verb and no subject. Pray tell who will derail, and who will fold up? The ‘Subject that cannot be named’ is some times referred to as ‘agencies’. The last time I checked, the term was used in every newsroom for news wire agencies. Like, a story is attributed to agencies when contents of more than one news wires are used. The other use of ‘agencies’ was popularised by MQM when it wanted to point a finger at one or several military intelligence outfits but wasn’t sure which one(s).

In fact all these and many more ambiguous phrases are coined by politicians whose job it is not to inform and educate, and therefore can’t be held accountable. But when a journalist uses this nonsense in a news story, who is clamouring for accountability? When a politician promises good news soon, it is reported verbatim as if there is a precedent of politicians giving good news to the people. As far as I remember the only times we as a nation celebrate good news is when a government — any government — falls. And this news is almost always broken by a four-star general in crisp khaki uniform. So while we may get good news at the expense of politicians, there is no sense in politicians promising their own doom. As for the ‘mast qalandar’ line, I have no idea what it means, and can’t even guess if it is alright for a non-Sindhi politician to use it. But every Urdu paper worth its masthead continues to print it.

To be fair to the average reporter who describes MFN as most ‘favourite’ nation, and thereby ignites a nation-wide debate on how come our arch enemy has become our buddy overnight, the above phrases are too cryptic to handle and therefore they do the right thing by slipping in a useful ‘he said’ before or after the sentence, thereby washing their hands off whatever it does or doesn’t mean.

But even the experts available to our media do not add much to our understanding. A political analyst — and they are the largest tribe of experts owing to the fact that the job requires no qualification at all — builds his or her entire argument on the basis that a civilian government is a democratic government. The defence analyst can seldom make out that the singular form of Taliban is ‘talib’. The economist can blabber on endlessly about the micro and macro indicators but never a sentence a high school graduate can understand. And I don’t know a single Afghanistan expert who knows the difference between an Afghan and an afghani.

The most unfortunate English word, on account of its rampant abuse, is perhaps ‘alternative’. In fact chances are you won’t find the word if you ran a search of the online database of Pakistani newspapers. It is one of those ‘missing words’ like the ‘missing people’ our Supreme Court keeps searching in vain. Try this instead: type in ‘alternate’, and if you get 100 results, 95 of these were actually meant to use ‘alternative’.

What defines a journalist?

The question was asked by the father of a friend who wasn’t thrilled for his daughter to join me at daily The Muslim, that used to be the newspaper of choice for residents of Islamabad. And without waiting for my answer, he offered his own: ‘At any gathering the first few people to reach for food are always, always journalists.

After many moons the question sprung in my head while reading my Sunday newspapers. It was September 4, the last day of eid holidays, and arguably the leanest day for news but ‘the pages have to be filled’ as they say in every newsroom from Karachi to Kohat. And so there were stories filed by staff reporters, there were headlines composed by sub-editors, there were pictures taken by staff photographers, and there were opinions expressed by the more brainy staff members, just like any other day.

But there was precious little to inform, educate or entertain the reader. Unless the country’s prime minister threatening Karachi squatters is taken for entertainment; reproducing hand-outs and transcriptions goes for information; and subjective opinions are meant to educate.

One of the few original news items I found was on the back page of The Express Tribune and it was about two devolved government departments that have practically done nothing for months because the province’s assembly hasn’t done the necessary legislation to take them over. The departments have been sent but haven’t been received, like packages in the care of Pakistan Post. It was an interesting story with a couple of direct quotes as well, only it wasn’t presented as a journalist’s work. It was a piece in the Speakers’ Corner, written by Sonia Malik, who going by her head shot, seems young enough to be in school or college.

If her piece is journalism, what is it that fills dozens of broadsheet pages of that day? Does she have the right to introduce herself as a journalist, on the basis of this one piece alone? Do all the others who failed in their job to inform, educate or entertain the reader through their words, ideas and illustrations, have the right to introduce themselves as journalists? Is employer the only one to decide whether or not a person is a journalist? Who and what defines a journalist?