Call a spade a spade

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 11 May 2012 |  The Communicator

A Karachi-based commentary accuses Pakistani print and electronic media of ignoring or minimising a UK case in which eight Pakistanis were jailed. It argues that editors prioritise political coverage while avoiding reporting on serious social crimes and abuses.

Summary

KARACHI: No matter how dastardly the deed, the truth will come out; this is a fact of life. Therefore, it makes no difference how hard our print and electronic media might try to cover up certain issues or even blatantly choose to ignore it, reality will be known.

Why our media should choose to be so unethical or rather unprofessional as to deliberately leave out a news item, not cover it, or try to give it a twisted angle is hard to say. Indeed, it is an entirely different issue.

It comes as no surprise that the Pakistani media, both electronic and print, so steeped in political intrigues, chose to completely ignore the news that eight Pakistanis have been jailed in the UK for running a gang rape club. According to the Daily Mail, other newspapers and online sources, the men were sentenced to jail for a combined 77 years for the sexual abuse and rape of up to 50 girls.

As many as 47 teenagers were given alcohol, gifts and money before being passed around to have sex with several men a day, several times a week. At least one victim was forced to have sex with 20 men in one night. Two became pregnant as a result of the ordeal. One of them was 13 and had an abortion.

The ringleader, a 59-year-old who was not named because of legal restrictions, was jailed for 19 years for conspiracy, rape, aiding and abetting a rape, sexual assault and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Now is that ugly or what? So what do the editors do? They decide not to carry this story. It would disgrace the country to do so! People did not need to know such things.

Such things don’t happen in Pakistan or are done by Pakistanis. Then the religion thing also comes into play. Such things are haram and, of course, a real Muslim would never do it!

So this bunch of self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrites that call themselves editors decide to be unprofessional and bury the news, if taken at all, in the inner pages; perhaps a few centimeters deep and most certainly no more than a single column. It’s hard for them to recognize the truth even when it’s staring them in the face.

In their reckoning perhaps it’s a ‘zionist plot’, maybe RAW at play, a foreign hand to disgrace the country. They will look for and come up with a hundred conspiracy theories to explain away such acts that, after all, do make up the grist of news any where else in the world.

But if only our editors could concentrate on things other than Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Zardari, Gilani, Kayani, the Chaudhry’s and the almost voyeur-like infatuation with Veena Malik etc…. maybe we would have some real news in our newspapers and on television.

Ugly stories such as female foeticide, incest, child prostitution, child marriages, human trafficking, acid attacks, honor killings, social injustice, corporal punishment, bribery, rampant corruption, incompetence, etc would make news anywhere else in the world but not in Pakistan. It’s not done.

The editor is too caught up in political entanglements and enigmas to even know there is any other type of news and if he does, he does not have the balls to order it be taken. When journalists like Matiullah Jan try to bring such issues to public notice they are told to shut up and look the other way. Their reports are censored; their programs edited. So where is the free media in Pakistan?

Yet the media here thinks it is okay to show gory and graphic pictures and coverage of plane crash victims, flood-stricken and displaced people, accidents etc. That’s fine. No problem. But it is not okay to admit a group of Pakistanis were involved in the rape of 50 teenaged girls.

That is taboo just like the time in the late nineties when four Pakistanis were executed by a firing squad for mind numbing deeds with the body of a young girl at a graveyard in Sharjah. That story slipped under the radar or rather was deliberately allowed to. Necromancy and Pakistanis…ooh my!!

Recently, there was a story of a Pakistani couple that stole millions of dollars from residents of northern California before running back to Pakistan to live the good life. No mention of that also;it’s fine for Pakistanis to steal from non-Pakistanis; that is not haram. It’s fine. What about the Hindu girls that are being abducted, raped and forced to convert to Islam in Sindh.

Does anybody have the courage to write about that or put it in print or film? Also what about the little boys that are chained and kept prisoner at seminaries to be raped, abused and sold out to whoever wants them by the very people who are supposed to be teaching them about religion? Are these not issues? Should not such things be reported or covered?

The funny thing is that Pakistani journalists still have no inkling of the power of the social media such as Facebook and blogs. So try as they may to suppress such news and reports, it is not possible. The world out there is reporting and people are getting to know. Try and stop that!!

So the fact of the matter is that real journalists like Matiullah Jan can be censored and muzzled, unpleasant stories can be dropped or reduced to non-existence and editors/program directors can pretend nothing is happening other than the usual political mumbo jumbo, but the truth is out there and does get known.

Another truth; we need real editors and real journalists not stooges and pretentious nobodies who know swat about journalism or the ethics of the profession. (The Communicator is a senior Karachi-based journalist and a guest writer for JournalismPakistan.com)