In a strange twist on the tense situation in Pakistan following flooding that caused 1,600 deaths, the media is being silenced.
Pakistan’s two major media outlets–ARY TV and Geo TV–have been silenced for the past 3 days in Karachi and Sindh province. The row started after the stations reported on a story about President Asif Ali Zardari having a shoe thrown at him while he was in a meeting in Britain.
After the reports of the incident ran on the stations, supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) are being accused of severing cable connections of the distributors that carry them.
The networks have been able to broadcast for a few hours here and there, and are on air in other parts of the country. But the ridiculous forced silence still continued as of Wednesday in Karachi and Sindh province.
Another major media outlet, Dawn, noted the hypocrisy of the situation in an editorial that said it all in just a few sentences:
…the unannounced Geo and ARY blackout constituted an attack on press freedom and a slur on a party that is in power because the people voted for it. Its commitment to press freedom in the party’s foundation documents and its various election manifestoes is categorical. During the 2007 lawyers’ movement, especially after the Nov 3 emergency, when the Musharraf government ordered the banning of many channels and policemen ransacked TV offices, the PPP leaders were among those who criticised the military government’s war on the media and the harsh Pemra guidelines that followed. That the PPP should itself now persecute sections of the media is astonishing.