Don’t put them all in one basket

In the United States, when serial killers spend years eluding the police, the FBI does something called profiling. What that profile does is that it describes the age, habits, lifestyles and a host of other signatures that could most likely be associated with the personality of the serial killers. Once the killer is found and captured, the personality traits are confirmed officially. Pakistani people had known for years that some of the journalists were nothing more than paid agents of a political party. Their rhetoric, arguments, columns, talkshow talks, and so forth were those characteristics that would define a lifafa journalist. Such audiotape leaks only make the lifafa work of these journalists official. What they practised and still do is not journalism but rather the work of a spin doctor.

Freedom of journalism is unquestioningly a good thing. However, as I wrote in this space before, there is a difference between evolution and production. Products can be produced quickly. Values becoming a part of a culture take a lot of time. The minds and the culture must evolve. Just freedom of journalism is not enough, who blows the whistle on the supposed whistleblowers? Who watches the watchers? The ballot alone does not guarantee democracy in a country. The sudden flashy Breaking News headlines do not mean brave journalism. Actually, the catchy sound bites apart, it means nothing at all. This is what happens when people enrich themselves by furthering the ulterior motives of the rich and powerful in the name of some nice sounding cause such as journalistic freedom.

The western media would jump on any news relating to a slight hint of a Pakistani journalist being threatened or some newspaper’s circulation disturbed or TV channel’s broadcast disrupted. However, it would be interesting to see if they would find this news worthy of broadcasting or publishing. More importantly, I wonder what kind of spin they would be attaching to this story. Furthermore, sometimes the most beautiful words in journalism are the ones not said. The leading Pakistani anchors and journalists have been quiet over this tape leak. They are literally giving a real life persona to Sherlock Holmes’s dog that didn’t bark. The only noise that has been heard has been about the manner in which these recordings were done.

That is the quintessential style of crooks in Pakistan. When caught red handed, they don’t prolong the fight to deny the shameful acts brought to light, instead they try to turn the direction of the anger around. Denial turns into deflection, which can be more effective. When the leading politicians’ corruption was proven and brought to light in the Panama Papers revelations, the Ayyan Ali episode, and so forth, the usual crooks indulged in What-Aboutery? The most important thing is not what they say, but what they don’t say. They say the pen is more worthy than the sword. Who could have guessed what that phrase would mean one day.

The audiotape leak may or may not have convinced the many PML-N voters what has already been an established truth: that their cherished journalists are in the pockets of their cherished leaders, making a perfect team, manipulating their minds into acquiescence. However, the leak would certainly convince Maryam Nawaz to change how she plays these shenanigans with the media. Perhaps, and I could be wrong, she would be planning to put all her journalists in multiple baskets where she can pay them using the various popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and so forth.

Perhaps she will try to diversify her journalists-for-hire portfolio and assign them to various baskets. Perhaps she would be on a shopping spree right now more than ever. Perhaps she is a fan of Pablo Escobar who said, “Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.” Her party logo seems to be: In Baskets We Trust.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2022.

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