Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif scored a major reputational win this week as the widely circulated British newspaper Daily Mail apologised for publishing a story in 2019 accusing Shehbaz of embezzling millions in British aid money. The right-wing tabloid, whose web edition is among the world’s most popular websites, has done some quality journalism in its long history, but it is better known for sensationalist and exaggerated stories. The story about Shehbaz clearly fit the latter group, since it was based on documents that the paper now admits it did not have and that probably do not even exist.
Specifically, the paper admitted that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had never accused Shehbaz of the crimes alleged in the story, after years of first claiming that it had documents to back up its claims, then sending a team to Pakistan to further investigate those claims, and doing its best to delay the case using the Covid-19 pandemic and security concerns as excuses. Even the reporter in question, David Rose, has seen several of his stories fail to pass legal scrutiny, including several successful libel actions against the paper. Rose has also admitted to being “ashamed and disgusted at having been duped” by shady sources as he helped build the case for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, yet he seems to have learned nothing from his previous interaction with a source that appeared too good to be true.
At the time, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, the corruption czar during the PTI government, who is himself now facing several corruption accusations in the country and has been in self-exile, made a huge huff about wanting Shehbaz to sue him in a British court. This lent credence to the theory that he wanted to introduce ‘evidence’ on the record along the lines of the ‘evidence’ against the Sharifs that NAB and Akbar’s pet project, the Asset Recovery Unit, reportedly provided to Britain’s National Crime Agency, which the British agency later rubbished.
It also remains to be seen how Imran Khan and other PTI leaders will pull an about-face on using the Daily Mail story to attack Shehbaz, after previously also misrepresenting the judges’ comments regarding court costs. The truth is that as part of the settlement, both sides agreed to bear their own costs; and the paper, apart from apologising to Shehbaz in unequivocal terms, also pulled the story from the internet. The only reason a publisher anywhere would risk such reputational harm is to avoid even worse consequences from the courts or media regulators.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2022.
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