Banning the Beeb

Despite his promise, has Gilani looked into the BBC ban? We have no follow-up news and we have no BBC.

Our prime minister, rather than growing into his office, seems to be stuck in the old groove that he has been in since somewhere in the remote 1980s, when he first crawled onto the political scene.

There is nothing at all wrong with that as far as his party co-chairman is concerned, as anyone who had any bit of independent or original spunk would not have fitted the bill.

On December 11, Yousaf Raza Gilani was interviewed by the BBC — ironically, by a channel which has arbitrarily been denied to the Pakistani public by a gang of nothings known as cable operators who make their livelihood by providing us, the viewing public, with television channels. The majority are largely unwatchable, being of the local brand with hysterical anchorpeople, and consist mainly of advertisements, which bring in a goodly revenue, interspersed with bits of news and a lot of what are known as talk shows. The anchors are well known for the dangerous inanities they spew out to a largely illiterate and ignorant public, and the interviewees they patronise (who probably pay to be featured as opposed to being paid) move from one channel to another, often indulging in hysteria and nonsense in consonance with their anchors, imparting to an avid public sensationalism and conjecture.

Anyhow, obviously unknown to the prime minister was the fact that the BBC had disappeared from our screens thanks to the cable operators, more loyal than the king and stupid to boot. They had taken exception to a BBC series on Pakistan (thought to be derogatory rather than factual), which for some time had been easily available on YouTube and elsewhere on the net, and decided to remove the BBC and CNN (what had it done?) and leave us at the mercy of the local lot (we do have Al Jazeera and Sky News but they are not quite the same caliber). Coincidentally, we lost Express 24/7, which had brought a few of us much welcome relief from the usual rants and raves.

Obviously, in a country bereft of law and order, anyone is free to do anything, so the cable operators have got away with their patriotism, guarding the country’s integrity, honour and all the stuff the ghairat brigade, which the prime minister has joined, trot out with regularity. Both Pemra and that thing that should not exist in a democracy, the ministry of information, stood by helplessly and have not uttered a word.

The prime minister seemed blissfully unaware of the removal of the BBC, its viewing probably being somewhat beyond him. All he could say when it was brought up in the interview, as reported in the press, was that he would “look into” the ban. Has he looked into anything? We have no follow-up news and we have no BBC. Gilani muttered on about how his government supports media freedom — well let him now show that support and sort out the idiotic cable operators and see that this type of self-censorship is not exercised.

The BBC is rightly angered — to quote a spokesperson: “We condemn any action that threatens our editorial independence and prevents audiences from accessing our impartial international news service”. Quite right, so, prime minister, “look into” it and act.

On a bit of a tangent, the scariest bit of stuff in our press for three days running last week was front page photographs of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. He was shown sitting with the prime minister discussing heaven knows what, then with the prime minister again plus the two Gujrat Chaudhry cousins who blight the political scenario and, worst of all and most scary, sitting with two prime ministerial sons. Crikey! Is this our future? The three young scions of whatever, of a political party treated as a fiefdom, looked as if they were discussing the latest rap hit or perhaps the pile-up of 10 Ferraris in Japan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2011.