Talk of a ban on live coverage of terror events

Interior minister seemed completely oblivious to the happenings, narrated story regarding late night events of Sunday.

In our luckless country, life has fast begun imitating art. But the bad thing about this emulation is that instead of producing something poetic and cheerful, this makes us suffer the real-time replays of things associated with the theatre of the absurd.

The leader of opposition in the national assembly savours the privilege of initiating the general discussion on budgetary proposals. Doing this, he also is not confined to any time limit. Syed Khurshid Shah had fully availed this privilege to deliver a surprisingly witty and engaging speech Friday. Yet he opted to abuse the same advantage, almost viciously, when the house resumed discussing the budgetary proposals Tuesday.

To overcome yawns induced by his speech, I left the press gallery and moved to the adjacent lounge reserved for parliamentary reporters. Thanks to LCD screens installed there, we also keep ourselves updated on latest news by watching 24/7 channels. While the wily politician from Sukkur was about to conclude his overstretched speech, a “breaking news” was flashed on many screens. It suggested another possible attempt to ‘attack’ an AFC-connected facility in proximity of the Karachi Airport.

In the context of what had happened in the same area two days ago, all of us present in the lounge were justifiably stunned. Doubly disturbing were live shots of personnel from multiple law enforcing agencies taking positions for a possible shootout with the real or imagined intruders. Yet we felt relieved when Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was given the floor.

We naively presumed that our hands-on pretending interior minister might begin his speech with some assuaging remarks on things that we were seeing while sitting in the press lounge. He seemed completely oblivious to these happenings, though, and went on and on to narrate his side of the story regarding the late night events of Sunday. In spite of speaking for too long, he did not add a thing to the glut of information that we already had due to the massive media coverage of the Karachi airport incident.

Sincerely suspecting that perhaps the interior minister was not aware of “the latest,” some reporters sympathetic to him tried to inform him regarding whatever they had been witnessing on TV screens by sending chits. Personnel guarding entry points to the house, however, informed that they had clear and firm instructions from Nisar’s office that he should never be passed on any chit while sitting in his seat in the national assembly.

The zealous ones were yet not willing to give up and decided to ‘inform him’ by sending the same chits to Zahid Hamid and Khurrum Dastagir, two weighty ministers, sitting close to the interior minister. None of them dared passing on these chits to arrogant Payal Rajput from Chakri.

Meanwhile, some people sitting in chambers of the opposition leaders had also watched the ongoing news. They tried to inform the PPP legislators present in the house through similar chits. No PPP legislators felt motivated to ‘interrupt’ Nisar with the information that they had been receiving regarding the latest in Karachi. Only once, I heard Ms Shazia Marri referring to them somewhat loudly but without making much ado. Then was the call for Zuhur prayers. The interior minister promised that during the recess for prayers, he would try to double check.

After the recess, Nisar dismissively claimed that “no untoward incident” had happened in Karachi. A section of the media was simply hyping a story which is “nowhere on the ground”. After claiming this, he casually forewarned that the government was seriously considering the idea of enforcing a complete ban on “live coverage of terrorism-related events because they hamper the work and capacity of the law enforces busy in tackling such incidents.” Nowhere in the world, live coverage of such incidents is permitted, he commented like a stern enforcer.

Give me a break Chaudhry Sahib. We had witnessed each detail of 9/11 while sitting home in this country and there are many more examples from all across the world.

A code of conduct is certainly required when it comes to live coverage of various frightful incidents. But the government and that too the one claiming to be the ultimate defender of freedom of the press should think twice before taking a totalitarian step of enforcing its own command and control over media coverage. Even if you are adamant to go for it, then also tell the whole truth please.

For the past two days, I have it from reliable sources, some people attached to the prime minister’s office are burning the midnight oil to devise a draft of the code of conduct for the media. But their real priority is to block the live coverage of Imran Khan’s public meetings and one-on-one interviews that the likes of Tahirul Qadri and Sheikh Rashid keep granting to anchors of their choice to incite a ‘revolution’ in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2014.