Pakistani media and the breaking news syndrome

Asiancorrespondent: News channels in Pakistan are often criticized for “the breaking news syndrome” as sometimes this leads the channels to commit grave factual errors, creating a lot of confusion.
Recently this happened again. This time the breaking news was about release of an Indian death row prisoner from a Pakistani jail. Therefore the news was of great importance for media in the neighbouring India too.
On June 26 almost all the Pakistani news channels reported that Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh, who has been in a jail in Pakistan, was to be released after President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari granted him a pardon.

A fatal year for Journalists

2012 on track to be the deadliest on record for journalists

By Curtis Brainard

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — With 72 journalists killed so far this year, 2012 is on pace to be the deadliest on record, the International Press Institute (IPI) announced here on Sunday.
The media freedom organization’s executive director, Alison Bethel McKenzie, choked up and struggled to speak as she addressed the group’s annual conference.
“From Somalia to Syria, the Philippines to Mexico, and Iraq to Pakistan, reporters are being brutally targeted for death in unparalleled numbers,” she said.
The most lethal year so far in the 15 that IPI has been keeping records was 2009, when 110 journalists died. Last year was the second worst, with 102 deaths.
Syria, where peaceful protests have turned into a violent civil war, has been the most dangerous country in 2012, with 20 professional and citizen reporters, both local and foreign, killed so far, according to McKenzie.

Still no justice for murdered journalist Saleem Shahzad

By Andrew Buncombe

The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents -

Wednesday, 30 May 2012 at 7:19 am

A year has somehow charged past since the abduction and murder of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad, a full 12 months in which no suspect has been identified, no-one charged with his killing and nobody brought to justice.
The 40-year-old correspondent of Asia Times Online, disappeared on the evening of May 29, a Sunday, as he made his way to an Islamabad television studio where he was due to talk about this latest scoop. He never got there. Immediately there were fears that he had been abducted by the ISI. Two days later his badly beaten body was discovered close to a canal in the village of Mandi Bahauddin, around 100 miles south of Islamabad. A post-mortem report concluded that he had been tortured and that his corpse showed at least 17 injuries.

Responsible free media imperative for democracy: Kaira

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira Thursday said that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government has firm belief that responsible and independent media was imperative to sustain and nurture democratic norms in the country.
Addressing as chief guest at the inaugural session of two-day national conference, organized by Press Council of Pakistan, Kaira paid tributes to the journalists community for their struggle for independence of media. The minister said no doubt media persons have rendered unprecedented sacrifices, but political workers have also supported them in their cause.
Kaira said for the first time in country's history the right to information had been ensured to the citizens through the passage of 18th Amendment.

Mubashir Lucman suspended for 'off-air' comments: Report

Mubashir Lucman, news anchor at private channel Dunya TV, has been suspended for the comments he made ‘off-air’ while interviewing business tycoon Malik Riaz, reported Pakistan Today.

Behind the scenes footage showing Lucman and his co-anchor Meher Bokhari talking to Riaz during their show surfaced on YouTube under the title “Malik Riaz Planted Interview with Mehar Bokhari and Mubashir Lukman on dunya tv“ on Thursday. The show aired on the TV channel on Wednesday.
Sources told Pakistan Today that an inquiry has been ordered against those who leaked the video.
Bokhari is heard saying a question is planted towards the end of the video.

“Say what you want… what question should we ask. It will appear as though it is planted… it is, but it shouldn’t appear it is.”

The footage shows conversations between Lucman, Bokhari and Riaz focused on the kind of questions they will be asking. Both anchors are also instructed against interrupting Riaz during the interview.
The video begins with general conversation and is followed by Riaz questioning the anchors on why they are not asking why he is part of “deals”.
In between Lucman’s smoke break, Bokhari turns to Riaz to discuss what they will ask next. A brief discussion and a “khul kay poochain”, Meher says that they will discuss journalists at the end of the show, so as to “clear her name” at least.
Lucman tells Riaz, “Today I will ask you to give me in front of everyone. Give me a villa like you gave Hamid”. “No, no,” is Riaz’s response once again, followed by a “why not” from Lucman.
Riaz is seen occasionally choosing topics of his choice, focusing on the chief justice as well. He is also visibly upset during one part of the video, where he says that most of his questions are left and the work isn’t done.
The second part also sees both anchors getting into a little tiff over camera time. Bokhari calls Lucman childish, who takes his mic off and leaves.
Riaz appears desperate when Lucman walks off, asking him to come back, saying it will be unfair for him.
An angry Lucman returns and tells Riaz that he will say live on air that he was pressurised into doing the show by him and Mian Amir.

 

Developing tools for open journalism Design entire systems, not individual tools, and avoid reinventing the wheel, says Martin Belam

The Guardian (blog) 
What we are able to do digitally is ultimately shaped by the tools that are available to us, and open journalism is no exception.
Over the last few years I've had a hand in designing more than my fair share of tools intended to elicit a response from the audience – here are four key things I've learned along the way.

Give users achievable goals

One example that is often cited as "crowd-sourced" open journalism is the Guardian's MPs Expenses app.
When the UK Parliament released redacted versions of MPs expenses, the Guardian invited readers to trawl through and note anything of interest worth investigating by a 'proper' journalist – a chart on the front of the app showed the progress made.

How the Obama administration is making the US media its mouthpiece

Spoonfed national security scoops based on anonymous official leaks – did we learn nothing from Judith Miller's WMD reporting?

New York Times reporter Judith Miller testifying before the Senate judiciary committee, in 2005. In 2004, the New York Times issued a mea culpa about Miller's use of Bush administration anonymous briefing on WMD intelligence before the Iraq war. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Glenn Greenwald  

guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 June 2012 15.57 BST

Over the past several weeks in the US, there has been a series of high-profile media scoops exposing numerous details about President Obama's covert foreign policy and counterterrorism actions, stories appearing primarily in The New York Times. Americans, for the first time, have been told about Obama's personal role in compiling a secret "kill list", which determines who will be targeted for death in Pakistan and Yemen; his ordering of sophisticated cyber-attacks on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities; and operational details about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

SC says no journalist can be forced to disclose sources

THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL 
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has issued the judgement of NICL Inquiry Commission on the question of compelling a journalist to reveal his source of information and has held that no journalist could be compelled to do so.
Justice Ghulam Rabbani, judge of the Supreme Court and head of the NICL Inquiry Commission, issued the judgment on a petition filed by former Senator Rehman Malik in the NICL Inquiry Commission to compel The News journalist Ahmad Noorani to disclose his source of information regarding a story in which he gave four options to former FIA Additional Director General Zafar Qureshi to influence the investigations of the NICL mega scam.

British journalist denies planning “expose” on Arsalan Iftikhar case

Sajjad Haider 

In messages sent out Sunday on social media website Twitter, British journalist Christina Lamb has denied having been contacted for a planned ‘expose’ on ‘Familygate’ — the case allegedly implicating the Pakistani chief justice’s son Dr Arsalan Iftikhar and real estate tycoon Malik Riaz of financial wrongdoing.

What is the media's role in preventing genocide?

By Jean-Paul Marthoz/CPJ Senior Adviser

Talking about genocide prevention in the shadow of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps brings an intense and unique gravity to the discussions. The academic presentations cannot extract themselves from the looming presence of the barbed wires and grim towers surrounding the Nazis’ most infamous death factory.
How could it happen? What made it happen? How can we make sure today that we would have the right reactions if something similar would emerge? Last week some 25 diplomats from around the world gathered in the small town of Oswiecim, the Polish name of Auschwitz, to find answers to these questions under the auspices of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation and the U.N. Office of Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide. My role was to reflect on the role of the media in covering and preventing genocide.

Yellow journalism

VICTIMS: Princess Diana would’ve been alive if the paparazzi had not hounded her

Vir Sanghvi 
It’s a nose for tracking down, not news, but 
celebrities’ personal lives that appears to 
drive certain sections of the press: is this an unabashed pandering to vicarious needs or downright intrusion of privacy?
If you have been reading about the British phone-hacking scandal that led first to the closure of The News of The World, Britain’s largest-selling newspaper and, then, to the Leveson Inquiry, where such figures as Rupert Murdoch and Tony Blair have been testifying, then you may be forgiven for thinking that the scandal is about the relationship between politicians and newspaper proprietors.

'Owners using media to make fortunes'

Reazul Bashar

bdnews24.com Senior Correspondent

Dhaka, Jun 6 (bdnews24.com) – A former senior official of the Ministry of Information says he thinks the owners are unashamedly misusing the media only to make fortunes.

Harun-ur-Rashid, the immediate-past Principal Information Officer (PIO) of the Press Information Department, in an interview with bdnews24.com says such abuse of media outlets could even worsen in the future.

He, however, sees 'some developments' in journalism in recent times.

Rashid was one of the war correspondents of the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra during the nation's War of Independence in 1971. He retired on Tuesday after working for 40 years at the Press Information Department (PID).

Who plays ‘political games’?

Interlocutors's dig on reporters and writers is a good fact-hiding tactic

COMMENT

HASSAN ZAINAGIREE

‘Clock (of constitutional relationship) can’t be set back’ to pre-1952 position to help Article 370 regain its depleted masculinity and ‘honor’. That is the admonition delivered by the three-member interlocution team in its report made public last week. But on the other hand, they exhorted local media in Kashmir to get fossilized in their outlook and stop lending their ears to the fast changing events which tell a different tail breaking many shibboleths. They want our analytical clock stop where Indra-Abdullah jammed it and left it dead.

CM gives Rs20m to APNS

KARACHI - Chief Minister Sindh, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Wednesday presented cheque of Rs. 20 million to the president of All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), Sarmad Ali, at the CM House here.
The ceremony was also attended by Muhammad Aslam Qazi, Javed Mehar Shamsi, Ilyas Shakir, Dr. Tanveer A Tahir of APNS, Sindh Minister for Information Shazia Atta Marri, Special Assistant to CM Waqar Mehdi, Secretary Information Sindh Kazi Shahid Pervaiz and other officials. Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister Sindh said that present government fully endorses the freedom of press and media and had always extended support and assistance to press and media.

Shooting the Messenger: Four Reporters Murdered in Pakistan in One Month

Malik Siraj Akbar

Editor in Chief, 'The Baloch Hal'; Author; Contributing Writer

In May 2012 alone, at least four journalists have been killed in Pakistan, increasing to six the total number of slain reporters for this year. Pakistan, which remained the world's deadliest place for correspondents in 2010 and 2011, once again stands among Somalia and Syria with the highest number of reporters who have lost their lives in the line of duty.