It only takes a stray bullet or a group of unknown men to make a story out of those who report the news themselves. Zubair Anjum, an executive producer at a leading news channel, joined the seemingly neverending queue of journalists who have found themselves in the eye of the heated storm. While this time, […]
Hate speech has now become an integral part of social media and all voices raised against it are usually ignored. Now the Islamabad police have decided to launch a ‘crackdown’ on social media accounts guilty of spreading religious, linguistic and sectarian hate and propaganda through its Violent Extremism Prevention Unit (VEPU). So far, the authorities […]
SOMEONE who entered the world of print and bore witness to the era of the electronic medium in Pakistan is a strange creature. Few of the ‘printies’ adapt easily to the universe of babble, where, despite the colour TV sets, the trend is to see things in black and white. Most of us live like […]
If a journalist posts something even on social media, his newspaper’s advertisements are stopped and pressure is put to remove the said journalist from the newspaper. The private sector in Gilgit-Baltistan is not stable enough for newspapers to run their business through their advertisements. In a recent meeting of GB Newspaper Society, a local body […]
In today’s hyper-connected world, digital media has become an integral part of our daily lives. The rise of digital media and the prevalence of short-form content has significantly transformed the way we consume information. From social media posts and memes to videos and articles, these bite-sized snippets offer instant gratification and quick entertainment. However, there […]
ALMOST two years back, the Global Religious Futures (GRF) Pakistan, published a survey report which claimed that only one in five Pakistanis was habitual of reading a newspaper. In another report, the Datareportal pointed out that there were about 71.70 million registered users of YouTube and 43.55 million registered users of Facebook in Pakistan till […]
Article 19A, access to information and empowered citizens are hugely overused and under-implemented expressions in Pakistan. Numerous Information Commissions, set up to facilitate ordinary citizens in gaining access to information, are frequently failing to see the forest for the trees, and remain insistent on running modern data and knowledge-based organisations by the 18th century colonial […]
A new report released by the advocacy organisation, Bytes for All, revealed that Pakistan is one of the world’s worst performers in regard to internet access and digital governance. On top of this, those who do have the privilege of using the internet have to bear extremely slow speeds and a lack of consistency in […]
APRIL 23 marked six months since the death of journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya. This week the Pakistan Press Foundation announced the 2023 Press Freedom Award for the journalist posthumously on the eve of World Press Freedom Day. Although Arshad Sharif’s murder is now over six months old, the mystery surrounding his death remains […]
The Supreme Court delivered a loadstar judgement on last Wednesday’. Hearing a petition filed by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) against a private TV channel for broadcasting a drama serial with content allegedly immoral and against cultural values, a two-member bench, comprising justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and justice Ayesha A. Malik, established […]
WHEN I was employed at this newspaper and working on these pages in the mid-2000s, a colleague and I would call each other following a violent incident in the city to alert each other about routes to take to keep us safe. Later, we would discuss the incident in terms of where we thought the […]
Thursday was a good day for Pakistani media. Against all odds, the Supreme Court issued a landmark judgement protecting the right to freedom of expression and information even for material that challenges the commonly accepted standards of decency. The ruling came after PEMRA filed a petition against ARY TV over the broadcast of a drama […]
In Pakistan, the right to freedom of expression is often suppressed by labeling it as “obscene,” “vulgar,” or “anti-social.” Recently, the Supreme Court declared that the freedom of expression and the right to information apply not only to widely accepted ideas but also to those that may offend or shock others. This landmark judgment, delivered […]
Thanks to judicial activism, freedom of speech and press have been declared the core values in our free constitutional democracy where political speech now can neither be abridged nor be limited. In a landmark judgement announced on WP No. 59599 of 2022 16, Justice Shahid Karim of the Lahore High Court struck down the Section […]
” 
