Geo neither sought nor granted permission
ISLAMABAD: All-out efforts of some elements in the legal fraternity — who are upset because of some recent judgments — and some big-businesses-turned-media-houses, to malign the outgoing Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on his last day in office were badly foiled by a big breaking story of Geo News.
The scoop of the full-court reference of Justice Chaudhry’s farewell was appreciated at the national level while the competition just cribbed and shed tears.
Justice Chaudhry, however, left the Supreme Court building on the night of December 11 for his home in a procession of hundreds of lawyers carrying lights and flowers, showered at him with all respect, dignity, honour and prestige. Such a farewell was never given to an outgoing chief justice ever before.
No TV channel, including the state-owned channel, was allowed live coverage of the full-court reference and no one broadcast it live.
However, a few news business tycoons to gain more and more power and influence, dishonestly continued to air news items whole day on Wednesday like “Supreme Court gave rights of coverage to only one channel”, “Supreme Court allowed only one channel for live coverage”.
This was absolutely incorrect, untrue, a naked lie and a wrong statement of facts. In fact, Geo News never showed full-court reference live nor Supreme Court gave it any rights, whatsoever.
It was only that as it was not a judicial proceeding and rather was an open function and was being taped for record purposes, senior correspondent of Geo News Abdul Qayyum Siddiqui worked hard and using his journalistic skills to get that video recording which later was aired exclusively on Geo News.
As no other channel was able to get this, it was shameful that some news channels started spitting venom on the institution of the judiciary, Supreme Court, person of outgoing Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and other judges of the Supreme Court.
Instead of appreciating and congratulating Geo News for its excellent exclusive breaking story, these business-groups-turned-media-channels started attacking judges of Supreme Court and again without investigating started leveling allegations on judges of Supreme Court on different counts.
Even it was alleged that Supreme Court has intentionally provided footage to one news channel without acknowledging the journalistic success and hard-work of Abdul Qayyum Siddiqui.It is worth-mentioning here that news channels with journalistic back-ground showed decency and did not air the news based on any bias or jealousy.
However, these business-groups-turned-media-channels set an unprecedented example of non-professionalism and sick-mindedness in country’s journalistic history by accusing the reporter, his media organization and the concerned institution of malpractice, instead of asking their own journalists to show cause why they had missed out.
It is important that guests who appeared on such channels spit venom against the person of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry are known for their bais against the independent judiciary and all upright and honest judges.
Whether Aitzaz Ahsan, Babar Awan, Ahmad Raza Kasuri or Asma Jehangir all used to attack the judiciary and especially Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for taking suo moto notices besides many other known reasons.
Aitzaz’s comments however were below the belt and he crossed all limits by making allegations of corruption against Justice Chaudhry by naming him repeatedly. Aitzaz Ahsan’s comments were totally uncalled for as an apex court bench headed by Justice Chaudhry had recently given a historic judgement in a petroleum related product quota case which is considered to have inflicted big losses for the top lawyer.
Not only Aitzaz but statements made by all others against the Chief Justice on Wednesday on account of Geo News’s big breaking news had no weight whatsoever as all these persons were already spiting venom against Justice Chaudhry since long. The news channel platforms they were speaking on were making announcements for the last few weeks to attack Justice Chaudhry right after his retirement.
However, Aitzaz Ahsan’s comments against the person of Justice Iftikhar were mean and could never be expected from a person who in past remained important lawyer.
All media houses and journalists have their own priorities to work. None of these news channels or their associates were even seriously covering the event of retirement of Justice Chaudhry.
However, priorities of Geo/Jang/The News were clear and not Geo but both Jang and The News were carrying comprehensive news stories and articles in connection with the historic event of retirement of Justice Chaudhry for last three to four days.
So it was obvious that Geo News had great value for the event of full-court reference and recording of such a historic event, if available through any source, would be of great importance for it. Its staff worked hard and got it which made yet another big and exclusive story.
The most important question however was if these news channels wanted to air this historic full-court reference footage, they could have taken the Geo signal and aired it as it is an internationally accepted practice.
However, it was never done. The objectives were obvious. These channels having no interest in covering the historic event were rather interested in attacking the person of outgoing CJ in their transmissions, never cut Geo signal and never used recording of full-court reference.
Airing it was not their purpose and the real aim was to ridicule and scandalize the person of Chief Justice Chaudhry on the day of his retirement.
And why this was done is also clear to everybody. No one in Pakistan has forgotten the leaked shameful video made during the breaks in an interview of an important personality which had exposed some dirty souls of some so-called journalists and motives of some so-called news channels.
The corruption references recently reopened also involving owners of TV channel were not reopened because of Geo News or because of any special effort of Justice Chaudhry. These were to be reopened in any case. Same was the case of Zamzama Market scandal-fame business men now running a media group who does not miss any opportunity to attack Geo News and the Chief Justice.
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