No World Call role in banning TV channel on cable: Taseer
ISLAMABAD: Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer — who is also the director of the World Call group — on Thursday rejected allegations that the cable-TV company played an instrumental role in banning broadcast of a private TV channel on cable in parts of Sindh.
Addressing a press conference in the capital city, Taseer said that it was not World Call’s policy to ban the channel from cable TV despite the fact that it had continued to malign the president’s image in the public eye.
He said that neither the government nor the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulation Authority (PEMRA) or World Call were part of the decision to block the TV channel’s broadcast on cable. Rather, Taseer said, the ban was the result of a tussle between the locals and the TV channel, which had hurt the sentiments of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) workers by highlighting the Birmingham story.
“The act is part of the mission undertaken by the channel to destabilise the government…it (the channel) wants to be a state-within-state and is observing no code of conduct for journalism,” Taseer said.
He said the channel had hurt the feelings of the PPP workers by launching a full-scale smear campaign against President Asif Ali Zardari. The Punjab governor alleged that the TV channel was busy working on the president’s character assassination.
The Punjab governor said that such disputes would not have occurred had the TV channel not launched personal attacks against individuals or levelled baseless allegations.
Later, talking to reporters, he said that the Friends of Democratic Pakistan group would provide $340 million to Islamabad for the flood-relief operation. He said the federal and provincial governments, and all political parties should make a collective effort for providing relief to the people adversely affected and displaced by the worst floods in the country’s history.
To a question, he said China was Pakistan’s close friend and has always helped Islamabad at times when other countries including the US failed to do so. He said Beijing had provided Islamabad nuclear reactors and was now helping the country build dams to overcome the power shortage.
Source: Daily Times
Date:8/13/2010
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