Pointing fingers at media
A government, any government, would never want its inefficiencies brought to the public. It would much rather keep them out of public’s prying eyes. However, when media does get a whiff of what’s going on in the government machinery, a government is often left flustered in its designs and the truth is unveiled. A similar thing happened the other day when none other than the prime minister of Pakistan stated his discontent on what he claimed to be media’s unjust criticism of his government’s actions.
Nawaz Sharif’s tirade against the media may have some truth in it but can you really blame the media if it is doing its job? And by extension wouldn’t the government be in a much better place to defend itself if it were really doing its bit? The premiere wants to be appreciated for the little things his government does, while completely neglecting major problems the country is faced with. Country’s economy is stagnant, terrorism and sectarianism have spiraled out of control, power and gas shortages have not been met yet; all this and the PM insists that he be appreciated for bringing down the prices of tomatoes. He sure doesn’t understand that what would make people, and the country, happy and prosperous. Like his younger brother’s government in the Punjab province, he also seems to favour short-term stopgap solutions to chronic problems of unemployment, high prices of daily use items and pretty much everything else. The prime minister also put the onus of our failure in becoming an industrial country squarely on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister who was hanged, judicially, by ironically the former military strongman Ziaul Haq, Nawaz Sharif’s patron in politics. That Bhutto’s decision of nationalizing industries can be disputed, it is also worth noting that the N League family has been in the power for a collective of around 30 years, and other than a motorway, whose utility can also be contested on merit, the party has nothing worthwhile to show for its political credentials.
Criticism for the sake of criticism bears no benefit, but if it is done for the sake of improvement, then it is not such a bad idea. Media industry in Pakistan may have its faults, but pointing fingers at it for when it is actually doing its job is not a good thing to do, particularly when the pointing fingers belong to the prime minister of the country.
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