The Editor
By: Umber Khairi
This month marks seventeen years since the death of one of Pakistan’s greatest journalists, the editor Razia Bhatti. She died suddenly in March 1996 of a brain hemorrhage.
Razia was an amazing editor and a pioneering journalist. In addition to this she was a very compassionate human being and a truly great friend.
I knew Razia’s name before I met her; she was the editor of the Herald, the hard-hitting yet stylish news monthly produced by the Dawn group, PHPL. After I contributed a couple of pieces to the magazine, I was offered a job on the editorial team and that was when I first met her.
Razia was a giant in journalism but in person she was a petite, unassuming woman: modest, down to earth and very, very kind. Her manner may have been understated but the strength of her professionalism and the clarity of purpose in her work was astonishing.
When I joined the editorial team, Razia informed me the first commandment in the office was “Thou shalt not bore.” Dull copy or pontificating had no place in her magazine. Then, despite my inexperience, she sent me off on a reporting assignment to Karachi’s troubled Shah Faisal Colony. That’s what Razia always did, assure her staffers that she was confident they could take on challenging assignments and help them make sense of their material.
In that office I met all the famous Herald bylines of the day: Ameneh Azam Ali, Zahid Hussain, Rehana Hakim, Samina Ibrahim, Talat Aslam, Sairah Irshad. This was a fun office, full of talented, intelligent people but really the glue holding them together was Razia: her journalistic vision as much as her style of leadership. She led by example, and she made everyone in the team feel valued, birthdays marriages and births were always marked lovingly and generously. We ate a lot, joked a lot, and spent long hours making sure every page (every comma, every caption) of the magazine was up to Razia’s high standards.
1988 was an eventful year for Pakistan and its journalists: the military ruler General Zia ul Haq suddenly dismissed the Prime Minister (M K Junejo), announced elections and installed an interim regime. Later, Zia was killed in a plane crash, elections were held and the PPP leader, Benazir Bhutto, became the Prime Minister.
But in the summer, the long shadow of General Zia still obscured the vision of many. The Herald management was perhaps one of these. Our cover story “Countdown to Confrontation” had a cover featuring Bhutto and Zia face to face, both in stark profile. This cover was stopped at the final printing stage. Another, a bland one without any picture of Bhutto, had to be provided at the last minute. From then, the pressure on Razia increased sharply and finally she was told that it was essential she “support” certain government policy. Of course she did not and she had to leave, and several of us decided to leave with her, in protest and solidarity.
Which is when we decided to start our own magazine: a journalist-owned venture, an independent news magazine: Newsline.
It was an uphill task yet the Newsline proved that professional journalists could take a stand if they wanted to. It was a measure of Razia’s reputation and personal goodwill that so many well-known writers and big names — I A Rehman, Eqbal Ahmed, Lawrence Lifschultz, to name but a few— supported the venture and often wrote without payment.
It was a huge privilege to have known a journalist of such integrity and courage as Razia Bhatti. She left us far too soon and she is still much missed.
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