Moborate

At certain points during a quick reading of these excerpts from Kim Barker ’s new book, featuring the shenanigans of our very own friendly neighborhood Teletubby, I found myself laughing out loud. It wasn’t the ‘ oh god that’s funny’ laughter though, it was – again – the helium like hysteria of you just can’t make this shit up . The excerpts didn’t just entertain, they educated too. I learnt many important things. For example, that tigers are people too. That a certain kind of politician’s favorite tune continues to be ‘how much is that journo in the window’. And that it is only a matter of time before ‘What do you think, Kim?’ becomes a popular pick up line. Then I watched the beginning of the Mubashir Lucman  programme episode mentioned in that post and it wiped the smile right off my face. The story he covered before he got around to setting the stage for Tinky Winky’s public humiliation was the latest twist in Mukhtaran Mai ’s tragically prolonged quest for jus...

I was actually going to put up a different post, on Pak-US relations, tonight but some last minute technical glitches mean that post will have to wait another day at least. Meanwhile, the next big political scandal is about to hit the headlines so I thought we could give you all a bit of a heads-up. Some of you may have already heard about the Kim Barker - Nawaz Sharif hullabaloo (if you haven't, I can assure you you will be hearing a lot more of it in the coming days). I learnt about it only after a journo colleague mentioned it in vague terms. Then I came across a clip of Mubashar Lucman's show on Dunya TV from a couple of days ago discussing the same in his usual sensational manner (which @kamran9558 sent us). In case you don't have any idea of what I'm referring to, it basically involves what former South Asia correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and current ProPublica reporter Kim Barker has written in her book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan ...

I never expected, when I wrote this small post challenging one by-the-way assertion of The Express Tribune 's publisher about ET 's online presence vis a vis that of its far more established rival newspaper, Dawn , that it would lead to an all-out flame war in the comments section. Those jumping to ET 's defence began first with trying to discredit our data, interpretation and our web-savvy, followed it up with spin about what was really meant by asserting that ET was "neck in neck" [sic] online with Dawn (hint: it can mean nothing other than readership especially when you're talking about circulations), and ended up by accusing us of carrying out some sort of campaign against ET . I was hugely tempted not to further indulge such grandiose notions of self-importance and (supposed) victimization, not to mention the fact that the comparative online reach of Pakistan's English print media is not an immensely critical issue in my opinion in the larger scheme...

There were some funny murmurings on Twitter about us not having commented on The Express Tribune 's one-year anniversary issue . I really don't see why we needed to. I mean, we don't usually comment on other paper's self-congratulatory anniversary supplements. And contrary to popular perception, we are neither obsessed with ET nor do we go looking for opportunities to stick it to them. And to be fair, ET has matured in many ways since it began. It remains the best looking newspaper in Pakistan and, while there is still plenty to poke fun at in terms of content (as there is in other papers), it is still the only paper to appoint an independent ombudsman for reader complaints , an innovation that other Pakistani papers would do well to emulate. With all the stuff going on around us politically and even in the media, we also really haven't found the time to do an exhaustive read of the anniversary supplement. I doubt anyone actually does that with any supplement, as...

Sigh. Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry at the state of political debate on the electronic media. See following clip from ARY 's " 11th Hour " programme from yesterday with host Waseem Badami (thanks to Akhtar Rind for bringing it to our notice). The programme was ostensibly innocuously about 'What good news could the government give the public in the current dire scenario?' The first comment was solicited from well known columnist and television host Hasan Nisar , who decided to proclaim that no good news could come until the current political elite was not "totally eliminated." According to him, the current lot of politicians were all "robbers and dacoits" who were "sucking the blood of the people" and the people themselves were the "biggest villains" for bringing them into power in the first place. Of course it all went downhill from there. The PPP 's Punjab president, Imtiaz Safdar Warraich , who s...

First things first: apologies to all for the disappearing act. (For those who actually noticed, a silent note of appreciation.) Had been away for a rather long stretch of time and while I was able to follow developments back home in an irregular fashion, simply did not have the time or access to all the information to put a post up (the perils of work work). And much has happened in the media while I have been away, which I hope to get round to in a one-by-one fashion. In particular, there are some interesting developments brewing on the electronic media front. However, I first want to take up the issue which apparently threatens the very survival of humanity itself. Yes, I am referring to the shut down of Geo 's sports channel Geo Super and it's music and entertainment channel Aag . To hear Geo talk about it, it is nothing less than the rule of tyranny, the deprivation of Pakistanis of all that is good and worth living for, and the wiping out from people's lives of all i...