Moborate

Apparently some erstwhile DawnNews staffers are mighty miffed that we haven't given the sudden closure of Express 24/7 early this morning the same sort of coverage that we once gave to DawnNews' woes (when it existed as an English channel). They might be upset for their own personal reasons but it really was neither completely unexpected nor will it have the same repercussions on the group or on the media market.   There is no doubt that we did not have the story before it happened, but then neither did most of the staff at Express 24/7. Consider the following tweets from some staffers: @Rabail26: Express 24/7 is closing down & I'm jobless, so I guess its time to edit the twitter bio. #tweetingtodistractingself @mirza9: Not sure about the details of the channel closing down. I just found out in an e-mail. #Express24/7RIP @mirza9: So should I text message my mom and tell her so she doesn't find out when she wakes up at 530AM and checks my twitter feed? @mirza9: wow...

Now that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has unfortunately allegedly indefinitely deferred its proposed ban on scurrilous words and phrases such as 'fingerfood', 'harder', 'deeper', 'Randhwa' [widower] and 'Carrom board', I believe it is time to step back, take a deep breath and re-evaluate, without all the deafening media hysteria, the fine, fine work being carried out by the telecom regulator. And yes, appreciate its commitment to promoting the country's progress in spheres that, in all honesty, is not its responsibility but which it takes on purely as a matter of conscientious citizenship. It is time for those of us whose voices were drowned out by the cacophony of knee-jerk anarchic reactionary-ism to step forward and bring a semblance of thoughtfulness back to public discourse. In this regard, I have taken the liberty of writing an open letter of appreciation to PTA, which I hope those amongst you who were equally troub...

I have been meaning to write about a clip from the DawnNews show Kab Ta k titled ' Hasool-e-Insaaf Ki Jidojehd ' (The Struggle for Justice) that aired last month but is only now doing the social media rounds. The clip features an angry broadcast journalist, Sophia Jamal , confronting the alleged rapist of a 6-year-old girl outside the court and screaming at him, in the process throwing any pretense of an unbiased, objective voice out the window. I was, fortunately for my own mental health (considering I would have had to watch it over and over again to formulate comments), beaten to it by Nadia Zaffar . Ms. Zaffar, who is a former DawnNews staffer, does an excellent job of using it as a case study establishing "yays and nays for journalists." Her take on it should be mandatory reading for newsrooms across Pakistan: " You are not the judge: As a reporter, please try to refrain from passing out judgments on people facing charges. Let the process of law and just...