Moborate

So, remember that we tweeted about the return of Mr Jeem (Jeem for Jaahil) Online, Aamir Liaquat , to Geo all the way back on June 20? We had also tweeted that our sources were telling us that the return had been pushed through on the insistence of CEO Mir Shakilur Rahman 's mother, the family's matriarch to whom Mr Jeem had gone abegging, and whose diktat could simply not be refused by anyone in Geo. Not only was the disgraced televangelist brought back and offered his own show (for which Geo has been running teasers and quarter-page advertisements proclaiming 'Someone is Coming'), he was ushered into the position of Vice President of the entire Geo TV Network, Group Executive Director and Editor Religious Affairs. The teaser print ad for the return of Aamir Liaquat on Geo Well, it seems a full blown revolt has now erupted within Geo's editorial management over this. Among the people said to be extremely unhappy with this turn of events are Managing Director Geo ...

This has already taken social media and even many television stations by storm. I am placing this here mainly for the record. Remember that 2-hour ' Dunya TV Special' yesterday where Meher Bokhari and Mubasher Lucman conducted a joint 'grilling' of property tycoon Malik Riaz , currently at the centre of what has been variously termed 'Bahriagate' and 'Familygate'? Well, here are the behind-the-scenes from that marathon that some conscientous soul at Dunya has put up on the net for all to see. You need to watch this if you haven't already, trust me. After this, only an idiot could possibly take Pakistan's 'investigative' television media seriously. Part 1: Part 2: So, basically we find out the following things: 1. This was a total set-up of an interview, with planted questions. 2. Malik Riaz is not only told the questions before-hand, he is fed some of the answers too and prompted by the intrepid interviewers to say things he might have...

We are sometimes accused by partisan supporters of opposition political parties of being soft on or for not being more vehement about denouncing the alleged corruption or misgovernance of the currently ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). While I could point to dozens of examples to dispute these claims, I would like to explain, once again, a couple of things. Firstly, we do not brook real corrupt practises, arrogance or misgovernance; our only problem is when either claims are made without substantial proof or when such allegations are made arbitrarily only against the PPP and without context, as if everyone else - from the military to the judiciary to other political parties - is innocent of any blame and everything was hunky dory aside from the times that the PPP has been in power. This is not to say that the PPP should not be hauled up for its sins, only to provide a more balanced perspective. But even more importantly than this is the fact that in the context of a mainstream medi...

I had the chance, or misfortune, to stumble upon yesterday's Khari Baat Lucman Ke Saath on its repeat today and I am still reeling at the heights of lunacy achieved in that programme. And no, I am not referring to the fact that, as an intro to the show, Mubasher Lucman kept pretending to present declassified and Wikileaked US government documents, which are freely available on the web and which have been written and talked about for the past one year, as documents that he had somehow mysteriously and surreptitiously got his hands on ("I have got Anne Patterson's entire email," he once proclaimed). I'm not even referring to how he claimed that one of his guests, Asfandyar Kasuri (who he claimed needed no introduction but who at least I have no idea about aside from the fact that he apparently likes to be known as 'Fundy' on Facebook) had a show shut down on Aaj TV because he had, horror of horrors, interviewed Noam Chomsky . (Yes, I'm sure the fac...

I had not actually planned to write this post but am doing so on the insistence of some of our friends on Twitter who think, quite rightly, that that medium is a rather ephemeral one and the information supplied on it should be preserved in a relatively more easily accessible format such as this one. This post is a follow-up to Pakistan Media Watch 's scrutiny of an apparent campaign against well-known journalist and television anchor Najam Sethi , which raises some very valid questions about who is behind the vilification and to what end. They are obviously mainly rhetorical questions since we can all tell what the possible motivations are when one looks at some of the illustrious names involved and the means employed. However, the PMW post also includes links to two television appearances by current Dunya TV talk show host Mubasher Lucman , wherein he attacks Sethi by name almost without provocation, and this is what prompted sharing this story. Here is the first of them, fr...

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 ...

First of all, on behalf of all of us, I wish to offer an apology for the lack of updates in the last 10 days. Call it a combination of too much other work and involvement in matters urgent, laziness and emotional fatigue. Sometimes we too need to take time off from blogging. Inevitably, some readers have written in to ask why he haven't 'covered' such and such, or made innuendos about our 'political' reasons for not writing about certain issues. There's nothing we can do as far as politically motivated innuendos are concerned but once more we'd like to point out that Cafe Pyala is not meant to be a newspaper or a news channel: we don't necessarily 'cover' everything, nor do we have the resources to do so. And more often than not, our reasons for blogging about something have to do with saying something that is not already being said in the mainstream media or by other bloggers, or to bring more attention to something that we feel is not receiving...