Moborate

Must Pakistan - or perhaps one should say specifically its government, its political leaders, its judiciary, its military and its bureaucrats - continue to make an ass of itself? Must it circumvent any attempt to make the world forget that we can be the most absurd cretins in the world? Graphic by Nick Bilton (Source: New York Times) Barely had the memory of the Lahore High Court-imposed Facebook ban faded from the collective global 'News of the Weird' consciousness that we were struck with the Twitter ban , which the Ministry of Information Technology people told us was because of "blasphemous and inflammatory content" on the site. ( Update:  I had almost finished writing this post when news came in that the Twitter ban had been lifted but am posting this in any case in the off-chance that someone within the corridors of policy-making might read and prevent a recurrence of such ineptitude.)  According to this Express Tribune story : "Pakistan’s government had...

Almost two years ago, I wrote this piece and this piece about reporting on the Air Blue aircraft crash in Islamabad. The tragic crash of Bhoja Air flight from Karachi to Islamabad yesterday and its attendant coverage has compelled me to sit at my keyboard yet again. But whereas my initial disgust with some of the reporting on television was the initial motivation for writing a few words, the subsequent speculation and shoot-everything-in-sight diatribes on social media deserve an equal evaluation. Bhoja Air crash (Photos via Dawn) More on the latter later in the post, however. First, let's look at where television coverage went right and where wrong (contrary to the outrage being expressed on social media, all of it was not dire). Generally, most channels did NOT show bodies or limbs. I flipped through most of the major channels during the initial coverage, once reporters and cameramen had reached the site of the crash, and none of them were deliberately showing gore. I have ...

More than one commentator has ascribed the relative dearth of recent posts on this blog to our having taken the easy way out (as others before us) and our expending too much energy on Twitter . And you know what, they may not be completely incorrect. It is, of course, far easier to write pithy sentences of 140 characters rather than thought out essays - even rants - and there is more immediate feedback. Sometimes even a conversation. (And yes, I do remember our initial expression of disdain for it.) It isn't the only reason (as I've tried to explain before ) but it could be one reason. So I thought what better way to ease back into blogging after a longish hiatus by having a post about that infernal sinkhole of time and energy, Twitter, which as we all know now even has the Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party,  Bilawal Bhutto Zardari,   in its clutches . And what better way to really make it easy by having someone else do all the writing and my being simply the medium po...