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...

"Laal’s new and most revolutionary video to date. Please paste to your profile to spread awareness against religious extremism." Thus spake the Twitter-feed of Laal the band’s lead singer, guitarist-songwriter-Marxist-academic-revolutionary Dr. Taimur Rahman , announcing the upload of the band’s latest track onto YouTube. The song, which features an anti-American/CIA/ISI visual collage, plus Comrade Taimur's delightfully uninhibited-by-hipness moves, and a chorus of " Dehshatgardi Murdabad " (Death to Terrorism), hasn’t received as much hype as some of their earlier offerings. One theory is that this is not because of its subject matter, or the moves (you know someone is committed to their cause when they even dance earnestly), but because it simply isn’t good music. (Though some people feel that a song that incorporates spitting out the words " Pitthoo ", " Chamchay " and " Tattu " deserves the same special cult status reserved f...

We have been frequent critics of Imran Khan the politician in the past and with very good reason. I still hold that his prescriptions for Pakistan's various ills are entirely simplistic and that his flirtations with the mullah lobby are dangerous indicators of his muddle-headed analysis of this country's political economy. And if anything gets my back up more, it's his and his supporters' dour self-righteousness on top of it all. But even I have to admit that for the first time ever Immy bhai exhibited a sense a wit when he dubbed Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif , presiding over a grossly personalized maladministration in the Punjab , the "Dengue Biradraan" (the Dengue Brothers). It actually made me laugh. Perhaps a rising popularity graph in the province can do wonders for your self-confidence. It's certainly loosened Immy bhai's stiff neck it seems. Imran Khan addressing a big rally in Gujranwala in September A showdown of egos now looms as the P...

Much has already been written and will be written about Begum Nusrat Bhutto , who passed away yesterday. I don't wish to regurgitate those words (you can read more about her life and times here , here and here ). But I do want to write a couple of lines for those who did not live through the times that really defined her (and most Pakistanis now, it should be recalled, were born after 1993) and who wonder what the massive outpouring of emotion at the death of an 82-year-old woman who had not been seen in public for more than a decade is all about. Nusrat Bhutto with Chinese premier Zhou En Lai and Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1964 (Photo: Dawn) To understand the connection that millions of people - and not just the supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party - feel with Nusrat Bhutto, one must understand how her grace under pressure and in the face of overwhelming tragedy - here was a wife and mother who lived to see most of her immediate family wiped out - inspired count...

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...