Pakistan government spokesperson Firdous Ashiq Awan consults with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, March 16, 2020. Khan said Monday he fears the new coronavirus will devastate developing nations' economies, and warned richer economies to prepare to write off the debts of the world's poorer countries.
March 20, 2020; Washington D.C, USA; White House press briefing on COVID-19
NBC Reporter Peter Alexander: “Nearly 200 dead, 14,000 sick, millions are scared. What would you say to Americans who are watching you right now, who are scared?
Alexander’s question lasted nine seconds.
US President Trump: “I’d say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I’d say. I think that’s a very nasty question. And I’d say it’s a very bad signal that you are putting out there.”
Trump’s response lasted for about 40 seconds.
The clip of the exchange was a global viral sensation.
March 24, 2020; Islamabad, Pakistan; Prime Minister House Press Briefing on COVID-19
If I were to transcribe the questions and answers of “senior” electronic media journalists and Prime Minister Imran Khan, I’d need to write multiple articles, all exceeding any readable word limit, and yet miserably failing to make a sense of whatever the hell happened in that media meet, pardon my French. This article is going to be long too, I fear.
As the world buckles under the merciless COVID-19, the most developed countries are doing their fatigued best to operate within the limits of their overwhelmed healthcare systems. Italy is removing its dead in army vehicles. Iran, a country burdened under international sanctions, seems beaten, trying to make its emaciated medical facilities work. The USA, with its inexplicably late response to the enormity of COVID-19, is closing one city after the other, agonised where to treat its daily-increasing cases of COVID-19.
The media in most countries has a single-point agenda: COVID-19. In Pakistan, media also has a single-point agenda: how to politicise coronavirus while saying how not to politicise coronavirus.
Past midnight, later that night, after watching in entirety, on YouTube, the March 24 media briefing, it dawned on me: I had brand-new respect for Prime Minister Imran Khan. His patience, his unflustered appearance, his countless “baat toh sun lain” (please hear me out), Prime Minister Khan, today, is a motivational force for all those high on self-imagined power and Twitter following who need to calm the hell down, and ask themselves a question or dozen.
I listened to each and every word. Despite being used to for years to Pakistan media’s theatrics and penchant for sensationalism, the Punjabi chatterbox me was dumbfounded. Hurling expletives at my laptop screen at 2am would have been the reflex, but I’m wary of redundant actions. It was the questions that had me baffled.
It was not that the questions were hard hitting. If that was the intention, they missed the mark by a mile or two. Most of the questions, some of the most well-known talk show hosts asked, were sarcastic, patronising, and meant to mock or demean. They didn’t even bother to word them in a manner that would at least pretend to be the right protocol for an interaction with the prime minister of the country.
If it wasn’t for the timing, it’d have been just another media interaction between the prime minister and talk show hosts, smug in their power of reaching millions of screens across Pakistan, and wherever Pakistani TV channels are viewed. When the world is united in its agony of once-in-a-century pandemic, where almost all the countries of all the continents except Antarctica are watching in terror-stricken sadness their young and old, their rich and poor, their healthy and frail testing positive for coronavirus, and when the international media has synchronised all its coverage and reportage to COVID-19, the March 24 Pakistan media event had questions and remarks that had not much to do with coronavirus.
Some were genuine questions about the governmental steps regarding coronavirus. Some were insults thinly disguised as important queries about COVID-19. The ones that made Twitter headlines were all direct attacks on the prime minister of Pakistan. It was the timing that made the questions–otherwise expected from most Pakistani anchors–that became a huge question mark on the integrity of their profession.
Now I’m thinking why I’m even surprised. The seriousness of Pakistan electronic media’s coronavirus coverage is a daily display, in all its macabre garishness, in its prime time shows, inexorably shifting from an apparent serious discussion on the pandemic to a who-will-insult-the-other-louder-and-dirtier match.
That night, as I watched the PM-media interaction I felt sad. It was if some of the most renowned journalists of Pakistan had come fortified with barely hidden daggers to settle some personal scores. Asking hard questions is solid journalism. Questioning governmental decisions is the prerogative of a responsible media. Demanding answers for every questionable step taken in the time of an extraordinary national crisis is the unquestionable right of the media. What happened in that event was an unapologetic who will-insult-the-prime-minister demonstration.
The questions of those who claim to be the champions of journalistic morality weren’t to challenge the prime minister apropos his decisions regarding the coronavirus handling of Pakistan government. Their attacks were personal: on Khan’s alleged interference in National Accountability Bureau’s actions; on Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar’s alleged incomprehensibility of the coronavirus outbreak; Khan’s “vendetta” tactics against a certain journalist for Khan’s alleged nepotism regarding Zulfi Bukhari, Special Assistant to the PM for Overseas and HRD; Khan’s “inability” to grasp the dynamics of the coronavirus management in Pakistan; Khan’s “flip-flop” on a complete or a partial lockdown. It didn’t stop there.
Although Prime Minister Khan didn't lose his cool and remained composed and answered each and every question coherently, backing them with numbers, facts and solid plans of action, the patronising snubs didn't end. His very able team had answers to all the questions too. But most of the journalists in that room droned on, almost every question laced with sarcasm, negativity, and even disdain. It was a sad farce. Pakistan watched.
There was also a ten-minute tirade that opened with a direct assault on Khan’s “handpicked” cabinet–a global practice but in 2020 Pakistan an arrow to target Khan—and on Khan’s “mismanagement” of Pakistan’s economy. It ended with words that shocked all decent Pakistanis. That if the economy went bust, “Maine Imran Khan ka girabaan pakrrana hai ya… (Am I going to take Khan by his collar or…)
In the time of coronavirus, Pakistan’s media is playing politics-politics
Media agenda: how to politicise coronavirus while saying how not to politicise coronavirus
gulfnews.com
