Monitoring Desk: Veteran journalists across the country are questioning the credibility of vloggers, bloggers, and YouTubers who had been injected into Pakistani journalism during the last decade because they were the demand of Project Imran and the philosophy behind their promotion was to replace credible journalists with paratroopers controlled by engineers of project Imran.
In a thought-provoking discussion held at a PTV Talk Show “Chotha Satoon” (Fourth Pillar) anchored by senior journalist Jawad Faizi, participants questioned serious issues Pakistani journalism is facing nowadays.
The discussion attended by veteran journalists like Abdul Abdul Qayyum Siddiqui, Asma Shirazi, and Absar Alam also questioned the role of the journalist rights organization that had been instrumental in accepting non-professional social media figures as journalists. It is pertinent to mention that there are rules and definitions written in the term references of press clubs and Union of Journalists about credible journalists but these rules have been flouted and everybody is using their profession of “journalist” without having any background in journalism.
The discussion evolved around serious issues related to social media mechanisms and participants were of the view that a cadre was developed in Pakistan for abusing politicians and making fun of working journalists, Parliament, and the Constitution and this cadre of vloggers, bloggers, anchors, and political analysts successfully filled television screens and prime places in Op-ed pages by 2014. They were elevated as senior experts, senior analysts, and social scientists by state institutions and state-funded think tanks. By 2018, they had already replaced working journalists who reached television screens and Op-ed pages after going through long journeys via newspaper newsrooms, or reporting rooms. Soon this new cadre became mouthpieces of different power grids. The front rows during media briefings and dinners in the Presidency, Prime Minister House, Chief Minister Houses, and Governor Houses were filled with these hybrid journalists. Hundreds of unknown websites having no physical addresses or credible names were launched to establish this cadre as “credible writers”.
Seasoned and working journalists had no option but to watch what was going on and to survive the social and economic strangulation they were victims of. This new cadre is composed of doctors, car dealers, engineers, showbiz celebrities, beauty parlor workers, bank employees, shopkeepers, real estate developers, and retired officials of the civil-military bureaucracy.
Participants were of the view that there should be state action against such people who are using the title of journalism for fulfilling their political and economic motives and they must be discouraged by the state departments.
