Pakistan: Journalism under fire
As Hamid Mir recovers after being shot by unknown gunmen, we examine the wider backdrop of media killings in Pakistan.
Last year, the Listening Post featured a day in the life of Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. We followed him around to get an insight on the risks faced by media workers in the country. Today, he is recovering in a Karachi hospital after being shot multiple times by unknown attackers.
Mir had faced threats to his life before. In 2012 a bomb was found – undetonated – attached to the bottom of his car.
It was the Pakistani Taliban that claimed responsibility for putting it there, saying it was in response to his coverage of their attack on the now iconic young rights campaigner, Malala Yousafzai. But this time round, Mir and his employer, Geo TV, have pointed the finger not at the Taliban but at Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service, the ISI.
While Mir has escaped with his life, the attack comes against a backdrop of media killings that make Pakistan one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Guiding us through this complex and treacherous landscape are: Rana Jawad, Geo TV Islamabad’s bureau chief; Mubashir Luqman, a presenter for ARY News; Raza Rumi, a columnist for Pakistan’s Express Tribune; and Rabia Mehmood, a freelance journalist.
In other media news this week: Journalists are kidnapped and outlets attacked in the continuing fallout from Ukraine’s political crisis; kidnapped journalists are released after months of captivity in Syria; and, in the wake of revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, US director of intelligence, James Clapper, issues a directive making it a sackable offence for intelligence workers to have any unauthorised contact with the media.
In this week’s feature, we explore the old adage that the “pen is mightier than the sword” by paying a visit to two men who wield some of the sharpest quills around. British political cartoonists Steve Bell and Gerald Scarfe have been delivering inky attacks against those in power for decades. But as the Listening Post’s Flo Phillips reports, elsewhere, cartoonists are not so free to wield their brushes against hypocrisy.
And closing our show is a tribute to a different kind of visual genius. The Editor is an animation that uncovers the artistry of the picture editor – the magic-makers who bring the news to life on your TV screens. It comes from the team that runs the Inside The Edit training programme, billed as “the world’s first creative editing course”.
From field reports to documentaries – and, of course, on shows like the Listening Post – editing is most effective when you do not notice it at all.
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