MicroPakistan

Yesterday’s events highlighted many aspects concerning the current situation in Pakistan and of course without the national media coverage none of the aspects would have been so clear.

Too close for comfort

Usually, I would not write a post on a current Pakistani event given that usually I have very restricted access to Pakistani news to form an informed opinion. However, yesterday I witnessed the media coverage of the unfolding events and it cannot be said that an eye witness saw better than what was seen on television because it was seen from so many different eyes. It was the first time I experienced such brave yet stupid coverage of events. Most (if not all) journalists and cameramen were stationed with the taliban (word used in its literal sense) rather than the rangers and policemen. I say it was brave yet stupid, because they were moving amongst Kalashnikov and pistol wielding men that were engaging the rangers with live gun-fire. In most situations when there is an ongoing gun battle, from my point of view, it is immensely irresponsible of the media management and naive for those media men to be standing without any protection other than their press cards.

Some might say that they were only fulfilling their duties in seeking to let the country at large know what was going on. To that my response is this: There are good examples of journalists who have risked their lives to bring to our television boxes dangerous events. The distinction between those journalists and those covering the events yesterday are two. Firstly, they are usually stationed with an organized group of men (such as an army etc) that although do not guarantee the life of the journalist, do guarantee that they will seek to protect them as if they were their own. Secondly, they move with protective cover under these men and wear protective gear such as gas-masks, bullet-proof vests and helmets. Of course, where the Taliban are concerned I am sure that neither had they reached any arrangements with these media men nor had they been wearing protective gear– therefore they were indefensible human targets.

When I saw the images of cameramen choking and coughing from the tear-gas shells lofted by the security forces (SFs), I was fearful that once the SFs started to return gun-fire these journalists would suffer critical injuries if not death. As the day wore on, it was reported that at least one cameraman (of DM Digital) had died after getting bullet wounds and one cameraman (of CNBC Pakistan) had received three bullets to his body and was in a critical but stable condition. Further the bureau chief of Geo TV and an ARY camera man were injured when hit by stones.

Although Javed Ahmed’s family (DM camera man) will be hard to console at this time, maybe they will get the tiniest bit of solace from the fact that he lost his life in defense of the truth. Maybe this is the clearest and greatest lesson that we Pakistanis can learn from yesterday.