Asian Broadcasting Network (ABN) is a non-profit organization serving the south Asian community in Chicago area since 1997. ABN also hosts an Urdu language talk radio show which goes on air every sunday from noon to 3 p.m.
Recently ABN featured a very enlightening interview with Pakistani journalist, Rauf Klasra. The interviewing panel consists of Dr.Mujahid Ghazi, Jibran Ilyas, Aqil Sajjad and Sabahat Ashraf.
The topics discussed in the interview range from Lahore incident to recent political situation in Punjab. He also talks about the current status of Long March and his assessment on the next events which may put Pakistan into one of the greatest turmoils of our history. He also elaborated the ‘Un-Holy’ alliance between the most powerful sections of Pakistani society viz. Army, Civil Bearucracy, Politicians, Judiciary and Media. He also talks about how this nexus was broken on March 9th, 2007 etc and how media has sided with the judiciary since then.
Rauf Klasra also provides an insight into the awareness that broadcasting is providing to the people in villages and how it is bridging the gap between urban and rural political awareness. He gives some concrete evidence of a slow change that is happening in rural masses and which hopefully would bring good for our nation in the next elections. Discussion on the concerns of the people of undeveloped areas of Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP against the domination of Punjab and unequal distribution of resources also happens in this interview. Finally Klasra gives his opinion on where to look for an ‘Alternative Leadership’ for Pakistan within Pakistani politics.
Please listen to the Interview here. It is approximately 1 hour long.
Credits: www.abnchicago.org
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1. Tenth Anniversary of Asian Broadcasting Network – Urdu Talk Radio
Come on PMA, The news traditionally used to be seen as a pro-PPP paper, that was back in the 1990s, and it even ran into a confrontation with the PML-N government in 1999.
In the last couple of years, the Musharraf regime and then, the PPP have been playing a negative role, so the news was only doing what any decent newspaper is supposed to do, highlight and expose the misdeeds of the ruling elite. Over these 2 years, NS hasn’t done any major wrong, which is in sharp contrast with Musharraf and the PPP; on the contrary, he has maintained a consistent stance on the judiciary issue. So naturally, there is less criticism directed at him. Now, if tomorrow, NS returns to power and the news glosses over his glaring misdeeds, then you would be justified in accusing it of a bias, but for now, any such allegations are unfair when we clearly see the way the PPP is behaving.
As for Dawn, who ever gave anyone the idea that its not biased? It fully supported the lawyers movement back when Musharraf was in charge, but the moment the PPP came into power, Dawn suddenly took an editorial line that there were many more urgent issues needing more attention than the judiciary’s issue. The same Dawn that used to take a strong interest in women rights issues didn’t deem it worthwhile to write an editorial on the appointments of Bijarani and Zehri as ministers.
This kind of flip flopping is exactly what the term ‘lota’ is for. Of course dawn does that in a somewhat subtle way, but noone should be mistaken that Hussain Haroon’s appointment as Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN and the connections of the Haroons with the PPP haven’t got anything to do with it.
PMA: All pak papers have their own biases..the DAWN is karachi centric..nawa-e-waqt groupsbiases are well known..the smaller provinces are largely unrepresented since the collapse of the Frontier Post.
Mr. Rauf Klasra works for The Jang Group–the publishing mega house known for its tilt to the ‘right’. In its politics The Jang Group which owns Urdu news paper Jang, English news paper The News and GEO TV has traditionally sided with the Sharif brothers. The question is that under such arrangement how objective Mr. Klasra and the Jang Group could be.