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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

TV journalism's Aafia mafia

BY FASI ZAKA 

Dr Aafia has been hijacked, and not just by the Americans, who had her flown to the US and gave her a dubiously excessive punishment for attempted murder, but by the Pakistani media itself.

Just recently Meher Bokhari conducted a TV programme on Samaa on Dr Aafia Siddiqui, and it was an atrocious attack on the idea of responsible, or even mildly responsible journalism. She opened her piece on the programme with an emotional plea about the “daughter of the nation” and how “time” would ask Musharraf about his actions. Is this journalism or jingoism?