Censorship in Pakistani media

In my school, we were taught in 'civics' that it is duty of 'responsible citizens' to form conclusions only after listening to each side of the story.

The newspapers I read are The Hindu and Times Of India. The Hindu is a mature newspaper while Times of India is sensationalist. My favorite magazine is Tehelka. I regularly purchase a copy after reading it on the website! I think that every Indian should read it. But I am digressing...

A few months ago I decided that to get a balanced view, I need to read a Pakistani newspaper. I did a quick Google search for 'newspaper in Pakistan' and the Dawn came up on top.

I liked the website. Clean, simple look. Lots of in depth analysis. Serious comments sections. Specially if you compare it to filth and venom which overflows in ToI comments section.

But soon I began to see a pattern.

Imran Khan is a enigmatic figure in India. He was a cricketer before he became a politician. Instinctively, most Indians do not like him. He was the one who managed to steal an unlikely cricket world cup for Pakistan in 1992. He is not going to be forgiven easily. And yet, in spite of everything, we are impressed by his charisma and leadership skill.

I found his opinions to be reasonable. He looked like one person who could unite Pakistan across class and faith. He is also an honest person. India can deal with him - if he comes to power - without fear of back-stabbing. Agreed he is a green horn. He might not know much about how to run a government. But he does know how to inspire a team. As long as he remembers that he is not an expert in administration and does not become overconfident, I think he will manage.

And yet I realized that the Dawn newspaper is quite against him. Posts after posts criticized him, in my opinion quite unfairly. But everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

Finally yesterday I saw a blog about Imran Khan that actually praised him. The blog was written by Farah Zahidi Moazzam. I liked it. It was one of the few news full of hope coming out of Pakistan.

The blog was posted at 4:30 pm yesterday (23rd May). I posted a comment on it at around 5:30. At 6 I went back to check whether my comment was up. And the blog had disappeared from the front page!

But that might be OK. At the same time, news about attack at PNS Mehran was coming in. So it was quite likely that the blog was removed to accommodate more important news. I went into the dawn blog page, and the it had disappeared from there also!

I gave it up at that time. This morning I decided to investigate a bit more. All the links to the blog had disappeared. Even Farah Zahidi's author page did not list this blog. The blog is still on the server though. I was able to finally search it up with help of Google.

What I am wondering is, is the censorship in Pakistani media self-imposed. Or is it being done by the government.

Or maybe, I am just getting paranoid.