A pious, famous and impartial reporter, who had ceased to be pious, famous and impartial in 2013, for which he was expelled from Pakistan, became pious, famous and impartial again on May 18, 2015 when he published a report about a company run by a bunch of very patriotic and pious individuals about to launch the biggest patriotic channel in Pakistan, something that does not bode well with other patriotic channels and their pious owners.
The pious, famous and impartial reporter, in his report for an international publication owned by not so pious US citizens, which also happens to be in a partnership arrangement with (one of many) a local media house, whose staff, particularly its anchors, are famous for their patriotism and piety, accused our ready-to-launch-number-one-patriotic-channel’s IT company of running a fake degrees empire.
The extremely pious, upright, law abiding and saintly owners of other media houses, who have never made an illegal penny nor have ever evaded tax or mistreated their employees, were shocked to learn about this scam as were their equally pious, upright, law abiding and saintly employees who always conduct a thorough investigation into the business of a media house offering them a job and join only after they have seen tax returns of their would-be employer and are convinced that it is totally — like, really totally — clean. They fell all over themselves to express their shock over the wrongdoings of the employer of their colleagues. They were at a total loss to understand how on earth a journalist could join and continue to work for such an employer since they — the torch bearers of integrity and ethics — have never, nor will ever, worked for an employer involved in the slightest wrongdoing.
However, a few despicable creatures had the audacity to say that it was only a newspaper article and not a court verdict, therefore, one must, instead of jumping to conclusions, at least wait for the response of the pious IT company. These contemptible people went on to say that even if the pious IT company was not that pious, journalists who had joined its media wing were not necessarily involved in its degrees business. Some of them even made extremely false claims that all employers of journalists were into one or another kind of shady business. Fortunately, their prattle failed to distract the pious crowd of upright, law abiding and saintly journalists, and they continued to piously bash their wicked colleagues and their monstrous employer.
By the evening, the pious IT company, run by extremely pious and patriotic individuals, had had enough and came up with a befitting reply in which it stressed that its rivals, contrary to their portrayal of themselves as pious and upright men, were in fact devils who were conspiring with their international partners against the soon-to-be-launched first ever patriotic and employee-friendly channel as they felt threatened by it.
The pious IT company also ‘proved’ that the publication in which the story appeared was an insignificant and extremely unreliable tabloid, which habitually runs false stories (many experts pointed out that it is quite common among US news publishers to publish false and defamatory content, the reason for which is the weakness of libel laws and a very weak, inefficient and corrupt judicial system in the country — anyone can say anything about anyone and get away with it).
As these lines are being written, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has also become a part of the international conspiracy against the pious IT company as its agents have raided the company’s offices and confiscated records. However, the company is committed to protecting freedom of speech for which it has served a legal notice to a local blog too.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani people are very grateful to all the media houses for bringing to them totally impartial news and analyses.
The writer is a freelance contributor. He tweets @atifhussain40