Sir: Our fast-growing media claims to have an eye on everything happening around us. The media’s revolution in the first decade of the 21st century in Pakistan is commendable but it is also unfortunate that most of the exclusive news reports are neither filed by the media staffers nor local agencies’ correspondents. The lead is still in the hands of foreign news agencies like AFP, Reuters, AP, etc. Foreign news agencies seem to have access to terrorists, personal contact numbers and location information of, say, Hakimullah and his comrades. It is obvious that if the AFP correspondent quotes Asmat Muawiya talking from an unidentified location, then our security agencies’ personnel, who are supposedly more equipped, can also have this access. The AP’s September 9, 2013 report filed by its Islamabad correspondent Kathy Gannon was shocking, with the headline, ‘Post-withdrawal Afghanistan war set to shift to Punjab’. Some television channels seem to have more access to inside North Waziristan or any other war zone than the security agencies themselves. Likewise, a drone strike killing how many and exactly where it occurs is reported by Washington one or two days later. Then we come to know that the strike “has killed al-Qaeda or the Taliban’s high value target”. The question is: why have we failed to establish our own information network even after a decade of war? Is it not our first and foremost responsibility?
ESCHMALL SARDAR
Peshawar