The last time the media reported the earthquake of 2005 in Kashmir and the NWFP it was quick on the draw, got to the affected area first and emphasised the lack of competence of the state in coming to the help of the stricken population. Later, however, the international community did not agree with the Pakistani media and rated the relief and rehabilitation efforts of Islamabad as exemplary for the world. (Relatively speaking, the Americans made a hash of the New Orleans flooding.) Now the Ziarat earthquake is upon us and the media should be careful about how it reports the calamity.A natural calamity is called “natural” because no one can be held responsible for causing it. But it is incumbent on the state to come to the help of the people in the affected area and restore their disrupted lives as soon and as much as possible. Because of the nature of the tragedy, however, concession must normally be made in terms of the whereabouts of the quake victims in terms of the nearest source of official relief. There is also the climate to be considered and, while reporting the plight of the people, the media has to be sympathetic to them without being biased against those who are working hard to bring them help.The TV coverage of Ziarat and the surrounding areas has been prompt. The affected population has been shown and interviewed and its complaints have been registered. This coverage will help the administration in reaching the areas whose plight has not been reported to them. But it is unfortunate that the plaints were also shown by the media as indictments of the political setup as well as the services involved in rescue operations. This is not fair. The area is far removed from Quetta and is climatically difficult, somewhat similar to what Kashmir had to go through in October 2005. It is cold and tents will be inadequate to defend the displaced people against the severity of he winter. Also, there is always a lag between the occurrence of the calamity and the despatch of assistance to the affected area. It normally takes a week or more for the organisational response to get in full gear. For instance, the chief minister of the Punjab, Mr Shehbaz Sharif, sent 65 trucks laden with food on the third day of the earthquake. More help apart from food is going from Punjab. The Lahore Chamber of Commerce has also not been slow in pitching in and collecting funds as quickly as possible. In Sindh, Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah also saw the relief trucks off on the third day. Meanwhile army helicopters are being used to get to the villages in the affected area.The calamity is small compared to what happened in Kashmir when it killed tens of thousands of people and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless. This earthquake is well within the capacity of the state to tackle. The TV coverage of the stricken population is projecting a picture today that will hopefully improve considerably in a few days. But for now it creating an impression that is negative and could demoralise those busy with the post-quake operations. Most of those being interviewed rightly complain about help not reaching them. But interviewers should give comment in order to “balance” the coverage, rather than leaving TV viewers to conclude that the government is doing nothing.The issue of the tents has to be handled very carefully and requires balancing comment. The affectees say they have fewer tents than they need but also add that tents are of no use in the cold weather. They impossibly demand that their houses should be rebuilt before the winter months are out. Others demand that new land be allotted to them after which houses be built there too. Letting these comments go on air without consoling the interviewee and without putting the problem in perspective lends imbalance to the coverage. The danger of being accused of biased or tendentious coverage is greater here because the affected population is small and will be adequately cared for within a lot less time than the Kashmir affectees were.Of course, one has to point out here that the TV channels are “balancing” some of their reports by interviewing officials in charge of the rescue and rehabilitation work. This is a positive achievement because it will keep them alert to the task they have undertaken, but the freewheeling coverage of the grief-stricken interviewees is too strong for the total coverage to be balanced. One crying elder saying no one has been to visit his people is enough to doom the good impression created by the official in charge of rescue. There is a need to professionally revisit the methodology of coverage and make the needed corrections. g Child marriage: no ‘karwai’, please! Two fathers have been caught marrying off their children, a boy of 7 years and a girl of 4 years, and have landed up in a police station in Karachi. The children are at the police station too and the policemen are pretending to take good care of them. The thanedar says he has the children with him because he wants to protect them (sic!). The Nazimabad police locked up the two guilty fathers and a nikah-khwan cleric for violating the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929. But the truth is that the police may exploit the situation to inflict more suffering on the misguided accused.The first thing that a magistrate must do is to send the two children back to their mothers. They have gone through a trauma and should not be subjected to more of it by being called to court. The two fathers have pleaded guilty to following a rivaj (custom). It is an open-and-shut case and the police should not be allowed to do karwai (action) on it needlessly to polish up their public image. The fathers belong to a community that practises child marriage. It has been discovered that the same mohalla has seen regular child weddings in the past. The cleric or nikah-khwan should be taken off the nikah register as a deterrent in such cases and the fathers should be freed after they have acknowledged the error of their ways. *