Daily Times

The cabinet in its meeting on 9 July took serious view of the interview of the former President Asif Ali Zardari by Hamid Mir for Geo TV which was taken off the air immediately after it started. The Prime Minister particularly seemed irked by the episode and it was decided to ask PEMRA to justify the airing of interviews of the under-trial prisoners and there was a consensus in the cabinet that there should be a ban on interviews of the under-trials.

I wish that somebody from amongst the cluster of media advisors and media mangers around the Prime Minister could have informed him that the mandate of PEMRA was not to stop the media from interviewing anybody but to expand the choice available to the public for accessing news, optimizing free flow of information and to ensure that the channels do not cross the Rubican stipulated by the conditions of licensing and the code of conduct issued by it for the electronic channels.

Neither in the conditions for licensing nor in the code of conduct for the electronic media issued by PEMRA it has been stipulated that the media will not interview the under-trials or inform PEMRA before indulging in any such exercise or the channel would seek permission from it before airing the interview. As such PEMRA has no the legal authority to prevent such episodes or the means to know in advance that some under-trial was going to be interviewed by a certain channel.