Freedom of the press: Yeah right, whatever! February 11, 2007
Posted by psykedelik in Pseudo-Sociological Crap, Random Crap.trackback
One of our reporters (Abbas) received a death threat today.
Abbas is our crime reporter. Mahim (the city editor) and him have been covering the story about Nisha’s death, and the police investigations, etc. Someone called Abbas up today and threatened to kill him.
This brings home the “fear” that every journalist lives in, here (in Pakistan). At times like these, you realize what a huge farce “freedom of the press” actually is, and reality hits in in a really big way. I mean, you always know that there’s a chance of things like these happening, if you’re pursuing stuff that’s serious enough, but somehow you never think it’ll happen to you or someone you know.
“Yeah well, it happens to people. I don’t know those people, though,” you think and sit back, relaxed. And then it happens to someone who works with someone you know, and then it’s someone you work with yourself. Someday it might be you…
I just realized what Abbas meant when he asked today if I could get his cellphone records out. I told him he should get a cellphone that allows him to record his calls — my K700i, for example, has the call-recording feature. With Nisha’s case, he needs to record every call that comes to him (exept from people that he knows, of course).
I’m hoping that the call to Abbas was just someone’s idea of a lameAss joke. If it was, all I can say to that person is: “Get a life, bhainchod! This isn’t even remotely funny.”
Yes its not very uncommon though I still consider it lucky that all he got (uptill now) is threats on phone call. Well, you can’t say it only happens in Pakistan. Yeah, it’s probably more common here and some other parts of the world than the whole world. But I still haven’t quite grasped the idea of “freedom of speech” as yet. So, I can’t say whether there does exists a world of “freedom of speech” just like “unbiased reporting” and other made-up words.
Internet probably was the hallmark of freedom of speech and individual representation. Well, sure, it still is by far the most democratic and free world on internet but it’s not really as free as some would have us believed.