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Journalism of Courage
KARACHI, March 4: People do not die in Pakistani newspapers, 8220;they breathe their last8221;. And sometimes if it is in the early morning, 8220;they breathe their last in the wee hours8221;.
Welcome to the colourfully-cliched world of Pakistan8217;s English-language press, where a robber is a notorious dacoit8217;, the opposition flays8217; the government, the water mafia exploit a water shortage and any sequence of words can be turned into an acronym.
This is the medium where things are always discussed by government officials as 8220;threadbare8221;. Urdu is the national language, but English, a holdover from the days when Pakistan was part of India and under British colonial rule, is still widely used.
Some of the English usage in Pakistan8217;s newspapers seems frozen in time at 1947 when the country gained independence, but other parts of the language have evolved, shaped by local forces, varying educational standards and a competitive press which sometimes focuses on the sensational over the accurate.
There are about 15English-language dailies published in Pakistan and the standards vary widely from the respected Dawn to an evening newspaper in Karachi with booming half-page headlines, whose only advertisement recently has been from its own staff complaining about not being paid for the last five months.
Another evening daily, Today, was not able to convince enough readers to buy it and went under even though it billed itself as 8220;the most convincible newspaper8221;.
Euphemisms for the word die8217;, such as breathe their last8217; or expired on the way to hospital8217;, are common even though some newspapers such as Dawn try to steer clear of them.
8220;We try to avoid that. We discourage it if a reporter writes that type of things,8221; said Tanvir Ahmad, assistant editor at Dawn.
He said the problem was 8220;English is not our language. The quality of education, particularly of the English language, has gone down.8221;
Very few of the older generation of journalists who trained under the British beforePartition in 1947 are still working, he said.
8220;It is a problem of the language, nothing else,8221; he said, adding it was sometimes difficult to find reporters who also had sufficient English ability because there were now more newspapers printing more pages.
A periodic table of obscure acronyms is also needed to read a Pakistan newspaper, and this is partly due to Pakistan8217;s colonial history as well as an explosion of political parties and splinter groups, Ahmad said.
8220;We have no option, with 34 parties8230; what do you do?8221; he said of headline writers trying to distinguish between different political groups and factions.
The acronym smorgasboard was not helped by political splits in all three major parties, he said. There is the ruling Pakistan Muslim League PML and several factions, including the PML J and the PML F, Benazir Bhutto8217;s Pakistan People8217;s Party PPP and the offshoot PPP SB run by her brother8217;s widow.
And the ethnic MQM party, which is popular in Karachi, has a splinter groupknown as the MQM H.
They are all prominent in headlines, with the PPP SB flaying the PPP, which in turn has been flaying the PML, which flays the MQM.
Flay8217; is a popular word, although not all of the flaying matches the dictionary definition of savage criticism or merciless scolding.
