Potshots from across the border

The Pakistani media is in quite a flutter over the Kandahar developmentsDAWN: A classic case of mishandlingThe year that began with the ex...

The Pakistani media is in quite a flutter over the Kandahar developmentsDAWN: A classic case of mishandling
The year that began with the excitement of the start of the bus service between Lahore and New Delhi is about to end with heightened tensions between Pakistan and India, in the aftermath of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane flying from Kathmandu to the Indian capital. It appears that Pakistan and India are destined to step into the new millennium with a deep gulf of mutual mistrust and suspicion continuing to keep them at loggerheads.

From the outset, Indian TV news channels kept suggesting that Pakistan was behind the hijacking. Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh also did no service to truth and objectivity and the chances of peace in the region by stating that the hijackers had travelled to Kathmandu on a PIA flight. Not to be outdone by the Indian TV news channels, the Pakistan Television also put up its own propaganda blitz with an outcrop of comments and paneldiscussions designed to establish that India itself may have staged the hijacking drama in order to malign Pakistan by blaming it for it. The PTV telecasts featured high-level dignitaries and specialists from the media and other related fields.

Some of the participants in the PTV discussions even went to the extent of suggesting that the Indian aircraft hijack `drama’ could be seen as a replay of the Ganga episode of 1971 when a passenger plane of the Indian Airlines bearing the name Ganga was hijacked to Lahore and later blown up….

(Oped piece from Dawn, December 29, by M.H.Askari)

The Nation: Fierce media war between Zee TV, PTV

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The Indian Airlines plane hijack has sparked off a fierce electronic media war between Zee TV and PTV, with the former spreading all sorts of anti-Pakistan theories, and the latter riposting vigorously. Interestingly, while the official Indian channel, Doordarshan, has been reporting cautiously, the supposedly independent and ‘global’ Zee has been crossingall limits of xenophobia, propounding the most outrageous theories.

Most of the material is obviously fed by official Indian sources, such as the sudden discovery that Pakistanis are on the passenger list of IA 805, or the dragging in of the earlier PIA flight to Kathmandu as a source of hijackers. PTV has been responding aggressively, with round-the-clock bulletins interrupting scheduled programming, and extensive use of all three PTV channels, spreading the reach of the Pakistani response as far as possible. If it had not been for the Indian media offensive, PTV would probably have not played the story as hard as it has done….

Whether the Indian government indeed has sinister motives in trying to blacken Pakistan, or whether it is merely trying to distract domestic attention from the gross mishandling of the Amritsar episode, is another matter. However, while PTV has given a spirited response, it has not been free of flaws. First, there is an element of overkill, as there may have been too muchinterruption of regular programming, converting both entertainment channels, PTV1 and PTV World, into news channels for all practical purposes….

E-poll carried out by `The Nation’:
Is India trying to get political mileage by involving Pakistan in hijacking? Yes: 61 votes (40 per cent); No: 86 votes (56 per cent); Can’t say: 4 (2 per cent)