Saturday, Mar 25, 2017

Dubai: A court case fought in London between two of Pakistan’s largest media houses has drawn attention towards media ethics in Pakistan.

A British court has handed an unprecedented verdict against a Pakistani TV channel broadcasting from the UK, after the judge found that allegations of treason and blasphemy the network orchestrated against the owner of a rival media group were not only “seriously defamatory” but also “simply had no foundation”.

The court in London also convicted the owners of ARY News of slander and libel and awarded $3.7 million (Dh13.57 million) in damages to the plaintiff, Geo TV, according to the judgement. The case drew a lot of attention because a British court gave a ruling on a squabble between the two of the largest media houses in Pakistan. The owners of both the media houses are residents of the UAE. The case also got attention of Pakistani residents in the Middle East because both the television channels are well known among the community here.

Dozens of Pakistani television channels have been at daggers drawn in the race to be number one since the former President General (retd) Pervez Musharraf allowed private television channels to operate in the country about 15 years ago.

According to the judgement copy obtained by Gulf News, the High Court of Justice, for the first time in UK’s history, directed the loser in the libel case, ARY News, to broadcast the summary of the court’s highly critical judgement against it. The TV channel was further ordered never to repeat the allegations against Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, Editor-in-Chief of Geo/Jang Group. In addition to the traitor and anti-Islam charges, he was even labelled as an agent of intelligence agencies like the RAW of India, the CIA of America and the Mossad.

“This appeared to be a grand plan conceived by the powerful elite against the most popular media group in Pakistan; by attempting to discredit, defame, and make controversial by using religion and patriotism as tools in order to further their own agenda” said a spokesman of Geo/Jang Group.

According to the judgement, ARY Group was also ordered by London High Court to pay £185,000 (Dh847,300) in libel damages to Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. After the litigation expenses were included, the total bill escalated to around £3 million. Soon after this judgement, ARY decided to appeal to the higher courts, which was immediately rejected by the court. So instead of paying the winning party, ARY filed for bankruptcy. Then on the basis of the complaint of Mir Shakil ur Rahman of Geo/Jang Group, the licenses of the network’s six channels have been revoked by UK’s media regulator, OFCOM. With this, the entire operation of this TV network has been closed in UK.

While the UK court has already given its verdict in the defamation case, the legal battle between the two media giants is also being fought in Pakistan.

The legal battle began after one of ARY’s anchor Mubashir Lucman aired 100 programmes throwing baseless allegations against Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman.

It was during the course of this malicious campaign that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman was declared to be connected to RAW, CIA, MOSSAD over 600 times, and declared to be a traitor 400 times, an analysis of ARY’s contents indicate. These allegations were constantly repeated on screen, with the anchor continuously holding papers declaring and giving the impression that he speaks with complete evidence in his hand. In court ARY could not prove that Mir Shakil Ur Rahman used his Media group to further interest of any foreign entity.

As the campaign widened, journalists of Geo/Jang Group were harassed from different quarters, the vans carrying newspapers of the group were burnt. Geo TV was unofficially pulled off the air in collaboration with cable operators. The media group claimed that it suffered financial loss of more than $180 million.

By Ashfaq Ahmed UAE Deputy Editor

Gulf News 2017. All rights reserved.