Prior to departing Pakistan for his international book tour, Musharraf had a tête á tête with an English-language newspaper editor. Much to this journalist’s professed astonishment Mush made him a Blue label special with his own fair hands.Now the editor, having swooned with pleasure at having received such personalized hospitality from the Khaki-emperor, is finding it somewhat confusing to criticize his cocktail-mixing benefactor.
Curses!
Your blogger once actually praised this editor for introducing some backbone into his long supine newspaper. Imagine the disappointment.
Some Pakistani journalists have been known to sell their objectivity for a piece of property or a briefcase full of ready cash - but to do so for simply for a glass (or two) of expensive but eminently quenchable liquid?
I just don’t know editors like this fellow are up to… but a display of childish excitement at a glass of uisge beatha proffered by a military dictator is - in your Blogger's view - quite pathetic.
Pakistan
2 comments:
This is the first time your Blogger has exercised self-censorship by re-editing a blog item.
Why?
Well simply because my uncensored original Blog did everything but mention the culprit’s name.
Not being a journalist I didn’t realize the amount of kerfuffle and finger-pointing that could arise in the journalistic community. Someone calling himself ‘Bluelabel’ even accused me of being a journalist who was “busy back stabbing former colleagues and making nonsense of it all”.
Having taken advice from a journalist friend, I have with some reluctance not only edited my original blog but have also deleted all the comments on the blog which revealed the name of the newspaper (which would clearly identify the erring editor in question).
Let me assure my readers that your Blogger has been, among other things, a lawyer and a banker in his previous lives, but never, never a journalist. On a lighter note, being somewhat proficient in writing English would, I would have thought, have automatically precluded me from writing for any of our English-language newspapers.
However, I must confess that I do know some fine journalists and the odd press people or two (including the voluble ‘Red Baron’) rather well socially. Notice of the odd goings-on in the journalist community can hardly be regarded as state secrets and consequently some of these snippets even reach my ears.
Truth be known is that I have met the editor in question only once in my life and that was many years ago at a dinner celebrating the launch of Newsline magazine. So I can hardly be guilty of having any personal axes to grind.
In my book any reputable journalist who happily falls victim to the ‘charm offensive’ of a military dictator deservedly needs to be taken down a peg or two - hence this particular blog.
Autumn 2006: you were lampooning the editor. What do you think of the editor and his newspaper now. Did Musharraf's 'charm offensive' work? Be honest and truthful
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