Sometimes Ofcom has an unenviable job. The TV censor investigated complaints about one sided news reporting on the ARY News channel of a massively important blasphemy case against another Pakistani news channel, GEO TV, which was accused of blasphemy.
ARY News, 15-16th May 2014
ARY News broadcasts news and provides general entertainment programming, in Urdu and English, to the Pakistani community in the UK.
Six
complainants alerted Ofcom to four news items as well as five editions of the programme Khara Sach, a current affairs programme broadcast between 14 May 2014 and 27 May 2014 by the Licensee.
The complainants objected to
critical references on ARY News about the Independent Media Corporation, and in particular, allegations that services owned by the company, including Geo TV, had committed blasphemy against the religious character Mohammed.
Ofcom
noted that the allegations of blasphemy arose from the broadcast of the programme Utho Jago Pakistan on Geo TV in Pakistan on 14 May 2014. This edition of Utho Jago Pakistan featured a re-enactment of the wedding of the programme's guests Veena Malik, a
Pakistani actress, and Assad Khan Khattak, including a group of live musicians performing a renowned devotional qawwali. The singing of this qawwali during the re-enactment of the wedding was criticised by some clerics and parts of the Pakistani media as
disrespectful to Mohammed.
We noted that the complainants in this case considered that the four news items listed above were not duly impartial. The complainants also considered the news items and the five editions of Khara Sach
contained: one sided hate speech in all reports .
This religious song, playing in the background of a fake marriage led to inevitably extreme consequences.
The owner of Pakistan's biggest
media group, Geo TV along with actor Veena Malik and her husband was sentenced to 26 years in prison by an anti-terrorism court for allegedly airing a blasphemous programme. Shakil-ur-Rahman, owner of Geo and Jang group, was accused of allowing the
airing of a blasphemous programme by Geo television in May, which played a religious song while staging a mock marriage of Malik with Bashir.
The Judge also sentenced both Malik and Bashir along with TV host Shaista Wahidi for 26
years each. The ATC also imposed a 1.3 million Pakistani rupees fine on the convicts and ordered that their properties should be sold to raise the fine, if they failed to pay it.
The judge said in his judgment that all four
accused committed profanity. There are reports that all four are out of Pakistan. Rahman resides in the UAE and the other three also went abroad after receiving threats by militant organisations. It is not known when the arrests would be carried out.
It is a little unfair to sum up reams of Ofcom justification in a couple of lines, but the most pertinent comments were:
Our view was that the alternative viewpoints presented during the programmes were
insufficient, given the range and frequency of strongly critical comments against Independent Media Corporation and the Pakistani Government.
We also observed that: despite the fact that the story covered in the bulletins centred
on material broadcast by Geo TV, during the four news programmes only one brief referencewhich could be reasonably described as offering the Independent Media Corporation's viewpoint was included (It just runs a ticker stating that they regret if
someone's feelings have been hurt) and that this itself contained an implied criticism of that broadcaster.
We concluded that, on the specific facts of this case, the news programmes were not presented with due impartiality and
were therefore in breach of Rule 5.1 of the Code.
(Rule 5.1: News in whatever form. Must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality) .
