Media war shines spotlight on ethics

ARY News found guilty by a British court of slandering GEO TV boss after accusing him of treason and blasphemy

Acourt case fought in London between two of Pakistan’s largest media houses has drawn attention towards media ethics in Pakistan.

A British court handed down 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.

Dozens of Pakistani television channels have been at daggers drawn in the race to be number one ever since the former president, retired General Pervez Musharraf allowed private TV channels to operate in the country about 15 years ago.

The court directed the loser in the libel case, ARY News, to broadcast the summary of the court’s judgement.

Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, editor-in-chief of Geo/Jang Group, was even branded an agent of intelligence agencies such as India’s RAW, America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad. ARY decided to appeal but their appeal was immediately rejected by the court.

So instead of paying up, ARY filed for bankruptcy and its licence to operate six channels was revoked by the UK’s media regulator, Ofcom. With this, the entire operation of this TV network has been closed in the UK.

Second case back home

However, another legal battle between the two media giants is also being fought in Pakistan. The battle began after one of ARY’s anchor Mubashir Lucman aired 100 programmes throwing baseless allegations against Shakil-ur-Rahman.

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.

In court ARY could not prove that Shakil-ur-Rahman used his media group to further the interests 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 a financial loss of more than $180 million.