Lahore (Monitoring Desk) – In the wake of the child sex abuse scandal that has shocked the nation, Geo news, which claims to be the biggest news channel in Pakistan, truly shocked the country with their coverage of the incident.
While the news broke in the morning on all mainstream channels, the coverage of the scandal was mysteriously missing from Geo. Later in the evening when they did finally cover the news, their coverage was nothing short of insensitive and biased. In their bulletin they brought on the DPO of Kasur, Rai Bahadur, who instead of apologizing for his negligence and lack of action, gave the whole scandal a new twisted angle.
The DPO maintained that the incident is nothing but a land dispute between two parties and only 7 videos of child abuse have surfaced. The DPO tried his best to play down the crime of horrendous proportions to nothing more than a dispute over land. He did not comment on the relationship between child abuse and land dispute nor did he say anything about police pressurizing the victims’ parents to drop the case, and Geo news went with that angle.
All other news channels reported that the criminal gang had been allegedly working under the supervision of the local MPA Malik Ahmad Saeed (PMLN), who had been actively trying to brush this incident under the rug. The relationship of PMLN MPA with the criminals might be the reason for Geo News’ mysterious coverage of the incident.
The rumors that Geo News is a mouthpiece of PMLN is not an old one, and such pathetic antics by a major news channel in face of such an ugly crime do nothing but lead credibility to these ‘rumors’. As of yet, neither Geo Tv website nor The News have covered this event. Is it because they are inundated by other, more important, stories? Highly unlikely.
Update: During the evening Samaa Tv also reported that the whole news is allegedly ‘fake’ and nothing but a land dispute blown out of proportion. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah also appeared on Samaa and thanked the news channel for their ‘honest coverage’.
On the other hand, we sent our reporter to the village who interviewed many villagers who all agreed that the sexual abuse and filming actually did take place. According to our reporter, this village and 3 other villages nearby were all involved in this criminal enterprise which was being run on a very large scale. All our investigations prove that angle being portrayed by Samaa and Geo is based on nothing but misreporting of facts.
In light of the reporting of these two channels and our own coverage of the news in the village, one can only feel sadness upon the state of Pakistani media and their relationship with the government.
