The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Friday issued notices to Geo News, Dawn News, News One and Dunya News for being irresponsible and provoking anti-national sentiments among viewers by sensitising events un-necessarily.
PEMRA said in a statement that some of the talk shows of the mentioned channels were violating Section 20 of the PEMRA Ordinance 2002 read with Rule 15 of PEMRA Rules 2009 and clause (1) (d) (g) (h) of Code of Conduct set out in the Schedule-B of PEMRA Rules 2009.
Since the PNS Mehran base attack, PEMRA said it was being observed that some news channels were not realising their journalistic responsibility towards the society, institutions and country and a few a had even gone overboard “in maligning the role of security agencies, armed forces and state institutions”.
“For instance, Geo News televised interview of an alleged eye witness in the PNS Mehran base attack and created undue sensation and hype without even bothering to verify the facts and realising the grave repercussion that such irresponsible journalism could have on the country. The witness later proved a fake,” PEMRA said. “No responsible media anywhere in the world undermines the repute, respect sovereignty or integrity of its nation, institutions or its forces or pass aspersions against them,” it said. PEMRA said the media across the world rather safeguarded national and strategic interests. The media in Pakistan had been given enormous freedom of expression and speech, but there must be some line drawn between desirable and undesirable acts by the media on its own, PEMRA said. “PEMRA has always upheld its policy of self regulation and will continue to do so. PEMRA is constantly engaged in consultative process with all its stakeholders to mitigate such occurrences which are not acceptable,” the statement said.
