Slap solutions

Slapping privileges in the media: Pakistan’s top reporters met late last night in a dark corner behind the Lahore Press Club building to unanimously approve the practice of slapping subeditors.

The practice is already widespread among top editors who consider it effective, especially in combination with extremely low and delayed salaries.

Junior editors criticised the decision, but experts see the authority to slap as a privilege and not a punishment. “People need incentives to do better,” a psychologist said. A reporter working on the city desk could only slap one or two people who are often in a different city, he said, but when they work hard and reach key positions in large media corporations, they could slap several hundred subeditors. “Who would not want that job?” he asked.

There are reports that several news anchors and talk show hosts also met to plan a campaign for similar privileges. “Most of the hosts, especially two female ones, insisted that we seek a right to slap our guests,” an anchor who attended the meeting told this scribe. He asked not to be named because he feared being slapped by his colleagues. “Two journalists who co-host a show really want to be allowed to slap each other,” the anchor said. Some hosts did not want to slap their guests but wanted to allow their guests to slap each other. “This is the beauty of democracy,” one of them said.

Intellectuals and analysts asked to comment on the developments have said they were considering a policy of picking up and slapping intelligence agents if they disagreed with their policies. “They have done that to us and the policy seems to work,” one of them said.

Asked if journalists could be compared to spies, he mentioned the recent News of the World hacking scandal in England.

“Phone hacking is not an effective eavesdropping technique in Pakistan,” he said however. “The cell phone service is so bad the voice would keep breaking up.”

He denied reports that the man who misbehaved with Rupert Murdoch during a parliamentary hearing had been hired by a Pakistani TV channel to host a talk show. He did speculate Murdoch dodged the pie coming in his face because he had hacked into the man’s voicemail and already knew about the plan.

Wives slap fatwa against clerics: After recent reports of a large number of fatwas that say it is permissible to beat wives, several hundred thousand housewives gathered in Islamabad to issue a unanimous fatwa that it was permissible to beat up clerics.

YouTube videos of women making hate speeches against clerics went viral. A housewife said she was very sad she would not be able to marry her real husband when she goes to heaven. Asked why she thought that, the lady said: “There is no Nikah without a cleric, and there is no cleric in heaven.”

Obama decides to slap republicans into economy deal: US President Barack Obama announced a new policy in the White House last night to resolve the biggest crisis he has faced so far. In order to save America from defaulting on its payments, the president decided he would slap republican congressmen into a deal to raise the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline.

As White House lawyers met to discuss in what cases slapping would be considered a First Amendment right, several elderly republicans announced they had thought over and decided in principle Obama was right. Others were seen fleeing the capital for personal reasons.

“We would be extremely happy if America were doing even half as good financially as the film Captain America,” an expert said.

Analysts believe if the move fails, the US might not be able to afford to buy ink from China to print new dollar notes.

The writer is a media critic and the News Editor, The Friday Times. He may be contacted at [email protected]