Regardless of what the outcome of the Arsalan Chaudhry case is going to be, audiences in Pakistan are having a field day watching the case’s repercussions play out across different camps in the commentariat as some of Pakistan’s most famous TV talking heads slug it out in an increasingly ugly – and open – mudfest.
It started with senior Dawn News anchor Talat Hussein accusing Geo pundit Najam Sethi (just a shade shy of taking his name) of being in the employ of real estate tycoon Malik Riaz and, therefore, being morally compromised when it came to commenting on the issue.
In his own program on Geo TV, Mr Sethi, after what appeared to be a scripted reluctance, returned the salvo and alleged that Mr Hussein himself was compromised and had been working with STRATFOR, an organisation that the Wikileaks claimed was a front for the CIA. He went on to twist the knife when he said that such claims are the result of the jealousy of channels on “the 7th position or the 8th.”
Mr Sethi expressed his intention to start legal proceedings against Talat Hussein and said that he had already served a legal notice to Dunya News anchor and former Lollywood producer Mubasher Lucman and had managed to get a restraining order against him from the high court.
Mr. Lucman, the enfant terrible of Pakistani TV journalism and not particularly famous for being a meticulous fact-checker, had claimed Mr Sethi had US nationality and that his daughter worked for the late US Af-Pak envoy, Richard Holbrooke. Both claims were untrue.
Pakistan’s lively mainstream news media has had many professional rivalries amongst its ranks but they were, by and large, kept under wraps. With time, the awkwardly maintained veneer of professional courtesy is coming off.
The pundits’ gloves come off
