Journalists are never neutral. They have biases. When it comes to writing op-ed columns, they should show their partisan nature. The same applies to political pundits on TV. One doesn’t know where this obsession with neutrality has come from.
But whereas the folks in the media have the right to their own opinions, they don’t have the right to their own facts.
For instance, Fareeha Idrees has every right to be pro-PTI. She has a right — lesser, though, but still a right – to give it more coverage than other parties; to let its representatives have their say more than those from other parties. But when she says on her programme that the KP government has raised the province’s education budget from Rs8 billion to Rs97 billion, she is downright lying. The KP government itself hasn’t claimed that in its budget documents.
You don’t have to be a public finance guru to immediately know that this increase of 1,113 percent is incorrect.
The Pakistani channels don’t have much budgets to splurge on research. Most of the associate producers working on the talk shows just do guest coordination. And the producers are in charge of the control room and looking at the associates. There is not much research to begin with.
As for Ms Idrees herself, she is probably one of the simple souls to whom figures like 1113 percent don’t seem out of place because during the course of her career, she probably hasn’t ever combed through figures or ever done any work that requires the capacity of abstract reasoning to begin with.
Being a talking head on TV is the easiest job in the world. Not much by way of accountability and very little actual work.