Not really clear about what the reading on Bol is. Prior to its initial launch, there was talk of the deep state behind the channel. Truth be told, at least on the financial front, the channel didn’t need much patronage, if the scale of Axact’s reported haul is true.
Post-NYT expose, the channel’s financial health won’t be as viable as it was initially planned. The question about whether the establishment is supporting it, however, is still not known. It is incorrect to ascertain such things from the content of a channel’s coverage.
They just might be a channel preening itself in front of the powers that be, telling them that we can out-ARY ARY.
On this front, Amir Liaquat’s program, Aise Nahi Chalega, a self-styled media critique (much like what you’re reading right now) is certainly pulling out all the stops in hitting all the right notes that the boots like to hear.
On a recent program, he played a Geo clip of Saleem Safi interviewing the League’s Abdul Qadir Baloch. It was playfully critical of the military.
This, of course, got Liaquat’s goat.
But out of all the boxes of boorishness that Liaquat ticked, one that needs to be mentioned before the serious ones, is his making fun of Safi’s English, mocking his pronunciation of the word “image.” Making fun of people’s English is perhaps one of the most crass things to do, but when the chairperson of the English department at Yale, Dr Amir Liaquat, does it, the word “crass’ doesn’t quite do justice to it.
On the content itself: Safi said to Baloch that your government functionaries, including Khwaja Asif, had been claiming that the ISI was behind the PTI’s dharnas. And since there is an image (yeah, it was here) that the ISI chief doesn’t do anything without the army chief’s express approval, does that mean that the League was accusing the chief?
Incensed, Amir Liaquat said if you already have made up your mind, and believe this image, then why on earth do you have a guest? Keep sticking to this notion that the ISI chief asks the army chief everything.
Though it is interesting to see Liaquat take this line of reasoning in the first place. Was his contention that no, the ISI did whatever it did without the army chief’s approval? What, really, was Liaquat getting at?
There is many a doublethink that a defender of the army has to stick to here. We didn’t lose the war and we lost the war because of Bhutto. We didn’t invade Kargil and we taught the Indians a lesson when we invaded Kargil. We aren’t harbouring the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan and we are going to bring the Afghan Taliban to the table because they live in Pakistan and we know where they are.
All this is going to be beyond the skill set of fake doctors.