Media Watch: Not NAB DG’s finest hour

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    He’s good. Shahzeb Khanzada is now arguably the best news show host in the country. If you want to watch an informed account of national issues, his is the program to tune in to, not the shouting matches vying for attention on the other channels and Geo itself.

    Of course, weighing him with other show hosts won’t exactly be an apple-to-apple comparison. As opposed to the park-and-bark model of the other talk show programs, he has a large staff doing research for him. Whereas the producers of the other shows do guest-management and perform control room duties, Khanzada’s staff (well-paid, as per sources) do their research  and due diligence meticulously. After that, it certainly helps that the host himself is whip-smart and actually does seem to have gone through the material that his staff would have prepared for him.

    The result: guests cannot BS their way out of things. Khanzada asks searing questions, hardly ever rhetorical, but very specific ones. He asks follow-up questions. He doesn’t let up. To make even the most suave of party and government department spokespersons sweat it out and sing for their supper is quite a feat considering he is polite to a fault while doing it.

    Well, some of that politeness wore off in his interview of NAB’s Lahore DG. It was a bit of a slow boil that led to the eventual unpleasantness. Shehzad Saleem had been doing the talkshow rounds recently. He was probably expecting a fawning anchor giddily lapping up spicy inside tidbits. What he got was an anchor who was asking some very specific questions. The DG was found wanting when it came to the specifics. But instead of politely professing ignorance of the minutiae of a particular case, he got a tad salty. Furthermore, those minutiae soon mutated into glaring information bald spots that, perhaps, the fellow should have known about, specially since they involved former chief minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is the current Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly who is in judicial custody (the first since Wali Khan was opposition leader; history hasn’t judged that particular incarceration well.)

    When he became evasive and unnecessarily toxic, Khanzada let it rip. He mentioned his fake degree case. A sucker-punched Saleem said that this wasn’t the topic of the conversation. Well, you weren’t answering questions pertaining to the topic under discussion anyway and then went on to cite reports by The News correspondent Waseem Abbasi. This Abbasi fellow has admitted his reports were wrong, has personally apologised to me and told me he was working under pressure, Saleem responded. Instead of letting it go, Khanzada’s producers immediately took Abbasi on the line, who went on to categorically deny what the DG was saying.

    Such a miserable trainwreck the program was that the Chairman NAB immediately put a stop to Shehzad Saleem’s appearances on television talk shows. The damage, however, seems to have been done.

     

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    We have seen a string of layoffs from the mainstream news media recently. Now, yes, there is a financial crunch in the sector at the moment. Government ads have shrivelled down and those contribute a substantial proportion of revenue. Furthermore, advertisers have also slowed down, with some allegedly being told by the powers-that-be about where to advertise.

    The considerations can’t be financial-only because those being laid off are almost entirely individuals with an anti-establishment bent of mind. Matiullah Jan, Nusrat Javeed and now Talat Hussein, who has left on his own, not laid off. Be that as it may, the fiscal aspect should still not be ignored. Channel overheads are huge, with some of the budgeting practices begging for an overhaul. Bol, not quite an anti-establishment channel (to say the least) dragged it employees’ salaries so much that they barged into the newsroom and commandeered it, demanding for their dues.

    Whereas the park-and-bark anchors should be paid lesser than what they’re getting, it would be wise not to lower the budget of shows like Shahzeb Khanzada. Yes, the man has his wits about him when doing a show but it is his research team that makes him so informed and well-prepped. There’s a lot that goes into a program like that; those corners should not be cut. Our news media landscape would be all the poorer for it.