– Becoming a bigger brand than The Dependent
Pemra has issued a warning to the nation’s news media outfits, asking them to exercise caution when indulging in political satire.
This is just a friendly suggestion, just the tone with which the MQM – now down on its luck – used to remark to anda burger stall-owners how nice their little outlet was and how it would be a shame were something to happen to it were they not to pay their haftaon time.
Now, though it could be a cause for concern, we at Pakistan’s Paper of Record, have a clear trajectory that is going to circumvent getting into trouble with the emerging Ministry of Truth. You see, the proportion of stories our Not The Dependent brand is doing is gradually increasing. We predict it will cross The Dependent’s stories sometime in the near future. And then, these stories are going to vastly outnumber those by The Dependent. Soon, The Dependent’s stories are going to be an ‘also featured’, the way Not The Dependent stories are in the print edition. There already are way too many Not The Dependent stories; we only select a few.
So it won’t be satire that we will be doing, but merely reporting what would have happened. But this is also going to pose a problem. Because merely reporting what happened is also hazardous activity. Journalism is besieged.
Fashion journalism, however, would be the only free space left in the country. Unfortunately, that space will also shrink with the upcoming launch of Askari Pret.
