Sting journalism will always stir up a debate within the journalist community. That’s just the way it is, the world over. Practitioners of the craft themselves are aware of this.
So the furor that ARY’s Iqrar-ul-Hassan kicked off when he smuggled a weapon inside the visitors’ gallery of the Sindh Assembly should have been expected by anyone who might have known about it beforehand.
Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani immediately had him arrested amid a ruckus in the house. Hassan and his journalist associate, the man who actually had the weapon on his person, were detained later at a police station. They were subsequently released after a media campaign to the effect, while social media was also abuzz with #istandwithiqrar.
The assembly secretariat, of course, had egg on its face. Regardless of what one might think about the role of journalists, the assembly’s security was demonstrably weak. The directives of the speaker, therefore, were construed as a punishment to the brave journalists who had exposed him and his staff. Though there might be a measure of truth in that assessment, from a strictly legal point of view, the assembly officials were well within their legal right to do so. In fact, they were doing just the exact thing that they have been accused of not doing: meticulously enforcing the letter of the law.
This is the second time that Iqrar-ul-Hassan finds himself in a somewhat identical situation. He had earlier used the Pakistan Railways freight services to transport weapons from Lahore to Karachi. Even back then, though the department itself was embarrassed about this proof-of-concept being broadcast on TV, Railways Minister Saad Rafique and IG railways police talked about how the law was violated, even if the greater public interest was kept in mind.
Dawn News’s nice-but-overrated program Zara Hutt Ke first ran an episode on the incident and then another one in which Iqrar-ul-Hassan came in to defend himself.
Wusutullah Khan and Mubashir Zaidi, otherwise sensible pundits, didn’t really argue their case well, which was otherwise strong. The smooth-talking Iqrar-ul-Hassan, on the other hand, defended himself well, having cut his teeth at perhaps the best college debating society in the country, Govt College, Lahore.
Consider, for instance, Wusutullah Khan’s point that Iqrar managed to smuggle in the weapon because he was a known face, and had leveraged that influence to avoid being checked by the guards. Well, first of all, it was his associate that had smuggled the video in, not himself and a video that he had brought in proved that. Secondly, even if that were the case, it would have still proved the point that Iqrar-ul-Hassan had set out to make.
The journalists shouldn’t be the news, said Mubashir Zaidi, and that there should be some lead that they should follow up on. Wusutullah said that examples of sting journalism in the west should be looked at; he specifically referenced the one that busted the trio of Pakistani cricketers. Well, what qualitative difference, specifically, have they identified between that one and his one? If they aren’t on the other side of the debate and are against sting journalism to begin with, then how are these different?
The celebrated Tehelka case in India, where sting journalists lured in a serving army officer into taking a bribe for a procurement deal and recording it, could be an example. Should the journalists be arrested for attempting to bribe a servant of the state?
There is a strong case for thanking Iqrar for exposing the weaknesses in the system and arresting him nevertheless. He broke the law. Isn’t justice supposed to be blind? The Pakistani judiciary has given its share of outrageously populist judgments, so it would be interesting to see the text of the judgment they would have given in this particular case, had it come to them.
We have to keep in mind that there are scores upon scores of newspaper and magazine declarations registered in the country. Some of them aren’t being published, some are but with very limited print runs. Some of the latter make money only through greasing the palms of clerical staff in the information departments. Some are available for free but in small, everyone-knows-everybody local markets and eke out a living through dubious tactics; yes, the stereotype of the blackmailing reporter is true, for a number of cases.
Then there are the channels. They might be lesser in number than their print cousins but still larger in number than you think. And this number does not include the hyperlocal cable channels.
And we haven’t talked about web-only outfits. Now that we have established that there is a huge number of news organisations, we should also note that they would have a lot of employees, some of them, only “honourary.” The ones in the districts are almost exclusively “honourary.” As a journalist myself, it shames me to say this, but this is a gallery of rogues that we’re talking about. Yes, some of them would be in for serious journalism, but the rest aren’t in it for the noble cause of the truth.
Would they be telling the police every time they are caught smuggling drugs that it was a sting operation that they were conducting; a flash of the press card, followed by a flash of the grin?
Caveat: on the other hand, if the letter of the law was to be followed, we might not have a lot of journalism to begin with. To get meaningful stuff, you have to colour out of the lines a little. Some years ago, a CNN team in Pakistan had filed a story on bonded labour in the Punjab. The international broadcaster’s S&P department (Standards and Protocols) back in Atlanta threw a fit. Why were you trespassing on someone else’s (the brick kiln owner’s) property? What happens when they sue us?
If proper protocols prevent even bonded labour stories, which are already “broken news” from being filed, what hope do the really hard-hitting ones have? Nearly all the journalists who have done something worthwhile have done it by being somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. And then by filing stories that defy state institutions whose respect was enshrined in the constitution of their countries.
If you dot your Is and cross your Ts, all you’re going to end up with would be correct grammar.
Regardless of how one slices it, the Iqrar-ul-Hassan case is problematic. If you’ve completely made up your mind either way, you haven’t thought about it enough.
