Beware, slanderers!
Thus spake Britain’s respected newspaper, The Guardian: “A libel victory in a British court has posed a major challenge to the bare-knuckle style of Pakistani television channels that specialise in wild attacks on public figures, often at the behest of the country’s intelligence agencies. Earlier this month Mir Shakil ur Rahman, a Dubai-based media tycoon who owns the Jang newspaper group and Geo television, won a significant victory against ARY, which like most other Pakistani television stations is answerable to British courts because it rebroadcasts in the UK.
The court found ARY guilty of making 24 separate defamatory claims against Rahman and ordered the channel to pay damages of £185,000. When costs are included ARY’s total bill is thought to be almost £3m … ARY is also being sued in the UK by Mian Muhammad Mansha, a banking tycoon said to be one of Pakistan’s richest men, after the channel accused him of fraud. Ofcom, the British media regulator, is also emerging as a forum for Pakistanis to complain about how they are treated by their own media. In November the watchdog ruled in favour of Chaudhry Barjees Tahir, a government minister, who complained he had been unfairly treated by ARY when a programme accused him of corruption. Ofcom also ruled in favour of the father of Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel prize-winning education activist who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012. The regulator said ARY had treated Ziauddin Yousafzai unfairly by not giving him an opportunity to respond to a programme featuring guests who alleged he had committed blasphemy and was a traitor ‘against Pakistan, its ideology, its very existence’. Yousafzai has now launched a legal case for damages against ARY … In court ARY did not attempt to defend any of the lurid claims it had made against Rahman as true … ‘Unfortunately, these kinds of wild allegations are very popular’, (said an independent journalist). ‘But the irresponsible remarks by some anchors have stirred up extremists and can literally put people’s lives in danger’.”