16 questions for credible journalism

In 2012, I attended an online course on covering politics and religion by the ICFJAnywhere. It was a riveting experience. 

Course instructor Stephen Franklin would lead the participants in engaging discussions. 

I learned so many valuable things regarding covering religion for peace. During the course, Stephen shared a list of questions, which reporters and subeditors might ask themselves as they work.  

Journalists should raise these questions while filing/subbing a story.

 What do I know? What do I need to know?

1.      What is the meaning of this story?

2.      What questions am I answering here?

3.      Can I explain why this is important?

4.      What is the context of this story?

5.      What is the broader picture, the larger meaning, the reason that this has deeper roots than the people and events I encounter?

6.      How can I explain this precisely and simply?

7.      Do I lack any information or sources? Do I have a plan to get this information? What questions can’t I answer?

8.      How can I include other people with other points of view?

9.      Who are the people affected by this story and how will this story – this situation – affect them?

10. What is likely to happen as a result of my story?

11. Can I rely upon the information that I have received from my sources? How can I check their reliability?

12. Can I confirm the source’s information through government or business records?

13. Can I contact other persons to confirm this story?

14. Do I need to talk to an expert on this topic so I understand it fully? Do I have a list of experts and sources on hand? How broad is this list? Who do I need to add to it?

15. What information do I need to follow up tomorrow, next week, next month?

16. What have I learned from this reporting (or subbing) experience?

How Pakistani media killed Dina Wadia's visit to Lahore?

Dina Wadia, the only child of the Quaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is no more. 

When she visited Pakistan in March 2004, I was then working with The Nation.

She was visiting Pakistan with her son and grandsons on the invitation of the Cricket Control Board chairman Shahryar Khan to watch a cricket match between India and Pakistan. 

I vividly remember that the next day, March 25, I frantically skimmed all the newspapers trying to find any news story related to her. 

There were no hard stories. There were no soft stories about her visit. 

All papers just carried a formal news that "Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's daughter, Dina Wadia, says she is happy to have come to Pakistan, adding that the only purpose of the visit is to watch and enjoy cricket".

Like her father, with a withdrawn personality, she was reluctant to speak to the media. 

Had she spoken to the media, newshounds would have dragged her into typical Indo-Pak relations and "what-do-you-think-about-Pakistan" type questions.

I was dismayed as no paper had tried to find any soft story regarding Dina's stay in Lahore. 

Pictures are doing the rounds on the Internet where Dina is seen sitting by then chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and standing by social celebrity Yousuf Salahuddin.

These gentlemen can narrate their time spent with the only child of the founder of Pakistan. 

Shehryar Khan and the family of Ardesher Cowasjee, who hosted Dina in Karachi, could be other useful sources.

The great opportunity was wasted then. 

The great opportunity know something about the reclusive daughter of Jinnah, has been wasted at the time of her death. 

Her obituary, carried in all newspapers, has the same oft-repeated things. 

No newspaper has so far brought the stories of her visit to Lahore and Karachi in 2004. 

Hacks are too lazy to hound people for human interest stories. 

Wonderful stories will remain untold and fade soon; the memory of Yousuf Salahuddin, Pervaiz Elahi and Shehryar Khan and so many other people, who met Dina Wadia, who spoke to her, who spent some hours with her, is bound to fade.  

The whole nation is at the height of emotion at the demise of the daughter of the founder of Pakistan. At the age of 98 years, she passed away in New York peacefully leaving behind no controversy, which could harm the reputation of her father or interests of Pakistan. 

Apart from her estrangement with her father over her marriage to a non-Muslim, against the wish of her father, she spent a clean life. 

She is survived by her son Nuslie Wadia and grandchildren Ness and Jehangir.

Dina was the product of a broken family and two opposites. Her father was the undisputed leader of the Muslims of the Subcontinent, a man of strong character and withdrawn in his private life, whereas her mother, Ruttie, belonged to an influential Parsi family of Bombay. She revolted against her family tradition to marry a Muslim man. She converted to Islam and married 41-year-old Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the age of 16 or 17 in 1917. Dina was born on 15 August 1919 in London. No several historical accounts are available to illustrate Muhammad Ali Jinnah-Ruttie married life, but the couple lacked compatibility due to age and cultural differences. 

Dina was initially raised by her aunt Fatima Jinnah, after her mother Ruttie died at the age of 29. Later, Muhammad Ali Jinnah allowed Dina’s grandmother, Dinabai Petit, to raise his daughter. Dina Waddi was named after her grandmother. Too much exposure to a largely Parsi milieu and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s preoccupation with Muslims’ cause had outfalls.

Strong-willed Muhammad Ali Jinnah got shocked when 17-year-old Dina broke the news of her plans to marry Neville Wadia, the scion of an equally illustrious Parsi family of Bombay. Jinnah’s one-time junior, the late Justice Mahommed Currim Chagla is witness to a conversation between the visibly perturbed father and the defiant daughter.Muhammad Ali Jinnah chided Dina and reminded her that “there are millions of Muslim boys in India and you can have anyone you chose”. Dina replied, “Father, there were millions of Muslim girls in India. Why did you not marry one of them?” Muhammad Ali Jinnah justified his marriage, saying she had converted to Islam before marriage. 

Dina remained firmed. She went ahead with her plans and married Neille Wadia. After her marriage, aloofness between the father and the daughter increased and Muhammad Ali Jinnah would address her Mrs Wadia. 

The estrangement was once broken when, according to Dina Wadia, her father phoned and invited her to Bombay in 1946. She took her daughter Diana (five) and Nussli (two). Despite his pressing engagements, Muhammad Ali Jinnah had not forgotten to buy presents for his daughter and her children. The meeting ended on a pleasant note when the grandfather gifted his cap, which bears his name, to Nuslie. 

His affection for Dina can be witnessed from the fact he had deposited Rs200,000 in the Habib Bank Limited and willed to give a monthly stipend to his daughter. 

Dina Wadia visited Pakistan twice: once in 1948 to attend the funeral of her father, and again in 2004 to visit his mausoleum and birthplace. The visit was kept private. 

She spent a quiet, far from media and publicity galore life. Given oft-erupting controversies between India and Pakistan, Dina Wadia kept herself away from politics. She protected the legacy of her father. She fought for the custody of her father’s mansion in Bombay. 

These are things, which we all know. 

We have known these things for years. 

Why not telling the untold stories?  

Watch out: smog is here!

Not long ago, the winter weather (or at least mild winter) would set in by the first week of November.

Now, it is the first week of November, and still, no one is seen wearing warm clothes.

For the last two years, the Punjab areas have been deprived of charming dusk hours of November.

It is smog.

Every day, layers of smog descend upon cities and plains preventing sunshine reaching the earth.

Smog.

Smog, a relatively new phenomenon in Lahore and other parts of Punjab, is the polluted crop, which we are reaping for uncontrolled and unplanned industrialisation and lack of environment-friendly measures.

Earlier, in every December, thick layers of fog would blanket the horizon making the visibility rate too poor to drive on Motorway and land at the Lahore Airport.

But smog, a major health hazard, is something else: the choking layer is smoke, a mixture of polluted air and water vapor in the atmosphere. Unlike fog, which descends upon plains and cities by the evening, the greyish smog falls in the daytime and refuses to vanish till midnight.

With smog have come health advisories: people need to remain indoors, avoiding unnecessary exposure to the air; people need to cover their eyes, nose, and ears or they can suffer irritation; people need to increase liquid intakes to avid respiratory ailments. Children, senior citizens and those suffering from lung and heart ailments need extra preventive measures. In short, smog can harm human health to a great degree.

Prevention is better than cure; besides following preventive measures, the public at large should press the government to awake to the situation arising from environmental issues and make the environment a major priority. Preventive measures could have averted the rise of smog.

Still, it is better late than never.

The government needs to look into factors contributing towards the smog phenomena. The choking smoke stems from traffic emission and industrial fumes that cause smog when they interact with sunlight and water vapors. The government blames the wisps of smoke rising from the burning stubbles in Punjab farms for smog. This is a great miscalculation. For decades, the farmers have been burning stubble at the end of every crop season; now the smokes billowing from farms have just aggravated the smog levels. Several cities, far from agriculture farms, such as Los Angeles, Beijing, Mexico City and Tehran, have also been invaded by smog.

Once the core issue is detected, the government should come up with preventive measures. One such effective measure can be banning cars on certain days in cities to lower the level of smoke emission. The government can introduce laws to discourage the use of old cars and other over ten years old vehicles. The industrial units emitting more carbon and smoke should be fined or sealed. The use of machinery and vehicles using diesel should heavily be taxed because they also release emissions which pollute the environment.

Toxic fuel emitting generators have become a must part of every factory and shop. That speaks volume of the power shortage issue. The government has commissioned coal-fired power units across Pakistan, and one such power plant is already functioning in Sahiwal. The plant should close if research finds it harming the health of air quality.

Lately, the media has been reporting that the Punjab government is going to introduce a smog policy. That is a welcome development but the public at large should also chip in their share to change their approach towards the environment.

As it is smog everywhere, it should be everyone’s issue.

Fall of MQM-P wickets - realities, implications

It has become an established method: reports of certain cases implicating a member of assembly belonging to the Farooq Sattar-led Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), also known as the MQM-Pakistan or MQM-P, appear in the media.

After a couple of appearance before Rangers or other law enforcement agencies, mandated with probing into criminal charges, the member in question, one day calls a press conference.

Leaders of the Mustafa Kamal-led Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), flank the member in question.

At the press conference, the member in question announces defection to the PSP, vows to fight corruption and work for peace in Karachi, and tenders resignation from the assembly. The defector is soon declared innocent by the probing authorities and the life goes on.

The MQM leaders’ defections to the PSP has, so far, failed to crack the MQP-P as barring two, all the seats vacated by defectors, were reclaimed by the MQM.

The PSP, on the other hand, shows no interest in bye-elections and keeps on accumulating the prized defectors.

The latest defection, however, changed the pattern.

On last Sunday, Karachi Deputy Mayor Arshad Vohra quit the MQM-P and joined the PSP without tendering resignation from the seat. It seems the previous pattern of defectors’ resignation from the assembly fired back as the MQM-P always emerged victorious in bye-elections.

Now, the defectors will stay in the party trying to create more defectors.

Arshad Vohra, once a diehard MQM-P leader, says the MQM-P has so many groups within because of leadership and vision crises. He refused to offer his resignation from the seat, challenging his former party to bring a no-confidence move to de-seat him.

He also said the MQM-P had failed to meet its promises made to the people during the elections. It is a matter of weeks, if not days, when charges of money laundering against Arshad Vohra will be dropped.

Not a bad bargain, at all.

It is time for the MQM-P to say ‘enough is enough’.

Sensing the pattern and hidden hands behind the defection, Farooq Sattar has threatened en masse resignations of its legislators from the national and Sindh assemblies if more of its lawmakers switched sides. He says despite their policy to part ways from party founder, Altaf Hussain, it seems the party has not been forgiven.

Hands are still working to oust the party from the mainstream politics.  

Without any dispute, Farooq Sattar is pointing fingers at the establishment, which has long been their partner in the Karachi politics. Army dictator Zialu Haq had first patronised the party, then known as the Muhajir Qaumi Movement in the 80s, only to weaken the Pakistan People’s Party.

The party, however, later followed the extra script, annoying the establishment. Since its inception, it has gone through many low times, but every time emerging stronger after crises. The establishment had created the MQM-Haqiqi to weaken the MQM, but it failed to inspire the urban population of Sindh.

The last operation, by Rangers and Sindh police, however, has broken the armed wings of the party. Altaf Husain faces speech ban, which is working well.

The ongoing fragmentation of the MQM, under the establishment, will only strengthen pro-Altaf Hussain factions, which are at the moment working for the right time to strike back.

The best course for the establishment is not to muddy the politics of Karachi with its constant interference and let the people decide about their representative.

People’s choice is the best choice.  

Forced marriage, poisonous lassi - lessons from mass deaths of Muzaffargarh village

Tears, sobs, cries.

The serene silence of the hamlet of Lashariwala, a riverside locality in Muzaffargarh, is often broken with sobs and frenetic cries whenever an ambulance arrives there.

By the time, this blog is being written, 16 ambulances have arrived in the village time to time since October 24 to deliver coffins.

The village has buried 16 people of the family of Akram Lashari, a small-time farmer of the locality, since October 24. The deceased include Akram Lashari, his sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters and other close relatives.

The 19-member family lived together in a small house.

Of them, 16 died together.  

Of them, one deceased is Amjad Lashari. The young man had married his cousin 45 days ago.

The whole death saga originates in this marriage.

On the fateful afternoon of October 24, the whole family sat for the lunch.

That’s how joint families work: they live together, sleep and rise together, and eat and work together.

During lunch, they drank lassi, which had been spiked with poison, by none other than the newly-wed daughter-in-law of the family, who avenged, what she says, her marriage with her cousin, Amjad, against her will.

Just 45 days into marriage, bride Asia Bibi had tried to break the knot through creating disturbance and constant bickering with her in-laws and showing the lack of compatibility with her life partner.

When these antics failed to get her resentment noticed by her family, she, with the help of her boyfriend, planned to kill her husband. She offered her the milk laced with rat killing pills on the eve of October 24. He refused. 

The heartless bride later went ahead with her revenge and poured the toxic milk into the curd pot. The next day when the family of Akram Lashari, her father-in-law, sat for a humble, simple lunch, they galloped lassi without knowing that they were taking their last meal.

They fell unconscious one by one; soon they were transported to the nearby Rajanpur District Headquarters Hospital after crossing the mighty Indus on boats. Viewing their life-threatening condition, the hospital referred them to better equipped Nishtar Hospital in Multan and the Dera Ghazi Khan Teaching Hospital. Of the 19 people hospitalised, 14 have died, while five others are fighting for life. We wish the survivors a speedy recovery and offer them heartfelt condolence over mass deaths.

Life will never be the same for the whole helmet.

The hard-hearted bride, who committed the deadly act and has confessed to doing it, does not deserve any sympathy. She is behind bars, and should remain there forever for this world is better off without such bilious people.

The incident, however, should be made a test case so that mass deaths do not happen in the future.

The first and the foremost is that the scourge of forced marriage should be addressed by social scientists, policymakers, and families. The institution of marriage suffers from a number of burning issues, such as cousin marriage, marriage under the exchange of hands or watta satta, marriage for dowry, underage marriage, and forced marriage. These practices have ruined many lives resulting in deaths, suicides, broken families, disturbed children and so on.

 Marriage counselling has yet to take root in our society.

 These practices may not go away overnight but at least these issues should come under discussions so that the public at large is sensitised about the sanctity of the marriage institution.

Another issue that should not go unnoticed is the easy availability of poison in the open market. A few weeks ago, the media reported the Multan division administration had banned the sale and purchase of kala pathar or paraphenylenediamine after reports that the chemical substance was widely being used in suicide and murder cases. Alone in the Nishtar Hospital emergency ward, 594 people were treated from January to July 2017 for treatment after they drank liquid spiked with the chemical. Besides the Nishtar Hospital, another major health facility in the region, the Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur, received 109 people from January to March 10, 2016.

 A few of them survived the poison attack.

The mass deaths of the Lashariwala hamlet should be used as an opportunity to question tribal and obsolete customs regarding marriage and the trade of poison should be regulated.

No unstable, revengeful person should be allowed to buy the substance.

These measures would serve justice on the deceased and the survivors.  

Come, fly with ailing PIA

By the time, you are reading this blog, the last Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Lahore to New York has taken off.

Yes, the last flight. 

After this no more direct PIA flight to New York.

Reason? 

Losses.

Why losses? 

Bad service. 

The national flag carrier has been flying low for years with no immediate successful landing in sight.

The recent development is that the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet is set to inject a whopping Rs13 billion bailout package to the state-owned enterprises, and most of the cheque will be consumed by loans and liabilities, which stand at Rs300 billion altogether. Besides frequent bailout packages, the airline is also allocated a large sum of money in the federal budget and every time, payments are delivered with an optimistic approach that the monetary injection would be helpful to boost the affairs of the airlines. 

Some chronic ills have been plaguing the PIA for decades, which should have been detected and cured years ago. 

It seems no political will and poor policy making are the other issues, which hinder the successful take-off of the PIA.

Years after years, the airline with 18,000 plus employee and a few dozen aeroplanes has only been adding billions to its loss sheets. In 2016, it posted a Rs45 billion net loss; in 2015 the loss stood at Rs33 billion. 

Figures are enough to prove the point that the airline has never been in the recovery process. 

This is perhaps an aeroplane, virtually held hostage by a strong 18,000 squad, which is hell-bent on crashing it.

Before the bailout package, the national flag carrier was in news for the shameful disappearance of an active aeroplane. For weeks or even months, no one was even aware of or bothered about, the missing plane, until some whistleblowers informed the opposition Senate members. When the issue was taken up in the Senate committee, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmad came up with a mind-blowing claim that former acting chief executive officer of the airline, Bernd Hildenbrand (a German national), had flown the plane home while leaving Pakistan. This speaks volume about the affairs of the airline. 

An aeroplane takes off from a Pakistani airport and no one is bothered about the procedures and protocols of flights. 

The government came up with a solution to find the missing plane: “We have formed a committee to probe the matter...” 

Now, we are told the structure of the plane is telling the tales of mess and chaos of Pakistan in a German museum. The good news, the government has offered so far is, that the engine of the plane will be brought back to Pakistan.

Once a pride of the nation for its good quality service, the PIA can be cured and put to higher skies only if the government shows seriousness to relieve taxpayers of the responsibility to bankroll the defaulting enterprises. 

First, a team of dedicated experts should be posted to the top posts. The team should be given a full autonomy to run its operations. If left to the team, hopefully, unproductive employees will be laid off. At this point, the government will have to show a strong will and resolve to stand by the management as often the PIA union resists layoffs. 

True, workers have right to earn, but the government or the PIA management can employ them in some other useful ventures. 

Once the airline has right people at the right place, things like service delivery, efficiency and innovation will be on the team’s mind and with that, a successful take off the airline will be in sight.

Friend requests, unfriend and block options

Before the age of Facebook, I never thought I would go to someone with a ‘friend request’.

I have so many friends. We befriended without any friend request to each.

I made friends in school, college, university, workplace, conferences, workshops, weddings and so on.

How I’ve been making friends all along?

Not a complex method.

In life, we come across the people. We talk to each other. We exchange numbers. And we leave.

After some time, we again meet. We talk. And we leave.

Then we realise, well, we are friends.

Then comes Facebook.

Friend requests. Accept or delete.

Then there is an amazing option of ‘unfriend’.

How many times, in real life, I have used this ‘unfriend’ option?

Very rarely. Sometimes an altercation ends in anger. The friendship is compromised.

I just checked my Facebook page and learned that I’d 4,225 friends, 1,772 followers and 999 friend requests pending.

I am not a celebrity or a popular blogger or a famous byline-maker.

A floodgate of friend requests opened after my Facebook friend Rehan Allahwala announced two years ago that he would gift laptop to those reaching 500 common friends with him.

Since then, he has given away so many laptops.

I would qualify for the laptop if I accept all the pending friend request.

No. I will not.

It is not that they are not nice people.

In fact, I have so many friends, all nice people, who I first met on Facebook, and then in real life.

Rehan Allahwala is one of them.

I have just stopped accepting friend requests for I want to have more and more journalists in my Facebook circle.  

I never gave a double thought to friend requests until came the issue of a friend request by a doctor to the sister of Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy.

Yes, the one Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Image: Courtsy http://raddipaper.pk/index.php/2017/10/24/sharmeed-obaid-thinks-adding-facebook-harassment/

In the age of social media, new situations are emerging, hence new rules.

Recently, her sister went to the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) emergency ward for treatment. When she returned home and logged on her Facebook account, a friend request from the doctor who had examined her had landed in her account.

Outraged, Chinoy turned to her Twitter handle, calling it ‘zero boundaries in #pakistan!’

“I don’t understand how doctor tending to emergency patients thinks it is OK to take a female patient info and add her on FB!,” she thundered.

“Unfortunately, the doctor messed with wrong women in the wrong family and I will definitely report him! Harassment has 2 stop,” she warned.   

The doctor has lost the job, we are told.

Does a friend request to a woman is tantamount to harass her?

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

In this case, the interaction between the doctor and the sister took place at a wrong place.  The relation between a doctor and a patient requires certain ethics to follow.  

Doctor friend Zulfiqar Ali (a Facebook friend) working in the US, supports Chinoy: “Yes she is right. Doctors are not supposed to send such requests. Also not at all disclose the identity of your patients. You do not even confirm if someone is your patient or not. In the USA, every state has own rules about having personal relations with patients. In Wisconsin, doctors are not supposed to have personal relations until two years after one is your patient. But rules for confidentiality are essentially forever unless one gets sued or one has written permission”.

Many think the doctor, who had no harassment record, was given a harsh punishment. 

Does a friend request to a woman mean harassment? 

Should an unethical friend request cost one their job? 

Unprofessional norms by doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalist and other professionals dealing with delicate information often go untreated. Professional bodies also show leniency to their colleagues caught breaching ethical rules. Here the issue of misuse of data and social media warrant the formation of the code of conduct and their strict enforcement.

In the West, several journalists have lost jobs for their biased, tilted tweets or Facebook posts. 

In Pakistan, journalists fight their political, ideological wars on Twitter and are never punished for such brazen shows of partiality. 

A journalist’s most precious asset is their credibility. If their credibility is gone, nothing is left.

Coming back to doctor's issue, I think the doctor should be served on notice and if he repeats the offense, he should be paid dearly. 

Meanwhile, women should use ‘Delete Request’ option judiciously and frequently whenever they receive any request from some stranger or unwanted person.

Let me revisit my Facebook friends list.

I have noticed some morons in my circle support IS, Daesh, Mumtaz Qadri and Taliban.

Let me click the ‘block’ option for them.