Pakistan's Geo TV Rapidly Losing Viewers and Advertisers
Geo TV has lost 80% of its viewers and billions of rupees in advertising revenue since it accused Pakistan's ISI of attempting to assassinate its anchor Hamid Mir last April, according to credible reports in the mainstream media.
Pakistan's once most-watched cable-satellite television channel Geo, with the country's largest newsgathering network, has lost more than 80% of its viewers in less than a month, according to the BBC. In addition to Geo News channel, major cable operators across the country have blocked transmission of all other channels of the group, including Geo Super, Geo Tez, Geo Kahani and Geo Entertainment.
Among the biggest advertisers, the mobile phone companies accounting for 20% of media spend on Geo group, have pulled their marketing campaigns from Geo Network, including Geo News, Geo Kahani, Geo Super and Geo Entertainment, according to ProPakistan.pk website which covers telecommunications news.
Geo News ranks number 2 and Geo Entertainment ranks 6th among cable-satellite channels in terms of viewers in Pakistan, according to Gallup Pakistan TV ratings data for 2013. Gallup report shows that India's Star Plus tops the list with an average daily viewership of around 12 million Cable and Satellite Viewers during the time period Jan-June (2013). It's followed by PTV Home and Geo News with approximately 8 million average daily Cable and Satellite Viewers.
Terrestrial channels operated by PTV and ATV continue to dominate the overall television viewing in the country. 2010 data from Audiencescapes.org shows PTV Home garnering the highest market share at 46% of all viewers.
Jang Media Group which owns Geo TV channels has been the biggest beneficiary of the 2002 media deregulation ordered by former President Pervez Musharraf. The Jang group is also credited with bringing down the Musharraf government with its heavy coverage of the lawyers movement to restore the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Mr. Munir Malik, one of Mr. Chaudhry's key allies, said in an interview recently that the lawyers movement could not have succeeded without the backing of Geo TV and other media outlets and civil society which grew up during Musharraf years. Jang Group has been facing rising criticism for what the critics call "sensationalism" and "irresponsible" journalism.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Prof Noam Chomsky on Indian Media
Pakistan's Media and Telecom Revolution
Hamid Mir's Ties to Terrorists and Spies
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
Geo TV Under Fire
Muslim Santa Claus Commercializes Ramadan
Wikileaks on Jang Group
Arsalan Iftikhar's Corruption Scandal
Chaudhry is No Angel
Among the biggest advertisers, the mobile phone companies accounting for 20% of media spend on Geo group, have pulled their marketing campaigns from Geo Network, including Geo News, Geo Kahani, Geo Super and Geo Entertainment, according to ProPakistan.pk website which covers telecommunications news.
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| Pakistan's Top 20 TV Cable-Satellite Channels. Source: Gallup Pakistan |
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| Overall TV Ratings 2010. Source: Audiencescapes.org |
Jang Media Group which owns Geo TV channels has been the biggest beneficiary of the 2002 media deregulation ordered by former President Pervez Musharraf. The Jang group is also credited with bringing down the Musharraf government with its heavy coverage of the lawyers movement to restore the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Mr. Munir Malik, one of Mr. Chaudhry's key allies, said in an interview recently that the lawyers movement could not have succeeded without the backing of Geo TV and other media outlets and civil society which grew up during Musharraf years. Jang Group has been facing rising criticism for what the critics call "sensationalism" and "irresponsible" journalism.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Prof Noam Chomsky on Indian Media
Pakistan's Media and Telecom Revolution
Hamid Mir's Ties to Terrorists and Spies
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
Geo TV Under Fire
Muslim Santa Claus Commercializes Ramadan
Wikileaks on Jang Group
Arsalan Iftikhar's Corruption Scandal
Chaudhry is No Angel
Comments
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2017/03/pakistan-geo-tv-ary-news-face-170318120831422.html
Munizae Jahangir: " The Geo-ARY debacle was perceived to be a proxy war between the establishment and the government of Pakistan."
The case failed to draw that much attention but, as 2016 drew to a close, a court in London convicted the owners of ARY News of slander and libel and awarded $3.7m in damages to the plaintiff, Geo TV.
What set this case apart was the fact that a British court was ruling on a squabble between two of the biggest media players in Pakistan.
The very public battle between Geo TV and ARY has been characterised as a low point for the Pakistani news media.
The TV news sector in Pakistan has exploded in size in the 15 years since the days of only one, state-owned domestic channel. But the quality of the journalism often gives way to sensationalism and irresponsible reporting, and, in this case, reckless accusations of blasphemy.
Some see the conflict between Geo and ARY as a kind proxy war for a larger struggle, involving the Pakistani powers that be - over who really controls the country.
The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi reports on a slightly complicated media story that reveals much about politics and power in Pakistan.
"The competition was rooted in how well the channels themselves were performing ... but over time, it morphed into something way more ugly, way more public," says Sadaf Khan, director of programmes, Media Matters for Democracy.
April 2014 marked a turning point in the competition between the two channels.
An attempt on the life of Geo News' most prominent anchor, Hamid Mir, put the journalist and his channel on a collision course with the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI. Mir had reported extensively on the agency and said he was convinced it was behind the attack.
This wasn't the first time the ISI was accused of targeting a journalist.
In 2011, investigative reporter Saleem Shahzad was kidnapped and then found dead in northeast Pakistan. Shahzad had documented three warnings from the ISI, letting him know his work had put him on their radar.
Now, three years later, the Mir case put the lingering issue of alleged rogue operations of the ISI back in the headlines, and ARY waded into the debate.
When ARY backed the ISI, it ostensibly aligned itself with the intelligence community and the military - the Pakistani establishment.
Geo, on the other hand, was seen to be allied with the elected government.
READ MORE: Pakistan's Geo News channel taken off air
"The Geo-ARY debacle was perceived to be a proxy war between the establishment and the government of Pakistan," explains Munizae Jahangir, senior anchor and executive producer, AAJ Television.
ARY News made it personal by accusing Geo TV owner Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman of taking money from Indian intelligence and using it to defame and discredit Pakistan.
Such accusations can get you killed in Pakistan.
"One of the main allegations was that we had run this campaign for peace between India and Pakistan, which was a media-led campaign - The Times of India, and The Jang Group had come together. This was completely an initiative that was funded entirely by ourselves - we had absolutely no funding from any international organisation, let alone intelligence agencies, and, and yet, continuously, documents were waved on the screen," says Geo TV president Imran Aslam.
"The editorial stance taken by our channels on various issues are different ... However, if you work on the behest of any government or you ally yourself with a government, then your journalism is flawed and the Jang and Geo group's output are perfect examples of this," says ARY News host Arshad Sharif.
https://crssblog.com/2017/06/08/why-wikileaks-cables-on-pakistans-nadra-need-serious-attention/
Below is the excerpt from the 2009 Assange-Imran interview, along with the leaked cables mentioning Malik and Gillani.
The interview excerpt:
Imran, we discovered a cable [09ISLAMABAD1642] in 2009 from the Islamabad Embassy. Prime Minister Gilani and Interior Minister Malik went into the embassy and offered to share NADRA – and NADRA is the national data and registration agency database. The system is currently connected through passport data but the government of Pakistan is adding voice and facial recognition capability and has installed a pilot biometric system as the Chennai border crossing, where 30,000 to 35,000 people cross each day. This NADRA system, that is the voting record system for all voters in Pakistan, and a front company was set up in the United Kingdom – International Identity Services, which was hired as the consultants for NADRA to squirrel out the NADRA data for all of Pakistan. What do you think about that? Is that a…? It seems to me that that is a theft of some national treasure of Pakistan, the entire Pakistani database registry of its people.
Excerpt from the leaked Cables:
Both PM Gilani and Interior Minister Malik pointed out that the National Data Registration Agency (NADRA) already collects a wide spectrum of information on Pakistani citizens, from driving records to DNA. Malik offered to share NADRA-generated information on Pakistani citizens, within the constraints imposed by privacy concerns. NADRA is at the heart of what the GOP intends to be an integrated border management system, Malik said, and suggested that API/PNR sharing could be a subset of this larger system. The system is currently connected through passport data, but the GOP is adding voice and facial recognition capability and has installed a pilot biometrics system at the Chaman border crossing, where 30-35,000 people cross each day. Reiterating that he welcomed both USG assistance and the arrival of a DHS team to discuss PNR, Malik agreed to set up a joint U.S.-Pakistan task force to work out a way forward.
(S//NF) Comment: The Secretary’s visit was an essential and well-received step to rebuild the trust between DHS and the GOP that will be necessary to reach an eventual deal on API/PNR. GOP officials are clearly concerned about the political fallout if any deal to share API/PNR data became public. Malik was direct in expressing his need for model agreements or other legal frameworks to help allay concerns of a politically embarrassing court challenge to API/PNR data sharing and the potential issues with airlines of third countries. While this information will no doubt be helpful, Post strongly recommends further political-level bridge building before we can effectively engage at the technical level. On senior officials’ broad requests for more assistance on border security, we caution that the openness we regularly see in high-level meetings is often not followed through at the institutional level. Post will work with DHS, State, and DoD (all of whom are already working on border security and training issues) to target DHS assistance clearly so as to complement our existing security and training programs. End Comment.
3-8-2
John Swinton: Yes, he said it, but...
http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty_four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
https://noam-chomsky.tumblr.com/post/13867896307/noam-chomsky-10-strategies-of-manipulation-by
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/utterly-unaccountable-turnbull-labels-news-corp-the-most-powerful-political-actor-in-australia-20210412-p57idq.html
Giving evidence by video link, Mr Turnbull said the Murdoch media business had evolved into a powerful political force that, unlike political parties, was unaccountable to the Australian public.
“This is the fundamental problem that we’re facing: the most powerful political actor in Australia is not the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Labor Party. It is News Corp. And it’s utterly unaccountable,” Mr Turnbull said. “It’s controlled by an American family and their interests are no longer, if they ever were, coextensive with our own.”
Mr Turnbull, a Liberal, has joined former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd as a strident critic of News Corp and has backed his push for a royal commission into the influence of the Murdoch empire on the Australian media and political landscape. The media diversity inquiry, which is examining issues of media concentration in Australia, was established by the Senate after more than 500,000 people signed a petition by Mr Rudd voicing those concerns.
In his evidence to the inquiry in February, Mr Rudd said News Corp used systematic character assassinations to cultivate a culture of fear among politicians and engaged in campaign journalism against issues such as action on climate change.
At the same public hearing, News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller dismissed Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull’s criticisms as “a convenient diversion from their own failings” during his evidence. News Corp executive Campbell Reid gave evidence the company was “professional, accountable media” that operated in the Australian landscape “with an extraordinary degree of both government, and indeed regulatory, oversight and legal oversight if we get things wrong”.
“Our editing process – for all professional media – is high stakes because we can be charged with contempt of court, our journalists can be threatened with jail, we can be taken to the Press Council, and we can be held up to scrutiny by other organisations, which is completely different to the misinformation industry that is perpetuated by and is a driver of, frankly, profit online,” Mr Campbell told the inquiry in February.
Mr Turnbull echoed many of Mr Rudd’s concerns, saying he had experienced “bullying and standover tactics” from News Corp when he served in the Parliament.