The whole scoop
ON a few people’s recommendations I watched the Netflix show Scoop about an Indian journalist Jagruti Pathak’s quest for front page stories and how, in that chase, she gets embroiled…
Role reversal
IN July I had the good fortune of watching a cinema screening of Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s one-woman play starring Jodie Comer, in London. During the lockdown in the UK…
Hanging by a thread
THE recent contentious exchanges witnessed in influential political and military circles call for serious introspection. Has there been a breach in the blatantly enforced code of silence? The events of…
Modern slavery?
ON April 16, 2022, a teenager in Karachi stepped out of her home early in the morning to throw garbage in the public bin nearby. She never returned home that…
None of the above
FELLOW Gen X readers may remember the 1985 movie Brewster’s Millions where (short version) a baseball player, played by Richard Pryor, has to spend $30 million in a month in…
PTI’s moment of truth?
PTI LEADER Imran Khan, it seems, has now very few cards up his sleeve and will face his moment of truth once he announces his long march date, as the…
Heal the press
WHEN I was employed at this newspaper and working on these pages in the mid-2000s, a colleague and I would call each other following a violent incident in the city…
An attempt at lucidity
THERE was a time when means of information were few and far between. Specifically, more or less sanitised newspapers in the morning and then the evening/dawn BBC Urdu broadcasts, bringing some real…
The bigger picture
I WAS reminded of Neil Postman, one of the most important communication theorists, media and culture commentators of modern time, while watching the talented broadcast journalist S. Muzammil Shah on…
‘You’re a disgrace, PTA’
THERE’S a certain amount of heartache that’s intrinsic to living in a place like Pakistan. If you’re paying any attention, you’ll see decisions so self-defeating as to be psychotic. You’ll…
