United Nations (UN) has accepted the request of Pakistan and has started probe into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The journalists should form a Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA) with whom it would be easier for the government to negotiate.
Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) would ensure that any television channel, seeking a license, had enough financial capacity to afford its employment expenses on sustainable basis. This was stated by Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman, while addressing the media persons during "Meet The Press" at Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Wednesday.
Urging the need to show patience, the federal minister said Benazir was an internationally recognised leader and her murder would be probed at a global forum, like UN. In this regard, she said Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had provided details to the international organisation.
Vowing to root out terrorists, their financiers and supporters from Pakistan, the PPP leader said, "Everything would be exposed on its appropriate time." Deploring the ongoing termination of journalists from various channels, Sherry Rehman said her government was in talks with the broadcaster association and some important decisions, favourable to the journalists and working class as per PPP's manifesto, would be taken in a tripartite meeting next week. Terming the television channels a new industry, the federal minister urged the media, particularly electronic media that, she said, had an important role in the moulding public opinion, to take self-regulatory measures on PFUJ level. "A code of conduct with the addition of peace", as aptly proposed by one of the Dawn's columnists, would really be helpful, the information minister said.
Stressing the need for promoting responsible journalism and keeping of national interest on priority, Sherry Rehman said some anti-democratic forces at home and abroad were conspiring to destabilise the newly elected democratic government that had been achieved by PPP after valuable sacrifices.
To a query about the ongoing military action, she clarified, saying "But military operation is opted only in case of a direct challenge to the government's writ,". She also reiterated her government's determination to establish writ of the government in those areas, where some anti-state elements had replaced the Pakistani flag with their own.
Rehman, who was accompanied by other PPP leaders including Rashid Rabbani, Ejaz Durrani, Shamim Mumtaz Wasi, Waqar Mehdi etc, also felicitated the newly elected panel of KPC. Earlier, President KPC Imtiaz Khan Faran and General Secretary A.H Khanzada welcomed the federal information minister and requested her to pay due attention to resolve the journalist' problems.
Khanzada, criticising the owners of media institutions for the ongoing termination drive, requested the information minister to make the employers accountable for creating a sense of job insecurity among the journalists.
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