KARACHI: President Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) GM Jamali and Sec. General Rana M. Azeem have strongly condemned the maltreatment of Senior Anchor Sami Ibrahim by Fed. Minister Fawad Chaudhry, terming the culture of abuse thus introduced as extremely deplorable.
In a joint statement, GM Jamali and Rana M. Azeem held that the abusive culture introduced by PTI has now transformed into physical mistreatment and torture of Journalists. They said that the attack was not an assault only on Sami Ibrahim but against the Journalists fraternity and that could not be tolerated at any cost: “PFUJ strongly condemn the incident and demand Prime Minister Imran Khan to take severe action against such a minister and apologize for the macabre act.”
GM Jamali and Rana M. Azeem stated that the state of affairs have reached its limits. During this government’s first few months while Media Workers were sacked the same minister was augmenting bonds with the Channel owners. Thus was equally responsible of the economic assassination of journalists. They observed that now the minister seems to have resorted to the physical assignation of the journalists that could not be accepted.
PFUJ appreciates the rejoinder posted by Fed. Minister Fawad Chaudhry in WhatsApp Group:
According to minister background of the incident of slapping Sami Ibrahim was that for advertisements government had formed categories A, B, C and D according to the ratings of channels.
“Due to that, 70% of the channels were dropped from A and B categories. Hence they were endeavoring (despite low rankings) to get themselves in the A and B categories.
“Sami Ibrahim claiming since BOL had done a lot for us they should be put in A category. Problem was that if I had given BOL Rs. 20million category, other channels would have also asked for it. That would have simply nullified the basic idea of forming categories itself.
“On my refusal, Sami Ibrahim had started a perpetual campaign against me. Meanwhile, I received an application from a senior reported that BOL was not paying his dues. Does a channel that could not pay Rs. 40,000 to its employee deserve to remain in business?
“After that, the drive against me was accelerated and I was declared RAW’s agent. Today when I came across this man he started insulting me. There is a limit to tolerating abuse. I slapped him and that is the only answer to blackmailing”
