When the news media becomes its own newsmaker there is reason to rejoice – or repent. Take Geo News, for instance. Pakistan's most watched news channel is holding the world transfixed by doing what the country's politicians haven't dared – locking horns with the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. The first week of June this year saw a further escalation in their battle, with the channel suing the spook agency for defamation over accusations of being 'anti-state', even as the country's electronic media regulator suspended Geo for 15 days for reporting that the ISI was behind the April shooting of Hamid Mir, one of the network's marquee journalists, and imposed a fine of PKR 10 million (around USD 100,000). We can only rejoice at a media organisation showing such courage under fire.
GROWING MEDIA, SHRINKING SPACES?:
WEB-EXCLUSIVE PACKAGE
Mass media and the Modi 'wave' by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Pakistan's media wars by Beena Sarwar
Violence, voices and visibility by Laxmi Murthy
Kashmir's media story by Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
Women in the newsroom by Amrita Tripathi
The work of the Guardian, a British daily, is similarly inspiring. The globally iconic newspaper brought Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to its knees by exposing how the corporation's British tabloids had bribed the police and hacked into the phones of celebrities, politicians and even the Royal Family; faced off against British and American authorities with its WikiLeaks and Snowden revelations because, according to the paper's editor Alan Rusbridger, citizens in a democracy deserved to know; and is working towards transforming itself into a global digital newspaper aimed at engaged, anti-establishment readers, while keeping it available entirely for free – a heady experiment indeed. Cheers.