A real journalist is usually a hard-working low paid activist who works for the good of the general society and the country. People like Mubasher Lucman are in no way journalists, no matter how many years they do a talk show. Such people have never experienced the hardships of reporting or investigating a story; nor have they actually done field work that makes a real journalist.
People like him somehow manage to get a slot on a channel and then start spouting nonsense through a public platform reaching a large number of people and trying hard to make an impression and failing. It is because of people like him that the TV has been called the idiot box.
It is about time the likes of Mubasher Lucman realized that screaming and shouting and taking on opponents bigger than yourself won't make you a mahatma of the media. You cannot get millions and then expect to pretend to be one of the 'poor' journalists or even to be their supporter.
Mubasher Lucman spoke this truth in a fit of anger when one of his guests, a veteran journalist, said that those anchors who mint money cannot know what a journalist goes through. Lucman was livid and said in a voice dripping of arrogance that he was well paid and was one of those people who were close to the management of a channel, adding was he stupid to be standing with the journalists. This revealed that does in fact think he is among the privileged and doing the real journalists a favor. This arrogance was revealed in the way he was talking to the veteran journalists on his show.
Also in the same show, Mubasher Lucman justified that being low paid; journalists were forced to take bribes so that he could make ends meet. Did he insinuate that journalists take bribes and are dishonest and did he justify this? How do two wrong makes a right, Lucman? Does it mean that to Mubasher Lucman journalism compounds to dishonesty and corruption?
Mubasher Lucman seems to think so; he said that the owners were depriving their workers from their due and that the same saved on taxes; he added that therefore the deprived journalists had to make money through dishonest ways.
He should be careful of what he is saying, because unlike him most people in the media are honest journalists and work hard to make ends meet.
Lucman also said that men and women armed with a pen and linked to a press club and/or a journalist union consider only themselves to be journalists and don't consider other staff members like drivers or non-linear editors as journalists. Of course he probably wanted to add that the real journalists don't even consider highly paid non-journalists anchors like himself as part of their fraternity.
While discussing the problems of the journalists, he went on to say that the media held everyone accountable except for itself and its own misdeeds go unreported. Does he now hate the media as well? Probably because he hasn't been able to reach the upper crust of the media world in Pakistan, and has remained a below average professional who has managed to get someone to sponsor him but has not been able to make it in the top 100 great media movers and shakers of Pakistan.
As if insulting the poor workers wasn't enough, Mubasher Lucman continued his tirade to justify (or insult) those correspondents of various media houses working in smaller cities and villages and who are not paid a salary. He said that these correspondents get the work done by blackmail and other nefarious methods with the supervision of the parent company. It seems that he is endorsing criminal behavior on his show?
Mubasher Lucman should also be warned to stop spreading lies in the name of his shallow so-called journalism. What does he know about journalism? Maybe he was attracted to this field because he thought it was all easy money and no work. And it seems he got his wish of no work, just pay in the name of journalism.
His absurdity didn't stop there; he went on different tangents oscillating between the owner of a media group to disrespecting the courts, judges and the law. He constantly overstepped the line of contempt as he always does in many of his shows, and kept on saying unsavory words about the honorable courts – and even at one point scolding one of his guests when the journalist used the word 'honorable' saying that these were not honorable courts. Like always he accused the judges and courts of being partial to particular special people.
Mocking courts, judges and the legal system is a constant practice on the shows of this richly paid anchor, who claims to be scared of no one. He is always preaching his viewers to disrespect the honorable courts and judges. The courts should take notice of Lucman's hate speech against them and also scrutinize his contribution towards preaching disrespect for the courts that could permeate into this already vulnerable society.
Lucman is overstepping social as well as professional norms and ethics all the time and needs to be reined in by the honorable courts. His show's content must be scrutinized and censored, because he is being awarded by his channel for spreading general hate speech against all and sundry, especially the courts.
Then his misleading promises of false surprises and sensationalism are only contributing to malicious behavior which is detrimental to the social fabric of this country and which is contributing to towards destroying the moral structure of the younger viewer's mind.
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