PPP decides to boycott Geo, Jang Group

ISLAMABAD (APP) - Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Saturday decided to boycott Geo and Jang Group for launching biased propaganda against the party ever since the present government assumed power. Addressing a press conference here, PPP Secretary General Senator Jehangir Badar said PPP had two options; either to mobilise all its resources to reciprocate the malicious propaganda in a befitting manner or to keep silent, and the party opted for the latter. Badar said that Geo and Jang Group had emerged to be a political competitor of PPP over the last 2-3 years. They sidelined all journalistic rules, ethics as well as sanctity of the profession and bent on torturing our leaders through tongue and pen (electronic and print media), Badar said. The PPP Secretary General said the party never reacted to the well-conceived defamation campaign orchestrated by Geo and Jang Group. Neither a single word nor any retaliatory action was taken against the media groups as PPP believed in freedom of press, Badar said. History bears testimony to the fact that four dictatorships attempted to knock out PPP from politics, but it didnt happen. PPP under the leadership of President Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would continue its struggle to materialise the mission of its martyred leaders, Badar said. He produced a complete detail of the programmes aired by Geo and article/stories/editorials published by Jang Group against PPP and its leaders. He said during the period in question Geo TV had aired 676 Talk Shows in which 605 were against the Co-Chairman of PPP. In percentage, PPP had 97 per cent criticism by Geo TV, which did it mere three per cent to other parties of the country. The PPP Secretary General said that Geo TV repeated 300 times its programmes on 12 years back fabricated cases against the President. He said that Jang newspaper published 4147 out of 4853 news stories against PPP in addition to 2002 of 2334 articles and 480 of 567 editorials that attacked the party. Badar said that The News published 2613 of 4569 news stories against PPP, besides publishing 1,225 of 1,421 articles and 761 of 782 editorials against the party. He described the journalists working with these two organisations as 'players, who actually joined the profession for bread-earning, but were assigned to hit PPP. The PPP Secretary General said that a senior journalist of the media group wrote up to 70 articles - all against PPP and its leaders. Another senior journalist wrote 479 of his 488 articles against PPP, a senior reporter wrote 380 of 394, an senior anchor persons of the group wrote 110 of 114 stories, another reporter wrote 129 of 138 reports, a senior media person wrote 346 of 384 reports against the PPP. Badar said that Geo TV and Jang Group targeted all what was good for the country, strengthening democracy, political stability and amelioration of the people.