 My topic is should media report acts of terrorism why and why not my brief answer to begin with will be yes The media should report acts of terrorism, but it should do it responsibly and with restraint Now Coming to real life as generalist working in the field in a conflict area I will start by presenting the example of My country's most dangerous and powerful militant organization the TTP Teriqa Taliban Pakistan Every day without fail its spokesman Shahidullah Shahid Calls a number of generalists from North Wajiristan Now we know that he's in North Wajiristan because we get his phone calls and we know that it is 0 9 to 8 the code number for For Miran Shah the capital of North Wajiristan, but we can't say that he's in North Wajiristan So we always say he called from an unknown location out of fear and Also, because he tells us Don't tell my location. Everybody knows about it. Even the Pakistan government knows about it But somehow he's able to avoid arrest now he calls every day and He comes up with a statement or some news regarding their You know attacks It then becomes a major news event Every day and it is endlessly Discussed on TV channels and in newspaper columns The terrorists get free publicity and the reporter is happy to get a byline Based on a one-sided statement Shahidullah Shahid and before him the other TTP spokesman Asanullah Asan Mollvi Umar Muslim Khan are now household names in Pakistan Thanks to this kind of publicity Now more than one person has been posing using these names. It's not only one person in many of them But again, we can't say that we say it's Shahidullah Shahid who called us There's also another context to this thing At least the faces of the TTP spokesman are familiar because they give TV interviews What about Afghanistan? The Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid and Kari Yusuf Ahmadi are faceless They call us they call everybody But you've never seen their faces because they never give TV interviews So they are well known and their statements are published But no journalist I think has met them and nobody has seen them What I want to say is that the initiative is mostly with the terrorist and the militants From the planning stage to the execution as they are on the offensive while the government often reacts to the attacks After every terrorist attack we in the media and others wait for the claim of responsibility We want to be the first to report it and then there's a long wait By the media for the video footage of the attack Everybody is so keen and desperate to get that footage especially TV channels Now every act benefits the terrorist the mayhem at the site of the blast The mismanagement the scenes at the hospital Recently there was a tag on a church in Peshawar in my city 85 people were killed 84 of them were church goers one of them was a policeman so 84 Christians and one Muslim Now these people became violent after the attack the Christians and they attacked the hospital the main hospital in Peshawar called the Lady reading hospital. It was the first time I Must add that the hospital was attacked by the attendants by the protesters So there is you know chaos Everywhere and the government is criticized for the lack of response or the slow response for the security lapses and Then there the police is under criticism the doctors the hospital administration Everybody is under some strain. There is chaos anger and protests This is what the terrorists want and are mostly able to achieve It happens all the time Now I read Somewhere that the media is the battlefield of terrorism Then we have this ongoing debate on definition of terrorism As we often hear that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter This confusion also benefits terrorists It is clear that terrorists need publicity for their cause and also for free Because they may not be able to afford it the media in this age of 24 hour TV news Thriving social media and cutthroat competition is ready to oblige Terrorism mostly works because the governments and the citizens give in and often the media also gives in We have this very strong argument that Journalists have an obligation towards the reader viewer and listener and therefore we must report all acts of terrorism because These are important news and impact the life of the people There is no way the terrorist attacks can be blanked out But as I have said earlier we have to report it responsibly With restraint and in the belief that these acts are inhuman and evil as Margaret Thatcher once famously said Publicity is the oxygen of terrorists and efforts must be made to deny them undue publicity Still the media has to do its job independent of the government and certainly not under the threat of the terrorist The next challenge is to exercise some kind of self censorship But not allowing the government to impose too many restrictions and taking away press freedom and other civil liberties There has been a debate that it isn't possible to deal with the new trends in terrorism within the existing legal framework This debate is ongoing Now to counter this argument someone said the best propaganda is truth How far this works can be debated this reminds me also of my former president Asif Ali Zardari's famous quote that Democracy is the best revenge So we can say truth is the best propaganda Now apart from the increasing Brutality of terrorist attacks the generalists also are under constant threat I'll give the example of my own country around 90 journalists have been killed in the last decades Because of their work They have been mostly killed in the conflict areas like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa previously called as Northwest Frontier province to which I belong and Fata the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and lately also in Balochistan Where there is a conflict a low-level Baloch Separatist insurgency is going on. So lately the highest number of fatalities actually have been Balochistan Now the sad part of the story is that only two cases have been independently investigated Out of these 90 people who were killed one is the case of a Generalist from tribal areas North Waziristan called Hayatullah. He was kidnapped and killed in 2005 And the second case became very well known Salim Shahzad who was kidnapped from Islamabad and killed last year Now these two Investigations carried out by the judiciary were made public. No, I mean they were investigated only despite demands by generalist unions One of the report was made public Salim Shahzad's killing but that report did not say anything It didn't put blame on anybody so Whoever killed him was not exposed in the other case in the case of mr. Hayatullah the report has not been made public despite demands So we thought that you know they kill with impunity. There is no investigation and that's why there are more deaths more killings now One other issue which I want to highlight is the code of conduct There were so many public complaints in Pakistan especially regarding TV journalism That they were showing these terrorist attacks live They were showing blood and bodies So after that the TV channel executives were forced in a way to hold a meeting and to come up with a code of conduct That code of conduct is not very comprehensive. It's not fully implemented But I still will add that it is a good start at least they have realized the extent of the problem Now I Think they can build on that code of conduct if it's implemented I'd also like to say that TV journalism in Pakistan in many other countries is new and It is going through a learning process. I think it will become mature. We should bear with it Whenever people raise these issues of TV journalism being very responsible I reply that look do you have any complaint from the print media in Pakistan? They say no, it's largely doing okay So I tell them that print journalism is mature. It has been there for 66 years But TV journalism is new it is growing it is learning So it will also become mature in due course of time but as we all know there are these Problems of being too independent being irresponsible is culture of breaking news You all know here in India also and in South Asia There are complaints against these kind of news now Lastly I Keep asking myself even now whether I should have done those two interviews with the Saman Bin Laden And that happened in 1998 in Afghanistan My answer is that yes, if there was a chance I will do it again although You can be accused of giving a platform To somebody who was a terrorist The problem is there is so much demand for these kind of interviews And you know the biggest demand came from the American TV channels So Saman Bin Laden attacked America, but the American TV networks wanted his interview at any cost the first interview by TV network With the Saman Bin Laden was done by CNN and That was in 1996 I believe Although Robert Fisk of the independent also did one interview But he did it for the print media for the independent newspaper in UK So the question of demand somebody he's a newsmaker. He was a newsmaker. He's dead now He was a newsmaker. So you wanted to know what is he up to? What does he say? And that's why I think that we cannot really afford to miss these kind of stories or interviews We must do it. So beside Bin Laden, I also Interviewed Dr. Amanal Zawairi who was with Saman Bin Laden at the time And I think the first and last interview with Mullah Omar the Taliban leader was also done by me So I'm doing it again and again Thank you