Editorial By Siddiq Baluch The helpless media Being extremely vulnerable to all sorts of pressure, the Balochistan media is positive in this country and always ready to help the Government in power in the past, including the present one avoiding any embarrassment to powerful rulers, officials and ministers in good faith. The Balochistan Government had never tasted a negative media which is a reality. The media managers are unaware of this reality. Similarly there is no corporate media to take the Government to task defaming it the world over on any issue which the media likes or dislikes. Massive corruption, fiscal mismanagement and administrative anarchy had been ignored by the media merely for being vulnerable. All the relevant information in shape of budget documents are supposed to be fed to the people through the media is denied and without any explanation. The Budget is presented before the members of the Provincial Assembly with the sole purpose to inform the people on every aspect of the budget, mainly revenue and expenditure or rulers vision for development. For the same argument, budget documents are public documents and not state secret to be kept hidden from the people. Why the Government had kept the budget document secret? No one had dared to defend it when the newsmen registered their protest. Mere apology is not enough. You denied vital information to the people of Balochistan by withholding the budget documents. We have in possession of tons of documents of the Federal Budget with minute detail of the Government revenue and expenditure. There is no secret in the Federal Budget documents, including the sensitive taxation proposals. It was no secret and the documents were handed over to the newsmen hours before the Finance Minister delivered his speech full of rhetoric. In the past, media people used to receive the budget documents hours before the concerned finance ministers read out the written statement before the House. Media is no more interested in reporting the written speeches of the Ministers on the occasion of Federal and Provincial Budget. They want substantial documents to report and inform the people about the every aspect of the budget. Ironically, the prime victim had become the sitting Government as it was denied wide publicity on the prestigious occasion of provincial budget. Precisely, it is the only occasion in the entire year that the Balochistan Budget is given wide coverage by the entire national and international media. Health of the provincial economy is widely reported in the country. Normally, the newspapers have enough space during the whole day and pages and pages are at the disposal of the reporters and commentators to feed information to the people, but in time. Thus every aspect of budget is covered comprehensively and to the satisfaction of the readers and researchers all over the world keeping an eye on the economy of Balochistan and economic performance of the elected Government or its vision to various economic and development issues. In Friday’s papers, there was not a single report on the provincial budget inside the pages and the Government had failed to use available space by feeding information in time. Budget speech of any one had no relevancy as it is full of routine rhetoric normally reported daily. It is mere reading out the statement drafted by the economic managers of the Government. It is pity to compel the journalists to depend on the written speech only. It is no substitute of the official budget documents and all the details provided in the budget speech were customary and usual. The publicity of the provincial budget is squeezed on the outer pages of the newspapers only and it was also confined to the speech of the Chief Minister. The big looser is the Government who still considers the budget documents as sacred and secret not to be touched by the journalists and media persons and maximum information is denied to the people.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:48:21 +0000
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