“There are so many problems in this unfortunate country, which you would highlight in the days gone by, but now you choose to write on un-related subjects. Have you been threatened or bought as most others?” This email came from a doctor in Pakistan. He said he did not mean to sound rude but was “disappointed” with my going timid. Readers back home are hardly ever on the same page. When objective reporting is done, most miss the spice; when spice is added, others find it sensational; when restraint is exercised, some call it cowardice.

The answer for journalists is to cultivate a ‘whistleblower!’ Or wait, even better, become a phone hacker! The way to get access to people’s phone messages is to go into the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234, according to a Reuters report that quotes Piers Morgan, now a CNN host, boasting to a fellow hack way back in 2002. Morgan is accused of phone hacking when he was editor of the British Daily Mirror (1995-2004) owned by Rupert Murdoch. Juicy details about politicians, celebrities, royalty got printed and made Murdoch a millionaire many times over.

Moving on from phone hacking to cyber hacking, WikiLeaks continues to whet our appetites and expose governments and organisations. Its latest hacking heist is the five million email-bust-up at the Texas headquartered global intelligence company Stratfor. This February, reports The Guardian, WikiLeaks began publishing ‘The Global Intelligence Files,’ containing confidential correspondence between Stratfor and mega companies overseas and in the US, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency.

Who has time to scan the five million emails? Will the earth tremble once the emails are in public domain? No! So, instead, let’s move to our own mini-media world of television. There once lived a man called Tim Russert. A likeable, chubby face with big brown eyes and an endearing smile. But as America’s leading political journalist, he was the most feared. His TV show ‘Meet the Press,’ sent shivers down his interviewees. His style of exposing their lies, double speak, flimflam was fiercely brutal. He simply put up their past sound bites or quotes that gave them the lie to whatever they were presently claiming. I still remember his ‘killer’ interview with Hillary Clinton after she left the White House. The unkindest cut the former first lady faced was when Russert confronted her on Bill Clinton’s infidelity. She was left fumbling for words. The grilling was merciless but to the point. There was nothing personal about it. One day, Russert collapsed at his desk of a massive heart attack and died. He was 58.

Journalism today, print or electronic, has gone corporate. Did you know that in America only four corporations own major media outlets? When corporate policies control what gets printed or said on the airwaves, can one hope for it to be objective? Besides corporations managing news, stories are often planted by inspired sources whose footprints lead to the White House, State Department or the Pentagon. It’s not only in America but in Pakistan, India, China, Russia and elsewhere where the ‘Big Brother’ keeps a watch on what gets disseminated to the public. Britain deserves special mention as Murdoch-related headlines tell us everyday.

Were Tim Russert alive today, he would surely have hosted our visiting president who was here last week to attend the Nato summit. He would have asked him point blank ‘What happened in Chicago between him and Obama?’ While, most US news outlets bypassed Pakistan, only highlighting Obama’s sudden adoration for Karzai, the New York Times in its front-paged story “Pakistan dispute casts a shadow on Nato meeting” wrote “Mr. Obama remained at loggerheads with President Asif Ali Zardari, refusing even to meet with him.” It reported “Mr Zardari, who flew to Chicago with hopes of lifting his stature with a meeting with Mr Obama, was preparing to leave empty-handed.” Someone called Vali Nasr, a ‘has-been’ State Department adviser on Pakistan was quoted saying: “This whole breakdown in the relationship between the US and Pakistan has come down to a fixation of this apology issue.” The combination of no apology and no meeting, Mr Nasr said, “will send a powerfully humiliating message back to Pakistan.”

Russert would surely have rustled up the name of the unnamed “senior official” who leaked inside information to New York Times with a malicious intent to embarrass, if not punish Pakistan for its refusal to open up its routes. “It’s going to be really uncomfortable” for the Pakistani president at the summit, the “official” opined as though to say ‘serves you right Mr President!’ We were further informed that Pakistan had gone greedy and was now demanding “upward of $5,000” for each Nato truck to pass through as opposed to “$250” per truck previously. The “official’s” trump card came out when he told the NYT about Obama’s phone call to the Pakistani president hours after Osama’s killing. The Pakistani president reportedly “spoke with emotion about the fact that these people were associated with the killing of his wife.”

As a precursor to the Zardari visit, this same newspaper printed an op-ed column by Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington on May 10 titled ‘How Pakistan Lets Terrorism Fester.’ One agrees with Husain Haqqani when he says that instead of fighting “jihadist ideology and those who perpetrate terrorist acts in its name… our national discourse has been hijacked by those seeking to deflect attention from militant Islamic extremism.” But to heap the blame on the [Pakistani] “raucous media” which in Haqqani’s view “has done little to help generate support for eliminating extremism and fighting terrorism,” betrays shades of personal grouse against the media and even the Supreme Court. He alleges that both the entities “insist that confronting alleged incompetence and corruption in the current government is more important than turning Pakistan away from Islamist radicalism.” The intelligence services (read ISI) are also blamed by the writer for opting to “keep the spotlight on the civilian government rather than on the militant groups they have historically supported.”

Did Haqqani’s op-ed help or hinder his former boss, the president’s trip to Chicago? Normally our Foreign Service diplomats after retirement are as reticent to air their personal opinion as they are when on active duty. Divulging classified information is off limits for them at all times. Aitzaz Ahsan, who is back in the PPP saddle, too has changed his tune. What he reportedly said in the New York Times Magazine report by James Traub published on March 31, 2009 is the opposite of what he’s saying today. More later.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com