READER’S FEEDBACK
CENSORING VALID OPINION

Not the job of editors

All experience it. You read something in the newspaper,  you do not like it. You write a letters to the editors, thinking that he will impartially print your opinion. It is really never so. Everything is by plan. Opinions are censored even before they are written.

I try to write a Comment on international pages representing the Pakistani point of view. It is not even composed when it is erased. And if it is placed, it goes out the minute it is there. You modify the language lest that there is any objectionable matter there. Nothing. It is not that at all. You can abuse anybody as long as it is in line with jounalistic policy.

In Pakistan the proper LETTERS TO THE EDITOR never get published. For just as the active journalists, the man editing the letters is also under the payroll or influence of some lobbies. Nothing good for the country can get through. The shame of Planet Earth is enormous. The much hyped FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION never finds expression in reality. The loser is Planet Earth itself.

In Pakistan I wrote letters the Editor all my life. Hardly a few got published and that they did, when the editor knew me personally. Again an influence operating not the reality of opinions. I met a number of persons who say their names are on the banned list of the editorial page. Often they circumvent that by writing under pseudonyms. Sometimes even that does not work.

Who benefits with bad news and opinion about the country all the time? The enemies, of course. But the illiterate people are better off. Their views are not influenced by this malignant groups of people. They get the reality mainly from their parents, friends, as well as the environment. And here gossip does operate too. But our people, contrary to belief, have great common sense. They know enemies by instinct even before the word is passed around.

An anti Islamic view for instance is in vogue that the moon and the stars configuration is the same as it was in 1947. Ripe for more partitions. This kind of bloody crap is fed to us all the time. The actual reason to break our morale in ourselves. But there is one thing still with the people which keeps them intact and that is the Holy Quran itself. It will make people rise through all ordeals of life.