Talk about making a bold statement. The News certainly did. Driving on GT road outside Ayub Park one will not miss the large billboard stating the obvious. Quite an unlikely place for the message because mostly the people who will be seeing the billboard are not of the literatti crowd. Mostly truckers get to park over there; but kudos to the advertising team of The News who chose that location and yet made their point audaciously enough as if they are the only mainstream newspaper which has the guts to call a spade a spade.
I started reading The News on a regular basis when our investigative journalism teacher said that to understand investigative journalism in Pakistan we would have to read this newspaper throughly. and this I did and really enjoyed my experience. Initially I had planned to read this newspaper daily only for the duration of my third semester but it grew on me. Getting to compare the the headlines of Dawn and The News became an intriguing breakfast pastime. Discussing how differently media organisations look at the same event but from different points of views, why one newspaper gave importance to one event and the other to another. What made a banner headline and why some advertisements were displayed on the front page.
All in all yes! The News has indeed been making headlines in the past two decades. Investigative journalism is still in its infancy in Pakistan but journalists like Ansar Abbasi, Umar Cheema, Usman Manzoor and others stay true to the essence of IJ i.e. to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
I applaud the efforts of the advertising team behind this billboard but don't you think if it had been placed in some other locality it would have indeed made many uncomfortable and efforts would have been made to quash another free expression of opinion.
