ANYONE who has ever worked for a newspaper, no matter how briefly, will be aware of the power commanded by the editor.

Whether it’s the editor of an entire network or a lowly section in-charge, to the underlings the editor is a colossus dictating their every move, the looming, fire-breathing presence looking over their shoulder. To the general public, he or she is the often caustic and generally hyper-energised face of any publication.

In an essay rather brilliantly titled “Editors and Egomaniacs,” journalist Henry Porter makes an attempt to solve the enigma. A freelance writer and the London editor of Vanity Fair magazine, Porter estimates that he has worked with some thirty different editors and comes to the conclusion that the breed comes in two varieties.

First are the “shirt-sleeved, seat-of-the-pants technicians” who have passed through the ranks of sub-editors, rise slowly to their positions and rely on a sure, experienced eye and a sharp news instinct. The other sort, Porter believes, “sees himself as an altogether more rational creature.” He dismisses this lot as having little technical experience but confident that they “offer something supposedly much grander – leadership, a world view, an intellectual analysis, a moral compass.”

Porter argues that having unshakeable opinions is, in this job, a virtue if not a necessity. “A newspaper editor must be opinionated,” he writes, “if only to give his paper direction and identity. His views may add up to little more than a collection of prejudices, but they are better than no views at all, or an outlook which is just too reasonable or too damned nice.”

Nevertheless, the seat of power is a dangerous one; the buck finally, and with an ominous grinding sound, stops here. At the same time, as an editor-in-the-making pointed out, few things are as likely to generate a god-complex with all its attendant evils. “Once an editor has served in the job for a few years, his grip on reality tends to degenerate,” writes Porter. “The unhinging is in part due to the excessive preoccupation of an editor’s mind, which churns endlessly with the business of the paper, but also with the insatiable appetite for novelty. All life is raw material for his publication and when it doesn’t quite match his Technicoloured expectations, he is liable to demand that his staff do something about it. . . Cut off from normal life by the rigours of the job and surrounded by people who almost never tell him the truth, the editor is liable to form some very strange ideas about his own abilities and importance.”

The idealists of our world feel that the press ought to play a greater activist role, and the field’s perceived lack of proactivity in this regard constitutes the raison d’etre of many a letter to the editor. But Porter has a single, caustic comment: such a campaign can only succeed if it has a definite goal which there is some hope of attaining. A newspaper agitating to save the dolphins or increase deciduous planting is hopelessly misguided, he states flatly, “because there is no natural end to the mission – an editor can never declare that there are enough dolphins or oak trees in the world.” Only start a newspaper crusade if you can be seen to win it and win it well.

Post script: Journalists are sometimes pejoratively referred to as “hack writers,” a term accusing them of being a ‘pen for hire.’ The etymology says quite a lot about the journalistic profession.

The term originally meant a person hired for routine work and was a shortened form of “hackney”, used since the 1300s to refer to an ordinary horse. The word came from the village of Hackney in the UK. Now well within London, in early medieval times it was a pastureland devoted to raising transport and carriage horses. The one-horse carriages used in those times thus became known as “hackneys” and since such horses were often over-worked and under-fed, the term soon gained connotations of drudgery or the prostitution of talent for money. The specialised sense of someone who writes for hire led to “hackneyed trite” in 1749 and the first use of “hack writer” is recorded in 1826. So-called hack writers were paid by the number of words in their article and therefore, the term also referred to quantity being given precedence over quality.

Today, UK journalists have adopted the term “hack” as a humourous, self-deprecating way of describing themselves.

THE Pakistan hockey administrators have triggered a latest controversy by back-pedalling on their earlier decision to discard three ageing and undisciplined players — Mohammad Saqlain, Sohail Abbas and Waseem Ahmad — opening the doors of national hockey to them once again this week.

The mind-boggling decision was recently announced by PHF secretary Khalid Mahmood who is also a national hero and a member of gold medal-winning squad of 1968 Mexico Olympics. But it is not a simple or run-of-the-mill statement when one considers the stand taken by PHF chief Zafarullah Jamali last November while announcing the Asian Games squad for Doha.

The trio and two more players — Ghazanfar Ali and Dilawar Hussain — had opted to play in foreign leagues despite being called up and given ample opportunity to report for Doha Games training camp in Islamabad and Karachi. The reason was obvious — to earn extra bucks — as they contemptuously refused to don national colours at the time.

It was not an isolated incident in which the players took things for granted. Sohail and Waseem have a history of showing disrespect to national hockey. The pair first went to play in a foreign league some three or four years ago, skipping back-to-back four-nation tournaments in Australia.

The PHF, under president Gen Aziz Khan and secretary Brig Musarrat Ullah Khan, set the wrong trend by including the pair in the Champions Trophy squad after dishing out a paltry fine of Rs100,000 each for the blundering players.

Being at loggerheads with Musarrat and preferring money to national honour, both Sohail and Waseem quit international hockey abruptly soon after the 2004 Champions Trophy in Lahore, saying that they were keen to pave way for youngsters. At the same time, however, they announced that they would be available only for major events which was certainly strange and indicated a selfish mindset.

Although the PHF was snubbed by the players, officials kept on inviting them to several camps only to be left red-faced. So much so that Sohail opted to practice for his department SSGC at Karachi’s UBL Sports Complex but never reported for national camp set up in the same city.

At one point, they went into hibernation only to resurface last year to represent the country at the Champions Trophy in Terrasa, Spain as well as in the World Cup in Monchengladbach, Germany, two of most prestigious international hockey events where Pakistan ended up at a poor fifth and sixth respectively.

After the vanishing act of the undisciplined bunch, reports recently began to taking rounds once again in the hockey circles that Sohail and Waseem are willing to “serve” the country. The reason, two major events again coming up with Champions Trophy slated for December and, of course, the Beijing Olympics next August.

But while Sohail and Waseem can be dubbed as opportunists for their approach towards the game, Saqlain has somehow kept himself afloat on the Pakistan hockey scene despite being notorious for his rash behaviour on and off the pitch and having faced several penalties for his unsporting conduct over the years.

The half-back was dropped from the 2000 Sydney Olympics squad for misconduct and was axed from the 2004 Athens Games by coach Roelant Oltmans for hitting team-mate Adnan Maqsood. Later, he was also suspended for one match for roughing up a South Korean player during the Azlan Shah Cup.

Pakistan also faced a lot of embarrassment when Saqlain was slapped a 1000-euro fine and a three-match suspension by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) for seriously injuring Australia’s Craig Victory at Hamburg Masters in 2005. The decision was upheld by Court of Arbitration for Sport despite the fact that the PHF challenged FIH’s decision.

The maverick player staged a comeback at last year’s Champions Trophy and the Monchengladbach World Cup in September was the last event in which he featured.

Encouraged by the antics of Sohail and Waseem, the pugnacious midfielder also jumped on the bandwagon by skipping the Asian Games camp and opted for a foreign league stint rather than attending to national duty.

Now this fresh decision of the PHF to recall the temperamental players not only defies logic, it is also a recipe for disaster. While they are likely to be technically negative repercussions of the decision, there are other points to ponder as well at this juncture. Firstly, it is incomprehensible why the PHF took a sharp U-turn when Jamali had taken a firm stand against the undisciplined players? It is conspicuous that though Jamali is at the helm, he doesn’t seem to be in command or is either being misguided by certain elements that are hell-bent on destroying the sport.

Khalid, along with selector Samiullah, is on record to have said the banned players would and should never be called again. “The PHF president has already given the policy. I had personally talked to Sohail before the World Cup and told him he should not have skipped national duty. But he again showed his true colour. I think that chapter is closed,” Khalid told Dawn on May 16.

Strangely, he has now changed course, claiming that Jamali has also taken the same stance on the issue and asked the press to “end the controversy.” The point Khalid has missed here is that it is the PHF which has reignited the controversy by changing its stance and the press is just reporting it.

It all started with a press statement from new chief selector Khawaja Zakauddin, another hockey stalwart who put his weight behind the undisciplined trio by saying that all the players needed was to prove their physical fitness to earn a place in the team again. Current scenario suggests one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to analyse who’s calling the shots.

It is obvious that Zaka is running the PHF as its de facto secretary and the president and federation secretary have simply been over-rided. What course does selector Samiullah adopts from hereon is also being awaited since he termed the three players as ‘ancient history’ not too long ago.

Team manager Islahuddin Siddiqui, who had diplomatically refrained from expressing views on the issue since the time he took over, has suggested that the violating bunch of players ask the PHF to pardon them. But here, Islah contradicts himself since he has used the phrase “re-building” a thousand times since taking charge and would now have to justify the recall of the three ageing players.

Coming to the technical matters, the decision to bring the players back into the fold lacks wisdom and is like going two steps backwards at this stage.

Pakistan never won any major title when these players were around and although Sohail may be a “legend” after breaking the 267-goal record of a Dutchman Paul Litjens, a majority of his goals have been scored against mediocre teams while he has struggled against giants such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and even Spain.

By recalling the players who ditched the country time and again and refused to don the colours that brought them respect, fame and fortune, the PHF will be setting a bad precedent and will send a wrong message to newcomers.

Pakistan hockey today needs heroes to carry the nation into future, not such ageing, over-rated players who put personal interest before national pride.

THE American administration is thinking aloud; there is no threat — not yet. But White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher have spoken in a way that does not rule out the possibility of a direct American attack on Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s tribal belt. However, in America itself analysts think such a strike could lead to widespread riots in Pakistan and the Arab world and hurt America’s interests. This line of thinking assumes that the Bush administration and the governments which preceded it have always acted in a way that promotes America’s cause. History discourages us from being so optimistic.

We now know that the attack on Iraq has in no way advanced America’s geopolitical interests in the region or taken the Arab-Israeli conflict any closer to a resolution. In fact, it had been decided much before 9/11 that Iraq must be destroyed. Two of Bob Woodward’s books — Bush at War and Plan of Attack — make it clear that the neocons had created a policy-making apparatus of their own with an agenda hidden from others. Some of the neocons are now in disgrace — Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearl, Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Paul Wolfowitz — but not before they had trapped America in Iraq.This neocon group does not care whether America gets hurt. It has one aim: to follow policies which advance Israel’s interests.

Israel considered Iraq its enemy number one. Even though Baghdad had no weapons of mass destruction, Baathist Iraq had oil reserves, a prosperous and educated middle class, and a pool of scientists and technicians. No other Arab country had this. So even if Iraq did not have WMDs in 2003, in a future scenario and at an appropriate moment Iraq could mobilise its resources and be back as a threat to Israel. So Iraq had to be destroyed, and for this it was American blood that would be shed.

At the last count, 3,600 Americans had died in Iraq. Adding to it the number of psychiatric cases and those who fell in combat, the Pentagon website puts the casualty figure at over 50,000.

Disagreeing tacitly with President Bush, the neocons have never been happy about Islamabad’s decision to join the war on terror, because this spoiled their game plan. What they have not reconciled to is Pakistan’s nuclear capability, which is a thorn in their side. Pakistan is the only Muslim country to have this deterrence, and they will see to it that Iran does not have it. The only countries besides the five recognised nuclear powers the neocons tolerate— and back — as nuclear powers are Israel and India.

Nothing would please them more than to see Pakistan quit the war on terror and create a situation where the US would have a go. If American air strikes on the tribal areas could lead to widespread anti-American riots in Pakistan and the Arab world and cause destabilisation and anarchy in this country, then unleashing US firepower on the tribal belt will be worth it. Why not? A Pakistan in ruins would be a delightful sight for the neocons.

By joining the war on terror, Pakistan has frustrated the neocons’ inner most desires and dreams. They feel angrier than India when Bush refers to Musharraf as an ally. The threat to intervene in Pakistan may not materialise, but the reason is not that which is dished out — that such an intervention will not be in America’s interest. The neocons see America’s interests differently. They would love nothing more than to see Pakistan declared a terrorist country and seen fit for doing another Iraq. It is Islamabad’s role in the war on terror that prevents the neocons from shoving Pakistan into the “Axis of Evil”.

What are the options for Islamabad? It should develop a national consensus on fighting terrorism, which regrettably enjoys the support of a section of our ulema and religious parties. Conclusion: other things remaining equal, under no circumstances should Pakistan quit the war on terror and oblige its enemies.