June 13, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 08, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 12: The presidency is reported to have complained to the information ministry about lack of coverage of activities of President Pervez Musharraf by the state-controlled electronic media and called for changes in the policy.

According to sources, presidential spokesman Maj-Gen (retd) Rashid Qureshi made the complaint during a meeting with Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rahman at the PTV headquarters on Thursday and sought adequate coverage of the president.

The presidency, the sources said, was unhappy with the Pakistan Television for ignoring the president’s talk last week with a group of Islamabad-based TV anchorpersons during which he said he had no intention to resign and would not like to become a useless president.

The talk was telecast by all major private television channels.

The sources said the ministry’s response to the complaint was that the presidency had not formally invited the PTV to the talk and had only called an anchorperson who was not competent to provide live coverage to the event which lasted about two hours.

A source in the ministry said that the presidential spokesman had drawn the information minister’s attention to minimal or no coverage of president’s activities on the official media.

“He made a passionate appeal to the minister of information to look into the matter and to enhance, if possible, the coverage of the president on the official electronic media,” one source said.

Confirming the meeting, Ms Rahman told Dawn that she had made it clear to the presidential spokesman that the policy of the government was to provide due coverage to everyone.

She said she had told the spokesman that the official media was giving due coverage to everyone according to the constitutional entitlement and that she was not micromanaging the PTV or any other institution to allow or disallow coverage of any individual.