One-liners and quips were the hallmarks of the session titled “Aaj Kal Ka Kaalum” on the second day of the Lahore Literary Festival on Saturday.

The panelists included Kishwar Naheed, Yasir Pirzada and Wajahat Masood while Arif Nizami moderated.

Nizami said Urdu and English language columns had been poles apart. “Urdu columns mostly lack ‘fair’ comment on political developments while the issue of narrative has predominantly been there. I found some pieces so pathetic that editing was a torture for me.”

He also shared with the audience some of his experiences when certain columnists requested him to publish their pieces because they wanted “a smooth sailing for their favour.” But then he lauded the contribution of some Urdu columnists.

“Men have penchant for hiding their age nowadays,” Kishwar Naheed quipped when Nizami said women and newspapers were equally particular about their age and circulation.

Speaking of the impact of the narrative on circulation, Nizami said no newspaper carrying progressive ideas could make major inroad into the market.

Kishwar related an anecdote about how a widely read Urdu newspaper once omitted the name of an oil rich country from her column to which Yasir Pirzada said: “You should have changed it to a brotherly Islamic country.”

Kishwar said since Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship, a ‘soldier had crept into minds of the columnists and that was the reason they were prone to self-censorship.

The ‘right-wing’ narrative on terrorism and Taliban came under scathing criticism during the session.

Yasir Pirzada, whom Nizami termed a new generation columnist, said the apologists for Taliban in the realm of journalism inflicted a severe damage on the country.

To Nizami’s question about art of column writing, Pirzada said a lot of research was “nowadays” needed to put together a piece. He said a columnist must decide whether he wanted to be popular or whether he wanted to tell the truth and to make a ‘fair’ comment.

Wajahat Masood said dubbing something obscene sold irrespective of its impact on the society. He disagreed with Kishwar over ‘independence’ enjoyed by English language columnists, saying they (too) had to be careful in their analysis.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2015

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