ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalist (PFUJ) has expressed serious concern over the growing media crisis which it believes is the result of ill-designed and ill-conceived media policy of the government.

“The crises in media industry is rapidly increasing resulting in forced retrenchments, closure of the media outlets, decline in circulation because of the advertisement policy of the government,” a joint statement issued by PFUJ president Shahzada Zulfikar and secretary general Nasir Zaidi said.

The PFUJ leaders said the government had deliberately slashed the rates of official advertisements in order to bring down the industry to its knees.

It observed that the government was deliberately not paying the dues of the media organisations amounting to Rs6bn to suffocate the industry financially.

While warning the government that any delay in the payment of the dues could cause irreparable loss to the industry, the PFUJ called upon the government to immediately release the outstanding bills to save the media industry from an imminent collapse.

The PFUJ leaders demanded of the government to announce a special relief package for the media workers and journalist community so that media industry could be saved from a complete collapse.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2020