KARACHI: A Bill to regulate ownership and editorship of newspapers in Pakistan by foreigners will come up before the Pakistan Parliament at its next session, it was reliably learnt. Political circles in Karachi were definitely opposed to foreign control over the “Fourth Estate”. They advocated that the Government should be armed with the necessary powers to restrict foreign capital in the newspaper industry. The fate of China, it was pointed out, was a definite pointer towards the undesirability of allowing foreigners to control moulding of public opinion... .

For obvious reasons, even the Draft Convention on Freedom of Information of the United Nations allowed a country to restrict the right to edit and publish newspapers and periodicals within its territory to its own nationals.

[Meanwhile, according to news agencies in Karachi,] Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan will inaugurate in Karachi on Sept 19, Pakis­tan’s “largest Urdu library”, the Anjuman Tar­raqi-i-Urdu Public Library. Organised and set up by the Anjuman under the guidance of Dr Moulvi Abdul Haq, the library is stated to contain over 10,000 books in Urdu... .

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2024