JUST days after Islamabad had hosted the most significant direct talks between the US and Iran in decades, the Jerusalem Post carried a piece expressing solemn concern at Imran Khan’s incarceration, warning that Pakistan faced “a defining test” for its democratic fabric. Ask yourself: what was happening in Pakistan that week that might have made an editor reach for that particular story, with that particular angle, at that particular time? The country was entrusted to mediate between Washington and Tehran. If that is a democracy in crisis, one wonders what a democracy in good health looks like.

I want to be careful here. I am not a lifafa (government apologist). Pakistan has real problems — press freedom, political repression, Imran Khan in a cell. These are legitimate stories. But legitimacy and timing are two different things. Pakistan did what it always does with guests. It opened the door wide. Foreign correspondents were welcomed, hosted, taken around — offered kababs, briefings and the carefully arranged access. And some, predictably, were approached by people with grievances to air, stories to place, agendas to move. You invite the world’s press and someone will try to use them as a mailbox.

But I want to sit with a more uncomfortable question. Why do we need them here at all? This isn’t a hostile question. It’s genuine. Pakistan has journalists. Brilliant ones. People who have spent careers understanding this country’s layers — its politics, its contradictions, its remarkable capacity to surprise. They have the sources, the language, the institutional memory that no parachute correspondent can acquire in a 10-day visit. Yet the assumption, baked so deep, is that the outside eye is the trustworthy one. That proximity to a place contaminates your judgement, while proximity to a London or Washington newsroom does not. Nobody asks the foreign correspondent whose interests they serve. Nobody asks which governments quietly pick up the phone to an editor. Nobody asks why certain stories get commissioned at certain moments.

In the same fortnight that Pakistan was being taken seriously as a diplomatic actor, some media outlets ran pieces that deserve scrutiny — not because criticism of Pakistan is illegitimate, but because the framing, the timing and the sourcing tell a story of their own. The FT’s report on our defence chief’s mediation efforts, for example, is serious journalism. It credits his access — days spent in Tehran meeting not just political leaders but the Revolutionary Guards, while maintaining constant contact with the White House. It quotes Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group praising his “whole-of-the-system approach to mediation” — an approach designed to ensure no Iranian power centre felt left out.

Why are certain stories commissioned at certain moments?

But then the frame shifts. Pakistan’s neutrality is questioned. Its mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia becomes a liability. Its financial ties with Trump’s circle become a conflict of interest. Its silence on the naval blockade becomes evidence of partiality. And when Iran didn’t show up for the second round of talks — Iran’s decision — it became, in the telling, a story about Pakistan’s credibility.

What do we call it when a Western power brings its alliances to a negotiating table? We call it leverage. We call it relationships. We call it experience. The FT itself notes that the Qataris and Omanis — previous mediators — have their own deep ties with Washington. Nobody called that a conflict of interest. When Pakistan does the same thing, the framing is entirely different. The facts may be identical. The label is not.

Framing is everything in for­e­ign corresp­ondence. It dec­ides what the story is about before the rea­der has read a single word. And once a fra­me is establis­hed, ie, Pakistan as ‘compromised broker’, Pakistan as ‘unreliable partner’, every subsequent fact gets filtered through it. There is a harder truth underneath all of this. Foreign correspondents do not fill a vacuum. They fill a gap that Pakistani journalism has not always had the resources and freedom to fill itself. When local outlets are pressured into silence, when editors make calls that have nothing to do with news judgement, when the story that needs telling goes untold, someone else will tell it. In a frame that serves their purposes, not yours.

We should ask who funds the foreign correspondent, why certain stories land at certain moments. But we should ask something else too. Are we telling our own story well enough that the world has no excuse to get it wrong? Are we producing the journalism that makes the parachute correspondent redundant? That is the harder question. Until Pakistani journalism answers it honestly, the foreign press will keep arriving, ‘concern’ fully loaded, at moments of their choosing. Not ours.

The writer is a former journalism instructor.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2026