KAR ACHI: Every citizen shall have the right and access to information and in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law.

This was the topic of discussion at a seminar organised by the Aawaz Institute of Media and Management Sciences (AIMS) in collaboration with the Karachi Press Club here on Thursday.

Former chairman of the mass communication department at Fuuast Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan set the ball rolling by pointing out that it was the media`s responsibility to make people aware. `Therefore we have Article 19 (A) in the Constitution of Pakistan.

The taxpayers of this country have a right to know how their money is being used and what is going on,` he said.

Scholar Dr Irfan Aziz said the concept of national interest and freedom of expression were being treated as if they were a religious matter. `No one is allowed to question anything or raise a voice against it. And if they do, they find themselves labelled as traitors of the state,` he said.

Ashraf Khan of Associated Press shared an account where he was reporting the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. `I was in Bagh district in [Azadj Kashmir. The place had received the brunt of the earthquake.

There was only the PSO petrol pump where I could charge my satellite phone. Doing so I noticed another sat-ellite phone also being charged there.

It belonged to an individual from the Lashkar-e-Taiba before it was banned,` he said.

`The owner of the phone said he was on the Indian side when the calamity took place and being familiar with the terrain he and his colleagues were some of the first to arrive and help out even before the government could do anything for the people affected by the disaster,` he said, adding that before filing his story, he discussed the piece of information with his editor and together they decided to leave out the fact about the man`s being at the Indian side when the quake happened.

`In doing so we avoided an unnecessary controversy. Besides, it was supposed to be a story focussing on the earthquake,` he said.

`It was our own mature-mindedness to report the happening with purpose and objectivity. It just goes to show that independent media is itself quite responsible and can be trusted.

Tahir Hassan Khan of The News said the government would not exactly tell you what was a `matter of national interest` but it would get you when it did not like what you wrote.

Mentioning Dawn reporter Cyril Almeida`s exclusive story `Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military`, senior journalist Mazhar Abbas said that television journalism here had become polarised and agenda-driven. `We are so divided ourselves as we put one another down that we have become confused about what and how to reporta story,` he said.

Providing examples from history, scholar Dr Riaz Sheikh that the media here was just learning to walk. `Let it stumble, fall and pick itself up again in order to teach itself how to move, he said.

Another senior journalist, Dr Jabbar Khattak of Awami Akhbar, said that today even if anyone dared to object to the Orange Line transit system, the government would see it as hurting national interests. `Freedom of speech and the right to information is our basic right. It is all about public interest not national interests,` he said.

Veteran journalist Ghazi Salahuddin said that defending public interest was really defending national interest. `The media, freedom of expression and the right to information is really a nation-building exercise,` he said while pointing to Dawn`s story by Mr Almeida.

`In my personal opinion, real news is that which someone somewhere is trying to stop from coming out,` he said. `And with Almeida`s story the government on one side wants to know who leaked it and on the other it calls it a fabricated piece of news. It is really kudos to Dawn for getting inside information public,` he said, while reminding how the fall of Dhaka was reported in the press.

`It was a tiny paragraph that read that on Dec 16, 1971, that only mentioned that Indian forces had entered Dhaka. And here we thought that we were winning the war!