{"id":10780,"date":"2019-11-05T14:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/05\/extreme-fear-and-self-censorship-media-in-pakistan-under-attack"},"modified":"2019-11-05T14:00:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T05:00:44","slug":"extreme-fear-and-self-censorship-media-freedom-under-threat-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=10780","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Extreme fear and self-censorship&#8217;: media freedom under threat in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Journalists face blanked-out articles, pulled funding and channel shutdown if they dare to criticise the state <\/p>\n<p>For almost five years, Talat Hussain, a well-known Pakistani journalist, hosted a popular current affairs talk show on Geo TV, openly discussing the political issues of the day. But last year all that changed. Forced to comply with a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2018\/apr\/05\/pakistan-journalist-danger-paris-pakistani-army-dissent\">total blackout<\/a>\u201d of news that criticised the military or the government of the new prime minister, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/imran-khan\">Imran Khan<\/a>, Hussain found himself unable to speak freely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy programmes were being repeatedly censored,\u201d said Hussain. \u201cI was told that any suggestion that the 2018 elections were rigged or that the army was part of the running of the government by Imran Khan was unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/05\/extreme-fear-and-self-censorship-media-in-pakistan-under-attack\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalists face blanked-out articles, pulled funding and channel shutdown if they dare to criticise the state For almost five years, Talat Hussain, a well-known Pakistani journalist, hosted a popular current affairs talk show on Geo TV, openly discuss&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[458,359,238,671,672,60,54,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-imran-khan","category-media","category-newspapers","category-newspapers-magazines","category-pakistan","category-press-freedom","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10781,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780\/revisions\/10781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}