Journalist Gharidah Farooqi found herself a focus of PTI's ire on Friday for discussing the performance of Federal Minister for Communications Murad Saeed in her programme G for Gharida. Shortly after PTI unleashed its anger, the hashtag #GforGhatya was one of the trop trends on Twitter.
Farooqi and her guests were discussing the recently awards given to the top ministries for achieving their targets in which Saeed's ministry came on top.
Farooqi asked the panel on her show why they thought Saeed was awarded the top position.
Analyst Mohsin Baig quoted the federal minister saying he had built at least 6,000 km roads across the country, but Baig said he didn't know anything about these roads.
"China refused to allow visit of Murad Saeed to Beijing because the federal minister has addressed a press conference on China-Sukkur motorway and waved papers there calling the project [which initiated in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government] a fraud," he said.
He also talked about China's response on the presser, saying Beijing issued a rebuttal on it and later the federal minister had to apologize.
At this the anchorperson wondered how Prime Minister Imran Khan was satisfied at the performance of the federal minister despite all these issues.
The discussion then took a new turn and Baig brought up the memoir of Reham Khan, Prime Minister's ex-wife.
He said one may find the reasons in her book but did not delve deeper. The host did not probe further.
Another panel member Tariq Mahmood said: "Only two people are serious in it: PM Imran who conducted the ceremony and Murad Saeed who received the top award. We should not get serious about it."
Following airing of the programme, Pemra issued a show cause notice to News One channel for “highly derogatory/ demeaning remarks… without any editorial check”.
Responding to that particular clip from her programme, many journalists took to say that gossip and conjecture did not qualify as journalism.
While many others questioned whether it is journalism.
But the hashtag garnered the support of the ruling party and its officials which took the abuse towards the journalist to a different level.
Azhar Mashwani who is the focal person of CM Punjab on Digital Media created a poll on his Twitter and asked what the show should be renamed.
Several federal ministers also tweeted against the journalist.
The ruling PTI's social media account also took part in the Twitter trend against the journalist.
However, a lawyer Ayesha Ijaz Khan wondered why people were angry at the journalist saying "Basically Reham Khan wrote a book. Even those who couldn’t stand her seem to have read it. If what she wrote was untrue, she could’ve easily been sued 4 defamation by Imran Khan and other PTI members but they didn’t sue!"
