Journalists staged a walkout from the National Assembly’s press gallery on Tuesday, a day after the federal government announced it was withdrawing a controversial media bill.
Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb announced on Monday that the government would withdraw the the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority amendment bill.
Aurangzeb said that the bill was withdrawn after strong oppostions from members of the media and journalist unions.
“We wanted to abolish the old black law of PEMRA,” Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said at the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting on Monday.
The bill was formed after consultation with a joint action committee which included members from print and electronic media. But some private news channel anchors, including Hamid Mir, Amir Mateen, Muhammad Malik, and Kashif Abbasi raised the point that they were consulted before the bill in the last meeting of the committee.
They were of the view that the government has “divided” the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists into four to five sections and unilaterally summoned one of the sections to have their signatures on the bill.
