Mediagate

The Mediagate (also known as Anchorgate ), is a common term describing a period of political competition in Pakistan, which eventually led to a media scandal between some mainstream televised news channels, hosted by their anchors and correspondents. On 15 June 2012, an anonymous off-air camera discussion was released on YouTube, it quickly grasped the media industry and attracted the nationwide attention.

In a Dunya News (lit. World News) special interview conducted jointly by Mehr Bukhari and Mubashir Lukman, the off-camera video showed anchors informally discussing questions and preparing Riaz Hussain, a real estate oligarch, suggested that the interview was pre-planned to an extent. The footage instigated media war among the television news channels that went head-to-head in a battle for PEMRA's rating each month. The revelation of footage led the deposing of Lukman from Dunya News and at the same time, Dunya News bulletins targeted Geo News of having conspired to embarrass Dunya News, after one of its leading correspondent criticised the channel for being unprofessional. Following this, the media war was further pushed into new dimension and a larger overall struggle between many of the leading news channels, which accused their rivals of being corrupt, dishonest and sleazy journalism.

Enlightening the profession of journalism and the credibility of their independent 24-hour news cycle sources, the news channels employed many tactics to gain more better ratings and reliability over their competitors, including the use of aggressive journalism, cutthroat tactics, defections of several news correspondents between the news channels. This media war was subsequently ended after a successful intervention and suo motu actions independently taken by the senior justices of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

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