Why The Front Page

By Mazhar Abbas

The Front Page | October 19

PEOPLE tell us journalists that they have stopped reading newspapers and watching television news as neither gives them anything worth reading or watching. It’s all fake or lies, they say. They also criticise the media for being biased. The unpleasant truth is, they are right.

Pakistan is at a crossroads and so is its media. Whether print or digital, it is the front page that matters. For newspapers it is headlines, for TV it’s breaking news and for digital it’s Tik Tok. I wanted to create a group of like-minded journalists to address the decline in the standards of journalism, as well as the widening gulf between elder and younger journalists.

The Front Page is not a union or an association or even a non-profit organisation. It is a small forum of journalists who agree on the challenges the news media industry faces and want to address these issues through dialogue. Our plan is to engage with a diverse group of stakeholders on the state, and future, of the newsroom.

This website is one example of the strong feelings we have about press freedom, threats to journalists as well as the state of journalism itself. We hope to organise seminars, workshops and lectures on media-related issues.

The Front Page is thus an idea, a way forward. It is a headline based on facts; there is nothing fake about it.