The Mediagate (also known as Anchorgate[1]), 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.
[1] Following this, the media war was further pushed into a 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.
[5] 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.
Since the early 1990s, the privately owned NTM, together with STN, faced generic competition with state-owed PTV over on television ratings and series of commercial programming.
[7] On 7 June 2012, Pakistani real estate investor Malik Riaz secretly approached a number of country's leading news channels and shared detailed information on camera to provide videos, documentation, and receipts of transferring ₨.
[9] Riaz's statements were also confirmed by leading lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, who claimed to know the existence of such business meetings and payment, and also shared it with Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry a while ago.
[10] In an attempt at damage control, Dunya TV channel's management registered a criminal case against "unidentified" people responsible for publicising off-air footage of a controversial interview with Malik Riaz; no names were put forward as suspects.
[13] The rivalry within the news channels heated up when the Aaj TV broadcast and televised the documented records payments allegedly made to the country's top 19 senior-political journalists by Malik Riaz.
[14] The documents showed an account of favours allegedly given to these journalists in shapes of money, luxury vehicles, and property recorded in these trademarked letterheads of Bahria Town.
[19] On a live TV show, Today with Kamran Khan, its host, Kamran Khan, strongly denied the allegations and quoted: "I will leave this profession if proven guilty of bribery"[20] After the news of Mediagate and accusations against each other aired on television channels, the senior justices of the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took independent sou mote actions against Malik Riaz and the television channels.
[25] Television hosts, Hamid Mir,[26] Shahid Masood,[27] Meher Bokhari,[28] Mushtaq Minhas, Nusrat Javed,[29] Talat Hussain,[30] Hasan Nisar,[31] and Mubashir Luqman,[32] denied all the allegations and terming it as "fraudulent".
[35] The documents corroborate claims that certain channels gained ratings through receiving advertisement revenue from the government that was disproportionate to their viewership share, raising serious questions about the motives for doling out arbitrary disbursements.