Pakistan’s Finance Minister Asad Umer interview with BBC show Hardtalk is a trending topic among country’s Twitterati.
Apart from whether Finance Minister appeared convincing or not what remained a talk of the town was BBC’s alleged censure of Indian Spy Kulbhushan Yadhav’s mention. Twitterati slammed BBC for showing its bias towards India and leaving out the section where Asad Umer talked about Kalbhushan Jadhav to explain how India was behind destabilizing Balochistan region.
Why BBC Omitted Mention of Yadhav from Asad Umer Interview?
It all began with Pakistan’s Minister for Human Rights, Shireen Mazari’s tweet that criticized BBC Hardtalk for showing bias towards India and not airing the mention of Kulbhushan Yadhav by Asad Umer.
Interestingly, BBC Hardtalk cherry picked Asad Umer’s response to Suadi involvement in Khashoggi’s murder but came up with a seemingly flawed explanation of why it omitted Indian spy’s mention.
BBC ‘S Explanation of Omitting Jadhav Mention
Later, BBC explained that it didn’t on air Asad Umer interview where he mentioned about Indian spy, due to some technical issue. It further elaborated that the recorded interview was edited for being too long for the broadcast slot.
As per explanation the omission was mainly on technical grounds and it had nothing to do with censorship.
Well, Pakistani journalists are not buying that explanation. First of all the mention was not long enough to take too much time, secondly, BBC could have cropped other things but it only chose to edit the Kulbhushan Jadhav part. Briefly, there are a number of doubtful things making Pakistanis believe that leaving out Indian spy part was a deliberate attempt.
People were also calling on double standards of BBC. The channel even tweeted about Asad Umer’s response to Khashoggi’s murder question along with airing the section but didn’t give coverage to mention of Indian sponsored terrorist’s mention who played his role in sabotaging peace in Balochistan.
So, what kind or human rights violation really matters to the world?
Journalists Calling It A Weird Explanation
Well, it is hard to expect that BBC’s omission of Indian spy’s mention from Asad Umer’s interview was not intentional, after we look at cherry-picked statements being posted on Twitter. But it is good to see that channel has now said to give a full coverage to interview without any omission. It is to be noted that said BBC show is popular for hard questions that anchors ask their guests and it is very well reflective of its name HardTalk.
