{"id":186119,"date":"2021-05-31T15:29:45","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T15:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpj.org\/?p=106273"},"modified":"2021-05-31T15:29:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T15:29:45","slug":"pakistani-talk-show-host-hamid-mir-suspended-after-critical-comments-on-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/31\/pakistani-talk-show-host-hamid-mir-suspended-after-critical-comments-on-the-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani talk show host Hamid Mir suspended after critical comments on the military"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Washington, D.C., May 31, 2021–In response to the suspension<\/a> today of Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, host of \u201cCapital Talk\u201d news program, by the Geo News network following Mir\u2019s critical comments about the Pakistan military at a rally on Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cForcing a popular news talk show host like Hamid Mir off the air after voicing criticism of Pakistan\u2019s military\u2014and support for a fellow journalist\u2014only underscores the lack of true press freedom in Pakistan,\u201d said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. \u201cCritical comments about key state institutions are an important component of democracy, not a scourge to be eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mir\u2019s suspension followed comments about the military at a rally outside the National Press Club in Islamabad in support of journalist Asad Ali Toor, according to news<\/a> reports<\/a>, video posted on Twitter<\/a>, text messages from Mir to CPJ, and a statement issued by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, which was posted on Twitter<\/a>. Toor was assaulted at his home last week, as CPJ documented<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Geo News representative, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, told CPJ in a telephone conversation that Geo was in the process of drafting a statement for public release on Mir’s suspension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mir survived an attempt on his life in 2014, when he was hit by six bullets in Karachi, as CPJ reported<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n\n


\r\nThis content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists<\/a> and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington, D.C., May 31, 2021\u2013In response to the suspension today of Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, host of \u201cCapital Talk\u201d news program, by the Geo News network following Mir\u2019s critical comments about the Pakistan military at a rally on Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement: \u201cForcing a popular news talk show host…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5097,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26391,27140,27141,26392,26947],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5097"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186120,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186119\/revisions\/186120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}