Back in the day when I was in my teens and cable TV just started gaining popularity in the masses, it was the first time I got introduced to the term Reality TV and there was no other show that appeared horribly REAL then the Jerry Springers show. Bunch of low life Americans (the term given by rich Americans to not so rich Americans) were called upon the show to discuss their personal affairs. Each episode of the show focuses on topics such as adultery, divorce, homophobia, homosexuality, incest, infidelity, pedophilia, pornography, prostitution, racism, strange fetishes, dwarfism, or transvestism . The audience (spectators is the right term) was often encouraged by the host of the show to ridicule these guests with their taunting questions. No issue on the table ever got solved and the show always, yes always ended in a catfight.

Now back in the day I used to wonder why people like watching trash TV, what kind of entertainment a normal person gets by watching other people getting ridiculed, beaten up and humiliated on the tele. What form entertainment is this and does this even qualify for amusement. I used to enjoy this (false) sense of moral superiority on the west; “We are poor and our national reserves might be empty, but when it comes to socio cultural values, people in the West should borrow a thing or two from us.” But unfortunately it didn’t take long and the reality bit me in the ass with Pakistan’s very own independent media.

Low budget but high profile, politically charged talk shows took over the entire prime time entertainment. Who saw that coming eh? Humayun Saeed (actor) was replaced by Sheikh Rasheed (pimp/politician) and Maria Wasti (actress) was replaced by more annoying Marvi Memon (politician) but the popularity level only increased. As a result, Pakistani viewers today, know more politicians, lawyers, ISI agents now than they ever knew anything about national hockey team or Lollywood.

So what went wrong?

Well, Jerry Springers happened to the Pakistani media. After Musharraf stripped off his wardi (uniform/skin) and CJ Choudary got restored there was no issue left worth fighting on the tele. News channels needed content for their talk shows and politicians needed scandals to keep them in these shows. So a new trend started where blaming, ridiculing and cursing became the entertaining features of these shows. You hardly ever hear a good news on these news channels. The ratio of good news to a bad news is 1:1000, TV anchors continue to highlight gossipy issues and common man (boring) problems are conveniently ignored. We all witnessed how the Saad Khan case was deliberately covered up by the mainstream media who claims to have “har khabar per nazar” (Eye on every news). TV anchors bluntly refused to bring Saad Khan’s case on their shows and the excuse they gave was lack of evidence but on the other hand a retired ISI member was allowed to use Pakistani Television as a confession box (no evidence was required there eh?).

A recent event that shocked every TV watching Pakistani, was the conversation that took place between two members of the national assembly Dr. Ferdos Aashiq Awan (PPP Minister) and Kashmala Tariq (disputed association with PMLQ) in a political talk show. In this show Ferdos Baji accused Kashmala of things that even a punk on the streets will think twice before uttering. And the language she used made me ask this question to myself:

“Why on God’s green Earth did I vote for these people?”

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not anti democracy or wish to see media getting controlled by the Govt. But aren’t these people professional enough to realize that what kind of conversation is allowed on the Tele when you are holding a public seat or running a national channel? But did any of the two parties learn anything from this shocking incident? The answer is NO, because soon after this show more TV channels invited the same guests to have another round of catfight and Baji Ferdous is anything but ashamed of what she said. This brings us to the conclusion that elites who are running this country are no better than the low lives on the streets in fact worse. As for the media , get ready for the time when they will be reporting about your personal life and the crowd will be chanting “Jerry Jerry!!”

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