When Journalists Stop Being Journalists

 

The Brussels episode involving Sohail Warraich is not an isolated faux pas; it is symptomatic of a deeper rot in Pakistani journalism. Once a journalist earns a measure of credibility, too many begin to imagine themselves not merely as reporters but as judges, prosecutors, and policymakers. They abandon the modest craft of reporting facts and instead assume the authority to declare how politics, institutions, and society “ought to be.” It is a dangerous transformation, and it is hollowing out the profession.

Let us be plain: journalism is about telling things as they are, not as one wishes them to be. Yet, in Pakistan, senior journalists routinely cross that line. They take sides shamelessly—defending political parties, shielding the establishment, or championing business tycoons. They masquerade as neutral commentators while peddling the agendas of power. And when they are caught out, they hide behind claims of “freedom of expression,” as though distortion were the same thing as truth-telling.

The irony is bitter. These self-anointed guardians of democracy, these supposed tribunes of the plebeians, have themselves become a class of unaccountable elites. They pontificate from television screens, write with the hubris of final authority, and use the public’s trust as a bargaining chip in their backroom dealings. In doing so, they reduce journalism to a marketplace of narratives, each bought and sold by the highest bidder.

Media houses are equally complicit. Many no longer act as institutions of public trust but as corporations chasing profit and political influence. If journalists appear unhinged, it is because their employers have let them run wild—or worse, encouraged them—so long as it serves the bottom line. When a newsroom’s guiding principle is neither truth nor public service but survival in a hyper-politicized market, recklessness becomes the rule rather than the exception.

It is time for Pakistani journalists to return to their senses. A journalist is not a judge, nor a general, nor a politician. Journalism must reclaim its humility, its restraint, and its discipline—or else admit openly that it has become a partisan racket. Without this reckoning, the public will continue to view journalists not as watchdogs of democracy but as dunces, fools, and opportunists of the first order. And perhaps, harsh though it sounds, that perception will not be wrong.

In the end, our so-called journalists—masquerading as judges, politicians, Ciceros, and generals—rush in where even angels fear to tread, and in their conceit they turn hubris into the fate of a nation.