Veteran journalist Talat Hussain seemed to have let out a breath of fresh air with the exposé he posted to his STH channel earlier—entailing the now-retired duo of General Faiz and General Bajwa’s pursuit of hindering his career under the guise of disloyal conduct—and rationalising his side of the story which he had found himself entrapped within with the advent of a surprising Naya Daur interview with General Qamar Bajwa.
Hussain, who currently hosts a program with Samaa, was alleged by General Bajwa to have been fired from his prominent position as an anchor at Geo News by his own subordinate, General Faiz. Bajwa himself denies any wrongdoing on his own part, and claimed to have not known much about Hussain’s situation.
Hussain justified, by credence of WhatsApp messages, that this had not been the case. Pressure had succumbed to Geo’s editorial staff from the retired military generals, with constant and alarming threats to take their channels off the air order to face ‘the punishment of the gavel’ or similar if they did not silence Talat Hussain’s brashness with regards to his stance on the military at the time. “The boys are quite furious at the moment,” texted a managerial staffer to Hussain at one point during the ordeal. The boys, in this instance, had been code-switching for General Faiz and General Bajwa; “We have been given a clear-cut deadline of midnight tonight, or else all of our channels will be taken off of the air.
“The main problem is not any particular person, ego, or animosity I assure you,” the staffer continued. “The main problem is that we are facing a gun at one end and a judge’s gavel that is not aimed at justice but [rather is] aimed at our [Geo’s] heads.
“What are the choices?”