It was flashed a while ago on a TV channel that Taliban in Hangu have ordered the natives to follow Islamic code of dress such that women must wear a veil when leaving their house and men must grow beards. This news is as FALSE as anything. Sources in Hangu city have no information of any such kind and there has been no information of such a directive in main Hangu City or its immediate suburbs, except in Orakzai Agency where such dictatorial orders are long in effect. But then Orakzai Agency is NOT ‘Hangu’.

It appears that certain media sources have started cashing news of fundamentalism and terrorism at the cost of fairness and media ethics. Terrorism has been made sensational and just the thing on air while in fact the practice is encouraging terrorism, instead of truly condemning it. Thus, we are facing the new question of the fairness of media in the way it reports things.

The biggest concern is lack of sources for corroborating a piece of news. I come from Hangu and know local media people. So I had the chance to verify the piece of news thus flashed. But imagine those hundreds of thousands of people sitting in other cities and towns, people who have no means to confirm an item. Will they not be misinformed on the situation? Hence a call for beware of any sensational news, especially regarding security and terrorism.