POREG VIEW: Citing the WikiLeaks cables, major Pakistani newspapers on Dec 09 carried stories that purported to detail eye-popping American assessments of India’s military and civilian leaders. 

A day later, on Dec 10, The News International, and the Express Tribune, which is published in cooperation with the International Herald Tribune, have offered ‘profuse’ apologies to the readers admitting that the WikiLeaks cables attacking India were a ‘dubious’ story and ‘may have been planted’.

Both dailies as also Jang, which also carried the ‘story’ amongst other Urdu dailies, have not said who had ‘misled’ them. Shaheen Sehbai, Group Editor, The News, attributed the story to the "agencies’ but did not elaborate.

Declan Walsh exposed the ‘fake WikiLeaks’ in The Guardian. His despatch said the ‘story’ was credited to the Online Agency, an Islamabad-based news service that has frequently run pro-army stories in the past. No journalist is by-lined.

Obviously, his curiosity to undertake an extensive search of the WikiLeaks data base  (both published and unpublished) was the tone and tenor of the ‘Cables’, which portrayed Indian generals as "vain", "geeky", "self-obsessed", "petulant", "idiosyncratic".  engaged in a "genocide" against Muslims in Kashmir, and supporting Islamist militants in North Waziristan and Balochistan.

These ‘cables’ also heaped praise on Pakistan’s top generals and exonerated the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of any involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The Guardian avers that this bogus story, a laundry list of Pakistani accusations against India, is the first use of the WikiLeaks revelations for propaganda purposes.

Observers of South Asian scene point out that it is not the first time that the Pakistani ‘agencies’ have gone into an overdrive to ‘create’ and ‘plant’ incendiary evidence against India’s involvement in the country’s domestic troubles. Whatever be his other failings, the Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik was frank enough to state on record that there is no substance in the allegation against India hand.  The fake leaks show the limits on Malik’s turf.

According to The News, the daily contacted the owner of the Online news agency about the veracity of the ‘Leak’. The Agency owner, Mohsin Baig said he had just returned from Turkey where he had accompanied the Prime Minister Gilani on his official visit ,and was, therefore, in the dark about how the story was released. The Online’s news editor Siddique Sajid also told The News that he too was unaware about the source of the story.

“Despite repeated requests, he (Mohsin Baig) declined to contact the employee who had downloaded the news, and asked us to check with them the next day. On further inquiries, we learnt from our sources that the story was dubious and may have been planted”, said The News on Dec 10.

It added: “A check on the Internet as well as The Guardian report showed that the story was not based on WikiLeaks cables, and had, in fact , originated from some local (Pakistani) websites such as The Daily Mail and Rupee News known for their close connections with certain intelligence agencies”. 

As Robert Mackey said in the NY Times that Pakistan’s Daily Mail, has a reputation for ‘reporting unreliable conspiracy theories that serve to deflect blame from Pakistani officials’. In September, it carried a ‘story’ suggesting that a Pakistani cricket scandal was actually a nefarious Indian plot. Promptly, blog, Café Pyala, called Daily Mail “the purveyor of all conspiracy theories” focused plainly to be “crude propaganda about India”.

In a post (Thursday) about the articles based on the fake WikiLeaks cables, Cafe Pyala noted that the newspapers reported their source as simply, “agencies,” before asking, “How stupid do the “agencies” really think Pakistanis are?”

The Express Tribune is much more specific than The News in pointing at the direction of the fake leak.

“Apparently there is conviction among intelligence agencies that Pakistani newspaper readers will believe almost anything”, the daily said tendering an apology to the readers.

Its editorial went on to say: “The attempted fraud offers an insight into the desperation of elements behind it. It seems this is the best they could come up with to try and tarnish an ‘enemy’ country and shine up their own standing. It is worth noting that while documents speaking of the weaknesses or wrongdoings of Pakistani politicians have been given much publicity in the country, those that direct attention towards the doing of the military or the dangers posed by activities of groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba have been virtually suppressed. The ‘self-censorship’ of the media plays some part in this; continued agency influence in press circles is a factor too. The whole sorry business should remind newsrooms not to allow themselves to be used. We hope it will also convince those involved in the attempted deception that the Pakistani public does indeed possess some grey matter and is quite capable of recognising efforts to fool it”.

What more can be said in post-script?