Pakistani broadcaster Geo News has been issued a show-cause notice by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) for airing content related to the death of legendary singer Asha Bhosle, the channel’s managing director said on Monday.
Azhar Abbas, managing director of Geo News and president of the Association of Electronic Media Editors and News Directors in Pakistan, shared the news on X.
“It has always been customary to revisit and celebrate the work of iconic artists when reporting on them. In fact, for an artist of Asha Bhosle’s stature, we should have shared even more of her timeless and memorable songs than we did. Yet, Pakistan’s electronic media regulator, PEMRA, has chosen to restrict this,” he said in the post.
Asha Bhosle died in Mumbai on April 12 at the age of 92. Tributes poured in, including from across the border, with many artists condoling the death of the legendary singer.
Actor Ahsan Khan called Bhosle’s death the “end of an era”. Another actor, Adnan Siddiqui, paid tribute to the singer, saying her voice “had a way of filling even the quietest moments with something devastatingly human”.
“Today, it’s that same silence that feels heavier. Thank you for the emotions you gave us, the memories you became and the magic you left behind. You’ll always be heard, somewhere… somehow,” he wrote.
The PEMRA notice to Geo News
The PEMRA notice was issued to Geo News on Sunday, highlighting the Pakistani channel’s broadcast of Indian songs and visuals from Indian films while airing news of Asha Bhosle’s death.
The notice called it a “wilful defiance [of] the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of Pakistan… wherein airing of Indian content was prohibited”.
In 2018, the Pakistan Supreme Court banned the airing of Indian content on TV channels in the country.
The notice said Geo’s broadcast was in violation of Section 20(f) of the PEMRA Ordinance, 2002, which obligates Pakistani channels to comply with the codes of programmes and advertisements approved by the Authority and to appoint an in-house monitoring committee, under intimation to the Authority, to ensure compliance with the codes.
The regulator has summoned Geo News CEO Mir Ibrahim Rehman for April 27. The channel has also been asked to explain in writing, within 14 days, why legal action should not be initiated against them.
PEMRA faces criticism
Many in Pakistan, including prominent personalities, criticised PEMRA’s action on Geo News.
“Art and culture have no boundaries and can not be confined,” Pakistani journalist Gharidah Farooqui wrote in an X post.
Journalist Rauf Klasra asked the regulator not to take the country back into the Zia-ul-Haq era.
“Pls dont take us back to the draconian years of the 80s of Gen Zia, when even owning a VCR/movies was a crime and punishable. It’s the age of Netflix and AI. Don’t make us look like a fool in this age,” he wrote.
