[Triumph of e-activism] SAMA TV decides to fire Maya Khan, ban her controversial morning show

PT Report

ISLAMABAD, January 28: The social media seems to have played an important role in bringing down the controversial anchor, Maya Khan, who aired footages in her morning show in which some middle class women and men were shown chasing couples, some female clad in Burqa, in a Karachi Park.

Through this show, Maya Khan later said, she wanted to discourage the trend of “dating” among the youth and make them “more responsible” towards their parents and families.

The show, however, ignited a mammoth rage as young people and rights activists saw it as a breach of privacy and media’s intrusion in personal lives of the citizens. The campaign grew with time with the help of new-media tools, like facebook, twitter and youtube, as anti-SAMA and anti-Maya messages, in the form of quips, very harsh rejections and satirical productions, poked fun at SAMA and Maya.

Writers, anchors, lawyers and human rights activists built the reaction and some of them decided to knock at the door of courts, to bring senses back to SAMA and Maya.

A half-hearted apology rendered by Maya Khan and SAMA did not seem to have any significant effect on rights activists and citizen groups campaigning against them.

Today, however, CEO of SAMA has written a letter in which he has said that “operational reviews” were being conducted internally at SAMA during the last week, to ascertain facts and reach at a conclusion. He informed that Maya Khan had been asked to “render unconditional apology” for her behaviour, which she refused. The letter further states that she was asked by the CEO to apologize for hosting that particular show but she again refused.

Based on this situation, the CEO has written in his letter, SAMA TV has decided to serve termination notice to Maya Khan and her team on Monday and that her show will be taken off air from Monday.

The CEOs letter, however, failed to describe why the controversial moral-vigilantism was not stopped from going on air.

Maya Khan has said that her opponents have conspired to get her off the air.