The Council of Newspaper Editors (CPNE) has condemned the curtailing of government advertisements to Dawn Media Group’s television and radio outlets, and called on the government to immediately rescind the ban.
In a statement issued on Friday, CPNE said that Dawn was among Pakistan’s most respected media outlets, and stopping the release of government ads to the group amounted to financially crippling the organisation.
The statement, attributed to the council’s president and secretary general, recalled that the Dawn Media Group had been providing unbiased information since the creation of Pakistan.
Initially, the release of advertisements to the group’s flagship newspaper was stopped, and now its electronic platforms had also been deprived of ads.
Earlier this year, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) noted in its ‘Islamabad Declaration’ that Dawn has been denied advertisements by the federal and Punjab governments since October 2024 “because of its professional and critical approach in reporting and editorials”.
The Sindh government, too, has periodically withheld its ads for arbitrary reasons.
This was not the only way in which authorities have tried to obstruct Dawn’s reporting – after the so-called ‘Dawn Leaks’ saga, the paper’s circulation was blocked in large parts of the country, especially the cantonment areas, on the orders of certain individuals.
