Supreme Court Justice Athar Minallah said on Saturday that had the fundamental right to freedom of speech been duly acknowledged, Pakistan might have been averted its division into two.
Addressing the Second Law Bridge Workshop on Superior Court Reporting in Islamabad, Justice Minallah said the onset of an unending cycle of censorship traced back to the censor of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech on August 11, 1947.
In acknowledging the contemporary challenges, Justice Minallah asserted that states find themselves unable to control the burgeoning expression of opinions in this technological era.
However, he said the reporters doing vlogging have an economic interest too therefore they should maintain balance in their comments.
He advised the journalists that revealing the identity of a child or woman or misreporting something was a violation of the journalism’s ethics.
Justice said he learnt a great deal of journalism from court reporters.
“When the matter of 18th constitutional amendment was raised, many forces were against it. A reporter asked me, what will the Supreme Court do about the 18th Amendment? I replied ‘in my opinion, the SC should not interfere in the constitutional amendment’,” he said.
Emphasizing the importance of judicial independence, he maintained that a judge should remain impervious to the influence of social media, as succumbing to such pressures would constitute a breach of judicial oath.
