ISLAMABAD: The\nPakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) has decided to launch the second\nphase of \u201cSave the Journalist Movement\u201d from Sunday (today) to mark the Press\nFreedom Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sit-in would be staged outside Parliament House in Islamabad\non Sunday, announced the leadership of the PFUJ and the Rawalpindi Islama\u00adbad\nUnion of Journalists (RIUJ) in a statement. They said that sit-ins would\ncontinue till their demands were met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They said that \u201cunannounced censorship\u201d and \u201cuse of advertisements\nas a weapon against freedom of the press\u201d should be stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They called for withdrawal of the recently introduced\ncentralised media policy as it was in conflict with the Pakistan\nTehreek-i-Insaf manifesto and press freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They emphasised the need for regional newspapers to save\nthousands of journalists and media workers from becoming unemployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They said that the media industry was on the brink of\ncollapse even before the coronavirus crisis due to the government\u2019s failure to\npay dues of billions of rupees of TV channels and newspapers. \u201cNow owners of TV\nchannels and newspapers have started resorting to sacking journalists and\nworkers and pay cuts and several media houses have not paid salaries to\nemployees for 10 months. So immediate payments should be made to media houses\nand these payments should be made conditional on payment of salaries to\njournalists and media workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PFUJ\/RIUJ leaders said in view of the coronavirus\npandemic, the government should announce a special bailout package to protect\njournalists and media workers from financial hardships and offer an\ninterest-free loan of Rs1 million to those journalists and media workers who\nwere suffering from economic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The income of press clubs across the country depended on\nnews conferences and government grants, they said. People have stopped holding\npress conferences after the outbreak of coronavirus. So in view of the dire\nfinancial situation, special grants should be provided to press clubs and until\nthe epidemic was over, electricity and gas bills of press clubs should be\nwaived, they demanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newspaper: Dawn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) has decided to launch the second phase of “Save the Journalist Movement” from Sunday (today) to mark the Press Freedom Day. A sit-in would be staged outside Parliament House in Islamabad on Sunday, announced the leadership of the PFUJ and the Rawalpindi Islama­bad Union of Journalists (RIUJ) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[4,3038],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8957"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12366,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8957\/revisions\/12366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}