In October, last year, we started this section called “Letters to Editor”. Then, primarily the aim was to give due coverage to our readers’ individual level complaints, queries which we couldn’t entertain in our usual transmission.
However, from today, we won’t accept any letter based on a very unfortunate incident that happened this week. Following is the complete tale.
If you are following ProPakistani, then you may know that we had a stance against Telenor’s “Khamoshi ka Boycott”, which is still there. For raising our concerns, we did multiple posts on the said topic, two of which were under “Letters to Editor”.
In connection to this ongoing series of posts on “Khamoshi ka Boycott”, exactly after one month of our first post on topic, on March 22nd we received an email from a person named ‘Nabil Anjum’. We believe this email was sent to multiple bloggers with an article titled “Why Telenor is portraying Pakistan so negative?”.
This was actually a lifted article that was already published on ApnaTime.
Sender requested us to publish this article, however, we ignored it altogether as it was an ‘already published content’.
Later in the evening, Jameel Arif published the same article (that was sent to us as well) on his blog with a shocking revelation that document attached in the email was owned by Shamorck, the PR agency of Mobilink.
We have checked our email too, and we can confirm that Jameel Arif’s claim of Shamrock’s ownership of attached document is valid.
For the purpose, we contacted Shamrock, and asked if they are purposefully spreading this article about Telenor? to which they disowned this email, article and everything. They denied Shamrock’s involvement with this incident at any level, and explained that changing the properties of a word file isn’t a rocket science.
Mobilink told us that they condemn whatever has happened and company isn’t involved in it, directly or in-directly. Mobilink said that they are investigating the issue with their agency.
So who sent us this email then?
Case 1: Shamrock sent this email to various bloggers to get the article published. But as they are denying it – and we don’t have enough proofs so its just a theory.
Case 2: Another theory is that competition companies, maybe Ufone, Zong or Warid emailed the bloggers with this article attached. And they changed the properties and the ownership of word file.
Case 3: Telenor sent this article to bloggers (while changing the ownership of document) to get a breakthrough and block the criticism they are receiving for their campaign “Khamoshi ka Boycott”.
ProPakistani’s Stance on this:
In our opinion, keeping the interest in the mind, there can’t be the forth case. We strongly believe that no blogger, reader, PTA, trader, vendor, common person can do this except the up-mentioned 3 cases.
In any of the above mentioned 3 cases, the person / organization responsible for this act is trying to defame competition, which is highly condemnable.
At ProPakistani, we protest against this act, which has hampered PR, Blogging and Telecom community. As an action against it, we are pulling back our Letter to Editor section, which could be used for such illicit work.
Through sources, we have heard that Telenor and Mobilink management is meeting today, or tomorrow at most to discuss the matter. However, neither Telenor nor Mobilink has confirmed us anything on this meeting.
We are confident that we will be able to determine the original sender of this email in coming days. As always, we will keep you posted with whatever information we will get on this.
On a side note, did you notice that Telenor didn’t advertise “Khamoshi ka Boycott” during yesterday’s Pakistan Vs West Indies quarter finals?
holy shit you are again trying to turn this against Telenor lol … and no wonder u never noticed anything like this while another blog did. Now that we know the hypocrisy you should apologize right away
I am not turning it against Telenor. There’s no chance that Telenor sent this email – in my opinion, but i had to publish Shamrock’s viewpoint and they are denying it. So i can’t accuse them on this – given we don’t have facts.
And you don’t worry – this comment area will get filled with all the proofs very soon. Things will get crystal clear with time.
so you want to say with all the minions you will make it say what you want to say :S
Look at ur so called case no. 3 then think again (if u can) if u r turning it against telenor or not. And now u r saying that it’s not possible that telenor sent it. Contradict statements. Huh!
In the post above, i was to write the possibilities – facts. In comments, i gave my opinion
Ooh! Aamir bahi – I completely disagree with you here! Pulling back this section means a lot of valid people, companies, issues and products will go unnoticed!
These corporates, in a race to sabotage each other and gain market and promote their products and they just try to use your system to gain! I believe they will eventually sort it out in their meeting!
Pulling back this section won’t be a favorable decision if someone is trying to misuse it. My personal advice is to uncover whether Shamrock was behind it or not and carry on with this section!
rizwan shah sent the same article with his personal id to pak media yahoo group.
check here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pakistan-Media/message/8848
shamrock better not deny it
The link you have provided has following words in the message:
“Mobilink Official PR Agency – Negative Propaganda Against Telenor”
Sure this email was sent by rizwan shah but he copied article from telecomnewspk.com (who has written this line of negative propaganda in his article)
This doesn’t prove that email sent to bloggers was from him as well.
Dear MANNU i have received the same email via PAK Media Yahoo group and its send via the Official account of Rizwan Shah([email protected]), who is official representative of the Mobilink PR Agency SHAMROCK.
how pathetic of mobilink, no wonder no negative email has ever come up against mobilink itself. no letter came up even when mobilink was down wah wah .. now we get it
Agree, no one wrote us any letter on this – but we covered the whole event with at least 4 posts with complete insight of the event. Check this for details: https://propakistani.pk/category/cellular/mobilink/
you wrote em but they were pretty neutral. mobilink is involved in the dirty business
Go nd read them again, and let me know if we missed any fact or detail
It seems Like ProPakistani Team has taken an emotional decision. if something wrong has happened then make sure you take extra care before publishing any letter and keep this section continue.
+1
yes…
why not add some more checks to stop such things… and filter out the real problems to get them resolved…
this is a better solution than pulling it back…
See how you bloggers are shameless toys for people like Shamrock.
Djuice’s campaign for youth is best till date, that’s the way addressong yoputh can help, they want it aggressive but somweho you old limbs bloggers etc popped up with worthless comments on topic.
A sprite recently came with worst ever ad on how you do poondi in front of your girlfriedn and seems like you bloggers aren’t paid by rivals to cover that.
For the first time, negative coverage of Djuice for no reason, made level of bloggers including Propakistaniu (and its writers) very low.
We cover Telecom industry only.
And how about Nokia’s recent add, in which a boy is aksing girls to add him to make their social life better (And, you cover handsets) but here no rival will pay Pro and its writers.
We wish you could stop being those cheap Geo type news people and come back to being the good odl way that made Pro and you earn big respect.
while it should be condemned, this does NOT change the fact that telenor’s campaign is maligning Pakistan and is demotivating for people.
Aamir bhai you can trace ip address of email, and further lookup for the ip details for that given date/time stamp, that may be proven as proof of who actually sent that email!
We will have to go legal in that case. Bloggers are not prosecutors usually. If Telenor goes to FIA, we will surely co-operate with agencies to give them details
I don’t know who is right and who is wrong but i simply know we have to stop this discussion and focus and work only for the soft image of Pakistan, Be pakistani and think about pakistan if some people are working on it we have to back and highlight the both side of this type of messages may be behind the TVC company have good thinking but they have to discuss of sensitive issue before out. Being a Pakistani i Pray to all, Please think about Pakistan we are in very critical sitution.Please I request all pakistani stop this discussion who is wrong and who is right. Yeh Lari band karo aur pakistani huna ka saboot du.
I salute all blogger s community, please work on soft image of Pakistan.
I got lot of emails every day but i dont publish it on my blog due to above problems. Specially when we are going to write against anyone it will be about the company’s future (as we have readers for Pakistan Telecom sector) and being a responsible blogger we have to set terms and conditions for our-self too.
I think its good step by propakistan to stop LTE
Can you please educate admin of this blog too int he LIMITS regard and to remain UNBIASED!
Sorry for typo above,
Can you please educate admin of this blog too in the LIMITS regard and to remain UNBIASED!
Interesting discussion here. I sincerely wish Shamrock should come forward with an official word because its their name as a PR company that is at stake.
The document properties shared here show “Syed Irfan Ali” as author. Can Shamrock confirm if they have such person in their team?
Has ProPakistani team tried to trace the email ID? That may give some clue to the location.
Hard to believe a PR company puts common sense on one side and send scandalous material from a software that has their credentials stored. Either its a fixed match or they have done a professional suicide here.
So what? if even you published wrong article that cause defame to any company, are you gonna close propakistani? come on Admin, you should take utmost care and thats it. Letter to editor is a nice try and I think it gave you clues to so many problems that you missed.
Being a journalist i have a proposal all of you, the same problem was showing in Print media which you have faced, as per our one of leading news paper group they demand ID copy with every LTE who wants to publish his views and problems with Publication, i think we have to adopt this drill.
I request to Pro pakistani management don’t stop the LTE corner just streamline and demand identification before print the material
Use disqus and force people to use registered accounts.
Propakistani has proved itself to bend over every time mobilink shows them the “Money”. And with this there are simply trying to cover this fact and emotionally black mailing the readers by discontinuing the section. Bravo Propakistani, no are not Propaksitani in any sense but are ProMoney.
do not ignore my comment, if you choose to do so i will get it published on other blogs and expose you for the fraud that you are
What ever happened and whoever did this isn’t encouraging at all. But I have a question to you Aamir,
Being the editor of blog is it ethically, morally and professional good to leak out the privacy of sender. I mean whoever the sender is, whichever company, planet he/she belong to, he sent you and every one this letter to publish it. You have every right to publish it or not. But he sent this one because he had confidence in you guys. But how will you people (editor of all blogs) justify this act of leaking out the privacy of a sender publicly. This shouldn’t have happened. Whatever he/she did is not good at all. But people write to you people because they have confidence in you guys. Now by leaking this every one will assume that his/her privacy can be leaked or it had been done in past. By doing this you guys have lost my confidence. I don’t know about others. I have never seen anywhere this thing that privacy of a sender has been leaked out in such a manner. This is totally unprofessional, unethical. You haven’t done justice to your role and you haven’t done justice with sender.
I want this thing to be taken as a separate topic on the blog and let every one respond to it.
I am sure you will respond to it.
lol asad if ur the editor than ur pretty stupid and ur blog must suck as well. please read the complete post u .. it doesnt say someone wrote it to them it tells mobilink was knowingly planing all this.
the blogger isnt doing justice if he tells one side of the story
Just read my reply once again with open eyes and open mind ( if you got one)and then you will come to know. All I said was that is it good to leak the privacy of sender in such a manner whoever it is?
Before commenting just get the sense what a person is saying and then comment. comment for the sake of comment shows your caliber. And moreover be bold enough to comment with your real name if you have got one.
Aamir,
Will you please clarify this thing for me what I commented above regarding privacy.
I agree with you on privacy, the editor should have considered its privacy policy before going public.
Given, the blog/website/publisher has a privacy policy in place.
Privacy??? Woh kis cheese ka naam hai? This is Pakistan, stop crying like a baby..
Ahh I feel for you guys. You guys don’t have courage to represent yourself with your own name. And yep this is Pakistan coz of people like you who always want to taunt someone on good things or bad things by keeping themselves anonymous. Poor souls
we are talking about privacy policy in Pakistan where their is no cyber crime law …. hahahaha
My Dear, Charity begins at home
Dear Real Name, if i’m hiding my name due to my personal privacy reasons then I’m a poor soul but if the admin is showing or its more like disclosing the real culprit by exposing the name then thats criminal!!! Looks like you are impressed with Telenor’s dual face thingy thats why your own thoughts are conflicting lolzz
Dear Admin, Like Letters to the Editors section you must take measures to improve the standard of the comments as well.
One can’t keep everyone happy. If there is no disclosure of some info, keeping some privacy paranoia aside, people shall claim that Amir Atta ( i guess he owns this blog) has no proof and spreading rumors. Its about time that we understand the fact that on internet, nothing is private.
Propakistan main tu bhot khus hoa tha aap ney telenor ki cheat aur un ki MUNAFKAT jo un honey flurt ad main dekhai thi usey aap ney EXPOSE kar k AWAAM k saamney lay thay ,meray khayal se tu ye bhot valid point tha is main sab agree thay.(aur haa namin jobless hoon kaafi arsey se mera mobilink se koi taluk nahi :D)
lolzz…and dont even expect you’ll get job on writing such comments
TELENOR walay Islam aur pakistan k culture k against ad dekhatey hain jo mujey bilkul pasand nahi,agar future main koi isi ghalti karey TELENOR tu aap dubara expose kariye ga ADMIN plzz .Ye ADMIN meri request hai aap se, bcoz telenor waley “fahashi aur uryani” phela rahay hain apney advertisment se jo society aur youth k liye bhot nuqsaan dey hai.
Lo gi aa gaya aik aur Islam ka thekaidar…
I’m not sure why all you bloggers are against the Telenor “khamoshi ka boycott” ads.
If we hide our heads in the sand, that does not mean the problem isnt there. As a nation we need to stand up and find the problems.
Remember, you cannot find a solution UNLESS you know and accept the cause of the problem.
I salute the initative taken by Telenor in bringing these issues out into the open.
really bad marketing practice
I dont know how pro paksitani print something which is in accordance with its editors thoughts and editor propagates the message well with some very solid reasoning, then all of a sudden they start opposing the stuff based on the fact that it was circulated by some competitor, yes its wrong but still the ideology of opposing the promotion of bad culture is right! and telenor must not infiltrate these bad acts of some people on the rest mojority.
nice pickup
i think Mobilink Involve. few days back they face big down time and many pplz change there service providing company so maybe it’s revenge??
Ufone or Zonge ha no just funny ads! both have worst coverage in interior Sindh.
I hope my blog gets famous and I get mails from companies. LOL
It could be figment of my imagination but the marketeers of these telcos are mostly Tommy boys(known as mommy-daddy in some quarters) belonging to certain so-called elite university of this country. Anyway they hold a very different viewpoint about this society (pakistan). They are also so called hip & trendy ppl and think they are the moral, righteous & true representatives of the country. In fact they are just naive & just happen to be deep pocketed.
Anyway their induction in these telcos & their output in terms of advertisement (not depicting the complete society of pakistan) is glaringly visible. I mean how much of the country is hip, trendy n stuff. So all this defaming of the country could be an inadvertent effect of letting these kids loose on the country (media front).
Note: btw I don’t live in a cave.