Amid spiralling protests against the sacking of Supreme Court Chief Justice, Pakistan government has turned its ire on the media for its coverage of the events, blacking out two popular TV channels for hours and stepping up pressure on managements to sack their anchors.

“I am mentally prepared that today is the last day of my show as I am personally aware of the pressure being exhorted on my management,” Hamid Mir, who anchors the popular Capital Talk programme on Geo TV, told PTI here.

Geo TV and its arch rival Aaj TV were “banned” yesterday and the two channels went out off the air for several hours after they declined the instructions from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to stop coverage of the bloody lathicharge on the agitating lawyers in which several of them including opposition Pakistan People Party senator and advocate Lathif Khan Khosa sustained head injuries. Photographs of a bleeding Khosa flashing a victory sign were splashed on front pages of the newspapers today.

President Pervez Musharraf sacked Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftakar Muhammad Choudhary on charges of “misconduct and misuse” of authority on March 9, six years before his term was to end, and a judicial panel will hear charges against him.

Also under the scanner is another anchor of Geo TV, Kamran Khan, and popular anchors of Aaj TV. Journalists of both the channels claimed that PEMRA exerted pressure on their editors to stop the telecast of the protests and when they refused to oblige, the government told the 200-odd cable operators across the country to black out the two channels.

... contd.