Balochistan Express Celebrates its 27th birthday
Balochistan Express Celebrates its 27th birthday
Haseeb ur Rehman
Editor's Blog

Today, Daily Balochistan Express, a leading English Daily from this Province, has completed 27th years of regular publication with complete honour and dignity.

Today, Daily Balochistan Express, a leading English Daily from this Province, has completed 27th years of regular publication with complete honour and dignity. The newspaper started its publication from a small office located in the heart of Quetta city with a very small staff, but all highly professional and committed to the cause of journalism. Now it is located on Saryab Road with its own building and with a staff of over 50 persons. The newspaper came to Quetta with new traditions and adopted a totally different policy comparing it with its contemporaries in 1990s. Most of the established newspapers were known to the spokesman of the Government of the day and they never differ with the policies of the Government. In other words, they adopted the policy of ‘handout journalism’ and beyond it their approach and vision was zero. There was no tradition to criticize the wrong policies of the Government of the day. The job was left for the political opponents of the Government and newspapers did not prepare or build public opinion. On the contrary, we had a definite opinion on social, political, cultural and economic issues for which we tried to build public opinion in a positive manner. To a great extent we succeeded in building public opinion on various issues which was disliked by the Government of the day or its media managers most of them were incompetent and blank on basic principles of journalism or opinion building. Thus we remained a direct and prime victim of the naïve media managers who always adopted negative tactics to curb the growth of the popular newspaper. They hated the newspaper the most merely because they had no guts to contest any report, news or comment nor they had the ability to present the Government opinion in a right way. Thus the easiest way was to discriminate it and economically strangulate it for the same reasons. They could eliminate the newspaper, its violently independent opinion, but they do retard its normal growth or delayed its growth. When we were bringing out the first edition, we broke very big news as I myself heard the voice of Independent Balochistan Radio and its contents were reported in the first day publication. The naïve media Manager objected to display of the news and suggested that we should have published the interview of the Chief Minister, the man who lacked consistency in his thought. Thus from day one, the Media Manager was highly offended for not publishing the interview of the Chief Minister.

Its articles, editorials and comments left a deep impact on the policies of the Government of Balochistan and considered it as an impact medium influencing the public opinion in a big way. It is the only credible online newspaper for the past 15 years. During the US invasion of Afghanistan, more than 70,000 people visited our site. Thousands of people visit our website to read comments on political, economic, security matters. Thus our website is very popular from Balochistan as we offer comments on day to day issues. The newspaper is popular in all the five ecological zones of Balochistan as our valued readers keep our team in high esteem posing trust for their commitment to the cause of journalism. It had been the policy of the newspaper to give equal right and legitimate coverage to all segments of society and also to all sections of public opinion in disregard for political, religious, sectarian and ethnic reasons. This policy had raised the prestige of the newspaper and the staff members very high. That is why the people, including the Government leaders, concede to our right of legitimate criticism and within the moral and ethical grounds.