Do They Know That We Know That They Know?

There is an episode of Friends where Phoebe finds out that Monica and Chandler are secretly dating. She tries to seduce Chandler to force him to admit to the relationship. Chandler realizes that Phoebe knows about him and Monica so he plays along to get her to admit she doesn’t want to bed him. Phoebe then figures out that Chandler knows she knows and on it goes until one person blinks (I forget who it was).

The ongoing Geo/government saga is something like that. Just about every story run by the various Jang Group papers and stations suggests that they suspect the PPP government and Musharraf are secretly supporting each other. The UAE government’s decision to shut down the Geo transmission gave them an opportunity to find out just how close that relationship really is.

First, the Jang Group published an ad in all their papers flirting with Musharraf and dissing the PPP.

Meanwhile, Geo TV has placed an advertisement in the Jang newspaper, which is part of the same media group, inviting Mr Musharraf to start his own daily or weekly talk on the channel if he thought his side of political developments in Pakistan was not being given enough attention.

The ad, which can be seen at the above link, goaded Musharraf by repeating a press report that Musharraf was upset that the PPP government had ordered a reduction in PTV’s Musharraf coverage.

Musharraf didn’t respond to the flirtations but Information Minister Sherry Rehman did, saying that it was the Jang Group she truly loved and they could be the masters of her domain at any time:

If any programme has been blocked by any force outside Pakistan, she makes an offer to Geo producers and anchors, who have been stopped, to use the PTV services live and without any editing until such time as they can restart or relocate, Sherry said.

The Jang Group knows that Sherry knows that they know that the government is close to Musharraf. Now its time for them to find out if Sherry knows that the Jang Group knows that Sherry knows that they know that the government is close to Musharraf:

A meeting of the editorial team of Geo was held here on Friday to review the offer given to Geo by the minister for information.

Appreciating the decision, the Geo editorial team thanked her and after reviewing the offer of the information minister decided that Geo will forward live signals of its programmes “Capital Talk” and “Meray Mutabiq”.

The editorial team requested the information minister to direct the PTV to receive live signals of the said two programmes and telecast them ‘as they are’ along with the advertisements therein.

The Geo’s editorial team held the opinion that each channel had its own set of standards and the same was the case with Geo. Therefore, it is important that a team of Geo prepares these programmes and forwards them to the PTV live. It also requested Sherry Rahman to direct the PTV to inform Geo about acceptance of this offer.

Sherry hasn’t responded to this offer yet. My guess: she’s going to come clean and no longer pretend she cares about Geo.