Who Says There's No Investigative Journalism In Pakistan?

A piece in Dawn caught my eye recently, for making the point that investigative journalism in Pakistan is wholly absent:

Whistle blowers and investigative journalism, two parts of a whole, have sadly never matured in Pakistan. It’s not the journalists who are the weasels; it’s our leaders because they don’t like to expose others for fear that their own mega millions rattling in their cupboards may come out. Or we lack the wherewithal (read money) to whistle up the blowers necessary to produce ‘breaking news.’

Au contraire, ma soeur! Perhaps you have not borne witness to Ansar Abbasi's relentless push for justice...with regard to Farah Dogar's exam scores:

ISLAMABAD: The two samples of Miss Farah Hameed Dogar’s answer sheets reveal another aspect of scandalous jacking up of her marks.

[...]

After this correspondent secured the question papers of Physics II and Urdu for the Federal Board HSSC-II Examinations 2008 and compared the same with the two samples, as reproduced in the IHC judgment, it is also revealed that the judgment pointed out a wrong answer for the Physics II answer reproduced in the verdict.

On page 13, the judgment said: “On visual examination of Physics-II paper, answer to question No 5(b) is given below: - “No, the plates of capacitor is not of different sizes; however to decrease the electrostatic factor a dielectric medium is putted in between them.”

Then the judge wrote: “The examiner crossed the question and awarded zero mark. Later on, he gave one mark. On re-evaluation (re-assessment), another mark was added.” It means that in this particular question of the paper, the candidate got two marks.

The question paper, however, shows that the above answer pertains to XIV (b) of Q.2, which reads as: “A capacitor is connected across a battery: (b) Is this true even if the plates are of different sizes?” It carries total one mark as part XIV, having three sub-parts — a, b and c — had total three marks. Against the answer reproduced above, the candidate, when reassessed, got two marks against the part that carried only one mark. It means even if Miss Farah’s answer was 100 per cent correct, she would not have got more than one mark, but she got two.

Horror of horrors! For those who need some backfround info on the insane Question 2, subpart XIV, subsubpart (b) story, click here and then here. Brilliant stuff all-round.

Anyway, this got me thinking. Where is the investigative journalism in Pakistan? I know there are some severe structural impediments to digging real dirt -- and no, Mr. Abbasi, exam scores don't count I'm afraid -- such as lack of money and a notoriously insular and cabal-like political elite. But it's not as if money isn't pouring in now, and which country doesn't have cabal-like political elites? The U.S. has Deepthroat, India has Tehelka and we have exam scores. No, seriously. Why are so many of the big political stories in Pakistan (BB's Surrey estate, Zardari giving permission for drone attacks in secret) broken by foreign media organizations?

I know we have a few Pakistani journalists in the audience. So perhaps they can enlighten us, because I'm at a loss to explain this.