ISLAMABAD: Imran Khan, realising he has no evidence against Geo’s involvement in election rigging has now come up with a graph from European Union’s Election Observation Mission report. This document totally refutes the totally erroneous claims of Mr. Khan and states that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) got the most coverage from Geo, the channel he accuses of being biased against him.

The thankless PTI chief, whose party dominated the election coverage given by Geo, has again embarrassed himself by quoting EU’s report which shows the facts are contrary to the position he has been holding against Geo News. According to the EU report, the one channel that gave him more coverage than any other channel was none other than Geo.

Whoever is feeding Imran Khan these lies is neither doing him any favours nor his youthful followers who are fanatical in their adoration and willing to believe anything. Presenting just one leaf from the EU EOM’s report which talks about coverage given by different television channels to the rallies and press conferences (live and recorded) during the election is simply dishonest and not even credible.

The graph presented by Khan represents less than one percent of the total media coverage given to the political parties by the television channels during the election campaign. Mr. Khan tries to build his case graph showing 1% of coverage to blame Geo and ignores 99% data of coverage which establishes that if any political party was favoured by Geo during the 2013 election, it was Imran Khan’s PTI.

The graph being shared by Mr. Khan with his followers on twitter says that PML-N’s rallies and press conferences were aired for around 5800 seconds i.e around 96 minutes (1 hour and 36 minutes) only during the entire election campaign by six media groups including PTV. Of this 1 hour and 36 minutes, Geo aired only around 20 % of the time. While PTI’s recorded rallies were aired for about 1800 seconds, which makes around 30 minutes in which Geo aired more than 25%.

But the graph shared by Mr. Khan describes only less than 1 present of the total coverage as, EU’s report has discussed the coverage in detail and on almost each occasion, the data mapped has belied the allegations of PTI chief.

For the information of Mr. Khan, it is stated that the EU’s mission report after monitoring the media channels from 6pm to 12 midnight and from 8th April 2013 to May 9, 2013, has mentioned that paid content on Geo was only 21 % and editorial, news and election debate content comprised 79% of the transmission. The paid content of Geo was far less than any other private channel in respect of percentage. Were you aware of that Mr. Khan?

The EU’s report has also documented that Geo gave 32 % (Highest among all private and state owned channels) coverage to PTI in its news content while PML-N only got 19% (lowest among all channels) coverage in Geo’s news content. These are the figures which perhaps Mr. Khan does not want to see or the people coaching him do not want him to know.

According to the same EU report, PTI got 21 % (Highest among all private news channels monitored by EU’s mission) coverage in Geo’s prime time talk shows and programmes while PML-N got 25 % coverage.

In the category of ‘Direct speech within the news time allotted to the quotes from particular political actors representing respective political parties or institutions’: Geo gave 25 % coverage to PTI and 27 % to PML-N.

Sources said that PTI’s ad campaign on Geo formed 23% of Geo revenue from election ads. PTI also got 20% discount from Geo as it came through the largest advertising buying company Group M. Besides this, PTI got the maximum coverage as Geo’s rating is far higher than any other channel. As a result of Geo’s coverage to PTI, the PML-N had to run its ad campaign on Geo to get itself noticed before Pakistani voters who prefer to watch Geo and only Geo.

According to details, Geo's election coverage of parties in March-April 2013: PTI 372 minutes, PML-N 339 minutes, MQM 120 minutes, other parties : 74 minutes.

Geo's coverage from May 5-9: PTI 51%, PML-N 31%, PPP 8%, MQM 6%, JI 2%, JUI-F 2%. When Imran Khan fell from the stage, Geo TV gave coverage for 166 minutes as compared to Dunya TV (154 minutes), ARY (45 minutes) and Express (42 minutes).