5 Things You Need To Know About The Ali Zafar And Patari Debacle

Following the widely publicised Patari fiasco, Ali Zafar has made it into the headlines again. 

Both Patari and Ali Zafar have received a fair amount of back lash from the public in recent days. Screenshots from Patari’s work conversations were aired on the internet indicating that Ali Zafar was undermining Faris Shafi’s work with Patari due to his recent conflict with Meesha Shafi. Ali Zafar’s legal team has reached out to ProperGaanda, speaking loud and clear against these accusations.  In the age of social justice it is always prudent to know both sides of the story before publicly crucifying an individual, in this case, Ali Zafar.

Here are 5 things that Ali Zafar’s legal team wants you to know:

 1. Dawn News is touting a false narrative

The article published online at Dawn Images on 04 June 2017 titled ‘Evidence Emerges that Ali Zafar and Patari worked to undermine Faris Shafi’s latest track’  “is incorrect, misleading and shows disregard for fact checking and balanced reporting.” According to Ali Zafar’s team, the singer did not speak to Patari for any forced placement of his music or film. 

2. The truth about the infamous screen shot

The article contained a ‘leaked’ screenshot of an employee to employee communication which seems to be happening in Patari’s internal server, where a gentleman whose name was kept anonymous, claiming to represent Ali Zafar’s views was communicating with another employee. Ali Zafar’s team claims that the employee had neither spoken to Ali, nor his communications team nor his management team – all of whom represent Ali officially. The Patari employee had only been in communication with the independent music license company responsible for Teefa in Trouble’s music distribution in Pakistan, who in their own right, like any distribution company, have all the right to ask for a fair positioning of content as they do with all the streaming websites they work with independently. However, fair placement is never at the cost of anyone else’s content being compromised.

3. Patari’s Co-Founder Faisal Sherjan has weighed in on the situation

Patari has officially clarified that Ali Zafar had no involvement in the conversation that was leaked. The following is an excerpt from Faisal Sherjan’s public statement:  ‘…The screenshot leaked to Dawn Images is reflective of an internal conversation between Patari employees and not a conversation between Ali Zafar’s team members or Ali Zafar and Patari as is being discussed. Nobody from Patari spoke to Ali Zafar , directly or indirectly for any kind of forced placement of his music for his film as suggested by the Dawn story . This is a false narrative. The said employee has neither spoken to Ali, nor his communications team nor his management team all of whom represent Ali Zafar officially. Humayoun inadvertently referred to Ali. He had only been in communication with the independent music publishing company responsible for Teefa in Trouble’s music distribution in Pakistan, who in their own right, like any distribution company, have all the right to ask for a fair positioning of content as they do with all the streaming websites they work with independently. Such placement was never asked for at the cost of anyone else’s content being compromised. I confirm that there was never any written or verbal conversation whereby a member of Ali’s team or Ali Zafar himself asked us to remove another artists songs or show favour to his music over that of another artist. Anything reported otherwise in Dawn or any other media is misleading and false. Faris Shafi’s song is in multiple sections of Patari and is in fact Trending at number 2.’

4. What about Ali Sethi?

The website has titled the article as “Evidence emerges that Ali Zafar and Patari worked to undermine Faris Shafi’s” latest track. The fact that the author leaves out the more popular/known artist Ali Sethi whose song it is equally contributes to a misleading narrative that targets Ali Zafar and presents a one-sided view of the incident.

5. Ali Zafar’s team will be lodging a complaint against the Dawn News website

Due to the defamatory narrative in the aforementioned article and previous articles published by Dawn News involving Ali Zafar, his team will be lodging a private complaint with the publication’s website that has put them in a position to have to clarify his position. The team claims that Ali Zafar is being targeted and bullied based on an incorrect story. “We urge such media to show more caution and balance in what they present as evidence and fact,” states Zafar’s legal team. ProperGaanda has always strived to provide a balanced overview of on-going situations, something that all media houses and publications should strive for. We have yet to hear more on this on-going debacle. Make sure to follow @propergaanda on twitter to stay up to date with current stories. 

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