Dark Outlook `We expect to throw open our pages to
promote a free and frank, if balanced and objective, dis- cussion of issues and problems that matter.' Not, in fact, a pre-dawn blurb from Mr. Hugh Cudlipp, but part of Mr. I. H. Burney's first editorial in the Pakistani weekly Outlook. Now, less than two years later, the magazine has been forced to close for 'reasons beyond control.' Mr. Burney has said that there is no way of continuing 'in view of mounting government pressures.' It is no surprise after this to hear that there is to be an election in Pakistan this November and the affair has already been com- pared with the BBC's pre-election ban on TW3. Unlike TW3, Outlook seems to have no hope of any sort of resuscitation. In its short life it had achieved an increasing circulation of over 5,000 and had, for the most part, carried out its promise of 'free and frank discussion.' As a result of the closure, the Executive Council of the Karachi Union of Journalists assured Mr. Burney of full support in his efforts `to uphold freedom of expression' and called on all journa- lists to 'stand by him.' It is difficult, however, to see what can be done. As Mr. Burney told his subscribers, 'This journal was started under the presumption that there is freedom of the press in Pakistan. In so far as the presumption was wrong the fate of Outlook was known from the day it started publishing on November 2, 1962.'
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