Geo News

The younger of Jang Group’s founder Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman’s two sons, he is generally known as MSR. He has expanded his father’s newspaper publishing business into a multi-billion-rupee media empire over the last four decades – becoming Pakistan’s biggest and the most powerful media tycoon in the process.
Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, who mostly lives in Dubai, is one of the pioneers of online news platforms in Pakistan. Daily Jang became the country’s first newspaper in 1996 to have its internet edition. Since then, this edition has transformed into a fully-fledged news website in Urdu language and has become one of the country’s most browsed online news sources. As of now, almost all news platform owned by Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and his family have their own websites, each with a sizeable audience.
He has shown the same pioneering spirit in television industry and has set up several television channels. These include Pakistan’s most watched Urdu language news channel, Geo News, and the country’s only youth-focused channel, Aag (which closed down after a couple of years of its 2002 launch because it could not earn its keep).
Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman’s first foray into the news industry, soon after he finished his studies back in the late 1970s, was to run an English language evening newspaper, Daily News. He turned it into Karachi’s largest circulating evening newspaper soon after taking over its management.

He has held key positions in All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), a representative body of print media owners. He has also played a key role in the formation of Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA) that represents businesses and individuals running televisions channels and radio stations in Pakistan.

Born in 1981, he is the eldest son of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. He received a business degree from a college in the United States in 2000 and became the founding chief executive officer of Geo News at the very young age of 21.
In 2009, he returned to the United States and received a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2011, he received Robert F Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service for his contribution – and that of Geo News – in the media coverage of a 2007 movement by Pakistani lawyers for the restoration of senior judges sacked by then President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf.
Like his father, Mir Ibrahim Rahman has expanded his family business in new directions. He set up Geo Films that has produced such blockbuster feature films as Khuda Kay Liye (2007) and Bol (2011). The former was about the menace of religious extremism and terrorism plaguing Pakistan; the latter was about the rights of girls.
Mir Ibrahim Rahman is also as active in media’s trade bodies as his father has been. He serves as joint secretary of the executive committee of Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA), a non-government entity representing businesses and individuals which own Television channels and radio stations.

A seasoned journalist, he oversees the contents generated for Geo News, Geo Entertainment and Geo Super television channels. A graduate of London School of Economics (LSE) and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), he started his professional life in the late 1970s as a member of the personal staff of Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan-al-Nahyan who at the time was the president of the United Arab Emirates. Later, he moved back to Pakistan to pursue a career in journalism.

In 1983, Imran Aslam became the editor of daily Star, an evening newspaper published by Pakistan Herald Publications Limited that also owns daily Dawn. He resigned in 1988 and worked in advertising, theatre and television over the next two years.

Since 1990, he has been associated with Jang Group and was a member of the editorial team that launched English daily The News International in 1991.He subsequently worked as the newspaper’s chief news editor, editor and senior editor. He was also a part of the editorial team that launched The News on Sunday, weeklymagazine of The News International.

When, in 2000, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman decided to set up Pakistan’s first private television news channel, Imran Aslam was again instrumental in making it possible. He was made the channel’s founding president at its launch two years later. Since 2015, Imran Aslam has was working as the president of both Jang Group and Geo Television Network. His younger brother Talat Aslam is also working with Jang Group as the editor of its English language daily The News International.

A 1990 graduate of Karachi University, he started his career as a reporter with English language daily The News International. Soon afterwards, he joined English language monthly Herald.

Azhar Abbas was among the first batch of Pakistani journalists who started working for a locally-based private television production house back in the late 1990s. This was when he, along with some other Karachi-based media persons, started Pakistan Business Update, a current affairs programme produced by a private company but aired on state-owned Pakistan Television. He also spent several years working as Pakistan correspondent for CNBC, an American business news channel.

When Geo News was being set up, Azhar Abbas joined its founding editorial team and soon rose through the ranks to become its managing director. In December 2006, he quit Geo News and joined Dawn News, an English language television channel owned by Dawn Media Group. He left Dawn News in 2009 and rejoined Geo Television Network. He quit it again in 2013 and joined Bol TV Network.
This network was a subsidiary of Axact, an informational technology company that was later alleged to be involved in money laundering and a fake degree scam. When these allegations led to the filing of cases against Axact management and the arrest of its top officials in 2015, Azhar Abbas left Bol TV Network and came back to Geo Television Network once again.

Jang Group false reporting: SC intentionally defamed – judge (2017), Samaa TV, Accessed on 4 March 2019

Geo TV Network (2012), Accessed on 4 March 2019