Dawn Media Group


Pakistan Herald Limited, doing business as the Dawn Media Group, is a Pakistani media company based in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It publishes the Dawn newspaper, Herald magazine among other publications and operates a TV channel, radio stations and websites. It is a listed member of All Pakistan Newspapers Society.
The group has an array of publications, as it tries to cater to the needs of both the financial and consumer bases. Although it has faced tough competition from the Jang Group since its creation, it has still managed to remain popular. The group is headed by the Pakistani media mogulHameed Haroon, its current CEO.

Ownership

The Karachi based group is owned by the powerful Haroon and Saigol families. The CEO is Hameed Haroon, and its chairman is Amber Haroon Saigol, daughter of the previous chairman Mahmoud Haroon and the 11th richest individual in Pakistan in 1993. A list of the top 10 richest families in Pakistan, ranks Saigol family as the 8th richest and the Haroon's the 16th richest as of 2015.

Structure

The Dawn Media Group covers three areas: print media, broadcast media, and internet media:
Spider written as SPIDER was a monthly magazine circulated in Pakistan by the DAWN group of newspapers, focusing on issues related to software/hardware and Internet technologies. The magazine sported a tagline boasting it to be "Pakistan's Internet Magazine" until March 2005. Since most of the issues discussed in its leaves are mostly about information technology rather than just Internet, the tagline was removed. A symbol that dons its cover pronouncing its identity is that of a mouse with eight limbs and a blinking red sensor as an eye over a web engulfed in a yellow circle, mostly found at the top-right corner of the publication.

History and profile

The magazine was launched at the end of the year 1998. Reader's comments and criticism were a regular feature in the magazine since then. The monthly comprised cover stories and feature articles usually on the growth of the internet and how Information Technology is affecting Pakistanis. Spider folded in 2014.

Rape allegations against Hameed Haroon

In 2019, Jami Azad, a filmmaker from Karachi, started a chain of often-cryptic messages about his alleged rape by a senior media tycoon, without ever naming the alleged rapist.
On December 28, 2019, Azad, revealed via twitter the identity of his alleged rapist: Hameed Haroon, CEO Dawn Media Group.

'Dawn leaks' controversy

In 2016, one of the journalists working at Dawn, Cyril Almeida wrote a newspaper article that stirred a major controversy in Pakistan, called Dawn leaks. Cyril had reported that during the National Security Council meeting between the civilian leaders and the military leaders of Pakistan, some civilian leaders had warned the military leaders about the risk of Pakistan's growing diplomatic isolation due to lack of action against some Pakistani militant groups. Pakistan's military leadership was clearly upset over reports of alleged leaking of this classified information to a Pakistani journalist by some civilian leaders attending that NSC meeting. After the controversy would not die down, Pervaiz Rashid and Tariq Fatemi had to step down as a result of this controversy.

Awards and recognition