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TV Anchor Apologizes For Leaking Babar Azam WhatsApp Chat, Says PCB Chief Asked Him

image-loe79zv1Babar Azam and Zaka Ashraf [X.Com]

Waseem Badami, the Pakistan television news anchor, as well as the broadcasting team from ARY News have apologized for unveiling Babar Azam's personal chats with PCB Chief Zaka Ashraf on live television.

Badami revealed that the network had originally not intended to display contents of the chat on air, but did so upon receiving a video message from the PCB chief himself.

ARY News apologizes for sharing Babar Azam chat

After receiving much backlash from the Pakistani cricketing fraternity, especially from fans of Babar Azam, Waseem Badami took to X (formerly Twitter) and accepted the network’s mistake of leaking a private chat of the cricketer on live television. He said:

“We have to make a lot of quick decisions when we produce a live show. Naturally, some decisions prove to be right and some wrong. As a team, we made a wrong decision, sharing Babar’s chat with a senior PCB official. In short, we were sitting together and deciding an hour before the show that we shouldn’t make a private chat public.”

Admitting that the network team was not intending to invade Babar Azam’s privacy in the first place, Badami added that they were instructed to share the chat from PCB chief Zaka Ashraf himself prior to the show.

“About five to seven minutes before the show, we received a clip where Zaka Ashraf is saying: ‘I am giving you this screenshot and I am asking you to show it live on screen'.”

The chat in question was instructed to be shared by the PCB chief in a bid to brush aside outside claims of his rift with the Pakistan captain. Earlier, several reports circulated around the web that skipper Babar Azam was unsuccessfully trying to reach out to Ashraf amidst team’s struggling World Cup 2023 campaign in India, which saw them cope four successive defeats in a row and a certain elimination from the tournament.

The invasion of privacy of Babar Azam by the news network received widespread criticism, with former Pakistan captains Shahid Afridi and Waqar Younis expressing their stand against it.