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A screengrab of ‘The Good News’ website that focuses on positive developments in Pakistan.

Pakistan is besieged by bad news but two young brothers are trying to make a difference by focusing the world’s attention on the brighter side of life in the embattled South Asian nation.
“The Good News” is a website set up recently by Majid and Mahmood Mirza that focuses on positive developments coming out of the benighted country.
“The idea behind the website is to highlight amazing, awesome and inspirational news stories coming from Pakistan, as opposed to the usual negativities that steal the headlines,” Majid Mirza said in an email.
Mr. Mirza doesn’t only lay the blame at the feet of the foreign press but says local media is just as guilty of focusing only on the bad developments.
In May, the month when Osama bin Laden was killed by a secret U.S. raid on his hideout in a Pakistani garrison town, The Good News’s attention was elsewhere.
It highlighted a Pakistani computer scientist who has invented a way to automate run-out decisions in cricket, a Pakistani mountaineer who recently scaled Everest and a Pakistani journalist who won a U.S. free speech award.
One might wonder why the site only drums up five or so feel-good stories a month, which hardly seems sufficient to combat the barrage of stories about suicide bombers, the rural poor and mistreatment of women.
Journalists often are told (most recently in India by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh no less) that they focus too much on negatives, but in Pakistan it’s a bit of a stretch to expect anything else right now.
Still, credit to them for trying. Here is a snippet from how they introduce the site:
“Did you know that Pakistani squash players have won the World Open 17 times, the British open 12 times, (the highest by any nation), and that Jehangir Khan was unbeaten in competitive squash for five years during which he won 555 matches consecutively?”
It goes on: “So why don’t we hear about these and other amazing news bytes about Pakistan? God has blessed Pakistan with a diversity of food, fresh water, profoundly inspirational people, beautiful mountains, beaches… the list goes on.
So let’s turn the tables on self pity and talk about The Good News, for a Change!”
The Good News is unlikely to be widely read. But for those who do turn to its pages, the site might help to counteract a prevailing view in the U.S. and India that Pakistan is a quasi-failed state about to be overrun by Mullahs.
Just take a look at the last two months’ entries. Who knew that GlaxoSmithKiline, the U.K. pharmaceutical company, was planning a 2 billion Pakistan rupee investment? Or that South Korean conglomerate Lotte planned to triple capacity at its Karachi-based petrochemical plant?
You can follow Mr. Wright on Twitter @TomWrightAsia.

Via: India Real Time