This an intersting piece i read in todays newspaper and thought i should share it with u all.
Time for the media to step up
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
If ever there was a time to shun The New York Times, BBC or other mainstream sources of news, this was it. How were the attacks in Mumbai being covered in other parts of the world? If you live in London and have Sky TV, there are several options for finding out. So I began searching.
The Chinese television station simply didn’t cover it. It was almost as if nothing happened in Mumbai. The Russians did not dwell on it much. France 24, which is a very interesting channel in English, had a coverage of the event similar to British networks but for a shorter duration.
Press TV, which is a new Iranian channel, was a true disappointment. Their one-hour chat show, called “Hearts and Minds,” hosted by an American man in New York, was dedicated exclusively to the attacks in Mumbai and three “experts” sat on the panel. The Indian view was represented by an Indian gentleman.
But there was no Pakistani representation. The other two panellists had little knowledge of what was going on and the host was consistently confused between Zardari and Karzai. At one point, he just referred to both as “Kamdari.”
This was quite a letdown, as I was expecting a channel along the lines of Al-Jazeera, which has excellent world coverage and has also covered the Mumbai incident very well and without bias. Al-Jazeera anchors like Ghada Al-Fakhri are good enough to compete with the best of the CNN and BBC journalists. And I would have thought that Press TV too would have tapped into the very large Iranian diaspora if it is to compete internationally. I would have expected experts like Sayyed Hossein Nasr, who are truly aware of issues in Kashmir and the Middle East, to have been commenting on the Iranian channel. But when I watched their world news it was quite evident that the restrictions imposed on this channel are enormous, not just in terms of content but also the dress code. “It’s like watching PTV in the eighties, only in English,” my husband said.
I flipped to the Indian NDTV channel, which is a good source for domestic Indian issues. But in the case of the Mumbai attacks, the less said the better. But what India is able to do through NDTV is give the world its point of view. Pakistan’s viewpoint, on the other hand, is only available on the “Specialist Channels” in Urdu. We desperately need a channel in English which beams along with the other international news channels. And unlike the Iranian channel, it must have reporters and anchors that are both aware of the issues and confident in English. If the few hours of Geo English and Dawn News that I have seen are anything to go by, I would say that we could very easily blow most of the other international news channels away. Our media is cutting-edge, often incisive and used to asking important questions.
But there is one thing that we will have to change. And that is our preoccupation with domestic issues. Of course, they are very important. But our media focuses almost entirely on them. There is very little international news available in Pakistan. And when it is made available, it often lacks perspective and is not presented in an exciting way. We talk about the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, or nowadays India, only because they have a direct impact on what is going on with us. Beyond that international coverage in our media is severely lacking.
As far as I know, we didn’t even try to send any reporters to Orissa in India when the Christians were being massacred. The only channel that had an in-depth documentary on this was France 24. We need to have an English channel presenting Pakistan and covering international issues on the world stage. This needs to be done on a war-footing.
Just as international news in Pakistani media is virtually non-existent, there is also a tireless obsession with western sources of information. Anchors on Pakistani television are addicted to Time, Newsweek, and the gamut of British and American papers. It would be nice if, for a change, they also focused on what papers in other countries are saying about Pakistan.
I did a rough search on this myself in the last few days and focused primarily on Muslim countries, which I thought may be more inclined to give the India-Pakistan news some perspective. From what I found, most Muslim countries suffer from a similar lethargy when it comes to covering international issues, often cutting and pasting stories from The International Herald Tribune and the like, instead of doing their own research.
Nevertheless, the editorial in The Jakarta Post was acceptable. It explained the Mumbai incident without bias, and then focused inwards, comparing the situation to the Bali bombing and how Indonesia can avoid such occurrences in future.
The newspapers of the UAE were a disappointment, with clear Indian bias.
Yet, the Bangladeshi newspapers gave me newfound hope. An opinion piece by Rahnuma Ahmed, in New Age was like balm on my wounded heart. I believe that Bangladesh is Pakistan’s most natural ally. My generation, which did not see but only heard and read about what happened in 1971, should be willing to extend the hand of friendship to our Bangladeshi brothers and sisters, to acknowledge them as equals in a partnership that can be beneficial to both countries.
There has been much criticism of the “war of words” that has taken place between Pakistani and Indian media in the past days. But sometimes I think that, had it not been for the war of words, we may have been confronted with the real thing. It’s important to get our story out there. Not just in Urdu, but also in English, for the world to hear. It’s also important for Pakistan to figure out how to pick friends. For too long we have been choosing allies on the basis of riches. America can give us aid; Saudi Arabia can give us oil. Choosing rich friends has made us a weak nation. It is about time we changed our policy and picked our friends, not on the basis of “common interests,” as Musharraf used to say, but of “common ideology,” an ideology that emphasises the equality and fraternity that Islam preaches, as opposed to the extremism and discrimination against women that is too often ascribed to Islam. In my view, Bangladesh would top our list of friends if this approach were adopted.
Coutesy-www.thenews.jang.com.pk
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