News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan During Wartime, 2010-2012

Patterns in the Chaos: News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan During Wartime, 2010-2012

Katherine Ann Brown

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2013

ABSTRACT

Patterns in the Chaos: News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan During Wartime, 2010-2012

Katherine Ann Brown

This dissertation examines the United States’s elite news media’s hegemony in a global media landscape, and how it can come to stand for the entire American nation in the imagination of outsiders. In this transnational, instantaneous digital media arena, what is created for an American audience can fairly easily be accessed, interpreted and relayed to another. How, then, is U.S. international news, which is traditionally ethnocentric and security-focused, absorbed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries where the United

States has acute foreign policy interests?

This study draws from two bodies of scholarship that are analogous, yet rarely linked together. The first is on hegemony and the U.S. news media’s relationship with

American society and the government. This includes scholarship on indexing and cascading; agenda building and agenda setting; framing; and reporting during conflict.

The second is on the American news media’s relationship with the world, and nationalism as a fixed phenomenon in international news. This includes examining the different kinds of press systems that exist globally, and how they interact with each other.

Afghanistan and Pakistan’s media systems have expanded dramatically since being freed in 2002 and they struggle daily with making sense of the volatility that comes with the

U.S.-led Afghanistan war. Through 64 qualitative, in-depth interviews with Afghan,

American and Pakistani journalists, this study explores the sociology of news inside

Afghanistan and Pakistan and how the American news narrative is received there.

There is a widespread, long-standing perception in Afghanistan and Pakistan that

American journalists stain the reputation of their nations as failed states. Just as the U.S. exercises global hegemony in a material sense, the U.S. media is powerful in shaping how American and international publics see the world. Yet, while American foreign correspondents are U.S.-centric in their reportage on the Afghan, American and Pakistani entanglement, so too are Afghan journalists Afghan-centric and Pakistani journalists

Pakistani-centric. Nationalism is how journalists organize chaos and complexity. While their news stories can represent an entire nation, they are more likely to harden national identities than to broker understanding between nations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Washington and Kabul v

Part I: The Background 1

1. The Afghan, American, Pakistani Entanglement: Introduction 2

2. Nationalism in America, Nationalism Everywhere: Literature Review 20

3. Twice the Forgotten War: American News on Afghanistan & Pakistan 60

Part II: The Pakistanis 80

4. From Quiet to Chaos: Pakistani News Media, Past and Present 81

5. ‘We Realized Our Power’: The Pakistani Journalist Experience 105

6. ‘So Much America in Pakistan, It’s Staggering’: Journalists and U.S. News 123

Part III: The Afghans 163

7. A Shaky Start: Afghan News Media, Past and Present 164

8. Optimistic, But Uncertain: The Afghan Journalist Experience 190

9. ‘We Can’t Do This Alone’: Afghan Journalists and U.S. News 219

Part IV: The Americans 249

10. ‘We Write for Us’: The American Journalists’ Experience 250

11. Dysfunction: U.S. Journalists View of Afghan, Pakistani Reporters & Officials 264

12. Clarity in Chaos: Nationalism to Manage Reportage 282

Endnotes 300

Bibliography 366

Appendix: Methodology 398

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The last six years at Columbia University have been extraordinary. There are too many people to thank for getting me to Columbia, and then getting me through a doctoral course. But here are some of them.

I feel extremely lucky to have the family I do. I am ever grateful to my tremendous parents, Christine and John Brown, who let me start traveling abroad on my own at age 16 and always emphasized the importance of education. I’m indebted to my sister Judy and her family, Dan, Briana and Patrick McEntee, for their support – as I am to my sister, Colleen and her new family, Padraig and Saoirse Swan. I owe much thanks to my Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom Carson, and to the Carson kids and their families:

Maria, Pierre, Emma, Carson and Benjamin Breber; Chris, Elizabeth, Ryan and Eva

Carson; Tim, Kathleen and Levi Carson; and Tom, Emily, Garrett, Ellie and Genevieve

Carson. Thank you to my Pennsylvania cousins Mary Pat and Charlie Weidner – and Jim,

Maria, Bob, Chrissy, Greg and Kelly Cain. And to my New York cousins, RJ and Kristen

Bannister, who gave me food, drinks, shelter and sanity.

I’m indebted to the wonderful minds I met at Columbia who helped me with coursework, teaching and the dissertation itself. To my fellow cohorts who have reached, or soon will reach, staggering heights in academic and public service: Chris Anderson,

Kate Fink, Tom Glaisyer, Lucas Graves, Ri Pierce-Grove, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Annie

Rudd and Julia Sonnevend. And I’m grateful for the incredible faculty I got to work with at the Journalism School and SIPA so closely, and who I aspire to be like: Todd Gitlin,

Michael Schudson, Andie Tucher, Richard John, David Klatell, Sam Freedman, Stephen

Sestanovich, Hishaam Aidi and Dan McIntyre. I’m grateful to Sean Aday and Hassan

Abbas who joined my doctoral committee and made the trip to New York from

Washington. And a very special thank you to Ruthie Palmer. Without her, I most certainly would have gone insane.

I received a series of lucky breaks in my career that got me to and through

Columbia. I am forever indebted to the people who engineered them. Thank you, Mike

Hammer, for taking a chance on a disgruntled intern in 1999 and bringing me to the

White House. Thanks to Kathy Magee, who let me follow her to seven countries on her crusade to transform children’s lives with Operation Smile. I am grateful to Condoleezza

Rice and Stephen Hadley, who let me see up close and appreciate the vagaries of the foreign policy decision-making process and showed me infinite grace under pressure.

And to the illustrious Jen Easterly who somehow made the West Wing the most fun place to work ever. Odds are I never would have traveled to Afghanistan if it weren’t for

Zalmay Khalilzad, who challenged me to move forward in my career as no one had before. And much, much thanks to the wonderful Jennifer Betti, who gave me an excuse to move to San Francisco in 2005 to work for The Asia Foundation – and to Nancy Yuan who kept me on staff via the Foundation’s Washington office when I moved to New

York. While I was at Columbia, I had two jobs that I’m still not sure I was deserving of.

Much thanks to Rick Kessler, who hired me to focus on public diplomacy issues at the

Committee on Foreign Affairs at the U.S. House of Representatives, albeit briefly. And

I’m grateful to Jamie Rubin who brought me to the original editorial staff team at

Bloomberg View. I loved my time with the editors at 78th and Madison who challenged me to be a better writer and thinker, especially the talented and hysterically funny Lisa

Beyer.

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I am too fortunate to have my friends at home in California who always gave me a haven to fly to when school, work and New York got to be too much. To my best friend of nearly 30 years, Katy Moore, and my Lancer girls who prove that high school friendships can stand the test of time: Lindsey Dazel, Erin Meyer Krupsaw, Robin

Remmel Henrich, Melissa Skrabo Munster and Adie Sletten (and their husbands, Dan

Munster, Seth Krupsaw and Karl Henrich). I’m also eternally grateful to my Southern

Californian best friend Dena Malea Lazarova, who has motivated me since we were roommates in Scheveningen the summer of 1997 – and to Miro and (my beautiful and brilliant Goddaughter) Gia Lazarova.

I am also obliged to the friends I made in Washington the past 15 years. They got me through times of great uncertainty and inspired me by sheer example. So much thanks to Camille Eiss, Rachel Hagen, Sarah and Izzy Klein, Amit Magdieli, Sidney Olinyk,

Farah Pandith and Erik Woodhouse. Also to my Operation Smile friends who helped me navigate those awful post-college years: Melanie Bariso Agustin, Mona Rowghani (and later, Ahmad), and Holly and Jim Clune. And to the incredible Chris Anderson, who told me I should rewrite my Columbia application’s personal statement in a random

Connecticut hotel room that December night in 2006. He has been of consistent support since 2001. And to my ‘big brothers,’ Jeremy Goldberg and Karl Rectanus, who I also met in Scheveningen in 1997 and who convinced me to transfer schools and move to

Washington. I’m also grateful that they married up: Jenna Arnold and Victoria Wheeler, thanks so much for your friendship.

I would have been lost without my New York friends who took me away from

Morningside Heights. Thank you, Kim Barker, Dan D’Lauro, Tanya Gallo, Nikki Ganz,

Reah Johnson, Kathryn McGarr, Gabrielle Olivera, Alex Rossmiller, Jennifer White and

Meaghan Winter. And a special thanks to friends like Sabina Sheikh and Bill and Julie

Coleman, who consistently dropped into town and gave me an excuse to leave the library.

I’m grateful to those I met in Afghanistan the last decade whose courage and intellect leave me in awe. A particular thank you to the remarkable Kay McGowan, who I am profoundly lucky to have as a pseudo big sister, and to her incredible daughter Claire

Skye MacQueen, who keeps me laughing. Joan Ablett, Caroline Chung, Chris Del Corso,

Jayne Howell, Shirin Pakfar, Beth and Nick Sanzone, and Jeff Raleigh are forever embedded in my life after they put up with me for a year on that tiny embassy compound.

And a particular line of gratitude to Marin Strmecki, who taught me how to shoot a basketball on the embassy court and pushed me toward a Ph.D. I’m grateful to John

Dempsey and John Agoglia who got me through my 2010 fieldwork in Kabul; and to

Declan Walsh and Yousaf Rizvi for their support during my Islamabad and Lahore fieldwork. I’m also ever grateful to those who got me through the final leg of Kabul research in 2012: Golareh Kia, George Abi-Habib and Amandine Roche. And to the

American journalists I cannot name, who face insanely difficult work daily yet still found time to support my work. I am also indebted to Scott Shadian for being an amazing boss and friend, and for looking out for me in Kabul ever since my first trip back in 2006.

Last, I’m indebted to the dozens of unidentified Afghans and Pakistanis interviewed for this study who struggle to make sense of the volatility and uncertainty in their homelands everyday.

DEDICATION

To my extraordinary parents, John and Christine Brown, who gave my everything.

PREFACE: Washington and Kabul

I write this from Kabul, Afghanistan, in July 2012. Almost nine years have passed since Thanksgiving Day 2003, when I first arrived here on a C-140 at Bagram Air Force

Base as a public affairs aide at the U.S. embassy. I didn’t realize at the time that it would be the first of many flights into Afghanistan, long after my yearlong State Department tour was over. The chaos and complexity of this place has driven many Americans and

Westerners from here, mad and frustrated. But some of us over the past decade have found reasons to come back: Trying to understand Afghanistan and the region can be addicting. For me, too, being, thinking, writing from here has always given me a sense of clarity that’s elusive elsewhere. Unwinding and making sense of Afghanistan, and its neighbor, Pakistan, takes years of living in both countries. I haven’t. I’ve therefore done my best to unpack small parts of these countries in the following pages. The clarity I seek and find here, therefore, is not as much about Afghanistan and Pakistan, as it is how

America looks from here. And that’s the real focus of this dissertation.

It was in Afghanistan in 2003 that I realized that Americans aren’t the only ones paying attention to U.S. news about the world; those affected by U.S. foreign policy rarely live within American borders. The people who often care the most about U.S. foreign policy agendas and news aren’t Americans, but the policymakers, journalists and publics directly affected by policies created at-a-distance in Washington. To most of these people – if not to most Americans – Washington is an intangible place. But they can turn to U.S. news — normally, elite agencies — to make their own meaning of U.S. intentions toward their country or region, and to see how America is projecting their country’s image across a global media landscape. My idea of looking at a national news

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narrative as a sort of national representation, and at journalists as diplomats, first took shape here.

To the reader and the critic of this work, I must be forthcoming about my professional, or administrative, experiences in U.S. press-state relations and global communications that contributed to this dissertation’s framework. While the cadre of

American reporters and officials who define and communicate what the United States’s role in the world is, and should be, has always fascinated me, two professional experiences inspired me to investigate this phenomenon further at Columbia University and provided the conceptual foundation for this work.

The first experience was in Washington.

The National Security Council at the White House is a collection of academics;

Foreign Service Officers; intelligence and military officers; and various other government officials who advise the president on foreign policy issues. Their job is to amass information from the various U.S. government agencies and then streamline it for presidential decision-making. It’s where foreign policy wonks want to work not only because of the NSC’s proximity to the Oval Office, but because of the intimate and flexible nature of the institution.

My first job there was as a 21-year-old intern in May 2000. Serendipitously, I had met the Deputy NSC Spokesman, Mike Hammer, on an airplane flying from Reykjavik,

Iceland to Washington, D.C. in October 1999. We were traveling back from a State

Department conference I had been dispatched to work at. Blame it on the exhaustion, or the typical panic and insistence of a college senior to plan his/her entire life, but I admitted to Mike that, because of a less-than-satisfying experience at the department as

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an intern, I was thinking of shunning public service and pursuing a career in the private sector. Luckily, he had a different idea: It wouldn’t be right, he later called to tell me, for one so young to give up on public service so soon. Mike hired me to intern at the NSC

Press Office during the final year of the Clinton administration and I started working there a week before my graduation from The George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs.

North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took up much of our time that year, but so did reconciliation within Northern Ireland and the Balkans. From the purview of the White House in 2000, the world seemed to be at peace – thanks, we thought, in part to Clinton. He traveled a great deal, making sort of global victory laps, as his second term came to a close. I remember, distinctively, receiving just one phone call from a reporter asking about Iraq the summer of 2000; it struck my colleagues and I as so odd at the time that anyone would think Iraq merited White House-level attention. Afghanistan and Pakistan, too, were on the underside of the agenda; neither country mattered much to

Clinton’s foreign policy legacy.

The closeness between the officials who worked at the NSC and the reporters who covered the White House was palpable. They were part of an elite club and I, as the gatekeeper to the spokespeople, was a sort of facilitator of the relationship. Journalists called me to find out the general stress level of the office, fish for gossip, receive advice on what restaurants to take my bosses to for lunch, and get tips on what issues they should research in advance to supplement their reporting.

I loved it: I felt like an insider, and cherished the opportunity. This was a thoroughly satisfying and inspiring time to be young and working at the White House. I

was grateful that Mike had redirected my ambitions. But, the vagaries of American politics cut my time short. I left in January 2001, discouraged that Al Gore had conceded the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, but encouraged by America’s seemingly positive place in the world and the prospect of returning to the White House in

2005.

Eighteen months later, however, I was back. In April 2002, as I was traveling in

China with Operation Smile, the charity I worked for at the time, the NSC’s personnel officer contacted me to see if I would interview to be an aide to President Bush’s

National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and his Deputy National Security Advisor,

Stephen Hadley. Her rationale was that I knew how the NSC operated and, more importantly, I was young enough to not mind the long hours and humble work. I hadn’t voted for President George W. Bush. But, for me, September 11, 2001 made me redefine what public service meant. Ten years ago, playing politics with foreign policy was shunned; national security was a bipartisan effort and I wanted to again make a contribution. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t voted for the administration in power, I told myself, we were at war—and I had a chance to serve again. I took the position after Rice officially offered it to me.

I quickly learned that my mindset would put me in good company with my fellow officials, and with the reporters who sat just a few feet away in the White House pressroom.

In August 2002 I took my seat in the National Security Advisor’s suite in the

West Wing as the public sell for a second post-9/11 war in Iraq began. I saw up close the profound media agenda-setting power of the White House, beyond what I had ever

witnessed during the Clinton administration. How President Bush and my new bosses defined global threats had changed, they argued, and the concept of preemptive action became operational doctrine with the October 2002 National Security Strategy.1

Over the next six months, the rollout for the war in Iraq to the American public and international community dominated our workdays. Interviews between Rice and journalists were a daily ritual. The White House Office of Global Communications compiled long but slapdash reports with titles like “Apparatus of Lies” about the threat of

Saddam Hussein for the public. Perhaps because of the lack of evidence to dispute the content – there were no U.S. news agency bureaus in Baghdad at the time – they were not publicly contested.2

The language in the 2003 State of the Union speech clearly communicated that

Iraq was the top presidential priority for the year, making the preparation for the war a fixture in the Washington-based press. The NSC and White House press offices had worked to ensure that this news coverage was favorable to their agenda. Officials led conference calls with academics, think tank analysts, and pundits, creating a sense of intimacy within and between them that possibly led them to believe that they were part of the same team. The experts had, essentially, become the administration’s third party spokespeople and White House talking points cascaded through the mainstream press, leaving few skeptics to balance the case for war.

Once the Iraq War began on March 19, 2003, the communications strategy shifted from Washington to Iraq. My office monitored the effects of the military embeds, engineered by Pentagon public affairs officials. News correspondents, a majority of whom had no experience inside Iraq, were deployed alongside American troops

purposely to give them a narrow, U.S.-centric view of the war. For the first month, the

U.S. news from Iraq was considered a success for the White House and the Pentagon and on May 1, 2003, the carefully crafted “Mission Accomplished” media event celebrated this veneer as solid truth.

At this stage, my comfort level of working at the National Security Council plunged. I respected my co-workers’ intellect and dedication to public service. But I wondered if my view from the West Wing of U.S. foreign policy effects was too removed from reality. This was not just about Iraq, but also Afghanistan, which had also been informally labeled a success within the first few months of the war and now received episodic attention from reporters and officials alike.

One July afternoon in 2003, while crossing the street from the White House to the nearby parking garage, I ran into Zalmay Khalilzad, the senior director for the Middle

East at the NSC, whom I frequently interacted with. Khalilzad was an Afghan by birth, and an American by choice. After receiving his doctorate in political science at the

University of Chicago, he became an associate professor at Columbia University; then a young aide in the Reagan administration as the U.S. fueled the mujahedden’s insurgency against the Soviets; and, ultimately, a Bush administration official. On September 11,

2001, there was no Afghanistan office in the White House – but there was Khalilzad. He shaped U.S. policy toward the country from that point on. And, while he had simultaneously been working intensely on Iraq issues, he would soon be announced as the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

I walked with Zal across 17th street and congratulated him on his new role. When we got to the parking garage, he turned and asked, Why don’t you come?

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Yes. I thought instantly. I should.

Then began the second defining experience, in South Asia.

When I first arrived in Kabul in November 2003, the U.S. mission was severely out of balance. There was a dearth of resources dedicated to U.S. efforts – less than $1 billion – but a plethora of optimism that a mission on a budget would produce sustainable change in a country with no infrastructure, military, health care system, civil service, or recent history of open governance. It was an ill-informed premise, which we’d realize-- and pay for years later. In 2004, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan was suspended between the excitement of the post-9/11 liberation, and the chaos that was to inevitably return as long as we dedicated a fraction of the money, troops, attention -- and sobriety -- necessary.

From the outset, the mission in Afghanistan was troubled: With the exception of

Khalilzad, we didn’t seem to know anything about the place. Debates about what to do oscillated between what should be a light footprint and a full-blown nation-building project. What was realistic for a country that had no human or physical infrastructure to effectively run a democratic government, civil society and economy beyond Kabul and into the parts of the country where extremism thrived?

Afghanistan’s cruel realities clashed with Washington’s confidence. I was a staffer in the public affairs office at the U.S. Embassy, grappling with how to even define what our purpose there was. We now had a $2 billion for aid funding and a staff of approximately 80 diplomats and aid workers. The constant riddle was how to celebrate small successes and build the Afghan people’s confidence that their lives were improving, while simultaneously convincing Washington that Afghanistan’s progress was superficial

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and needed continued investment. We were trying to make Afghanistan matter to U.S. policymakers and the press before it became a crisis.

As embassy officials, we weren’t the only ones trying to get our Washington bosses’ attention. Afghanistan’s second-priority status affected the reporters assigned to cover the war for U.S. news agencies. Representing the U.S. press corps full-time in

Afghanistan were six reporters working for the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Journalists from CBS, Los Angeles Times, National Public

Radio, Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal would visit frequently, but also covered the entire South Asia region that included the complicated, dynamic nuclear-power rivals of India and Pakistan. Exacerbating the exhaustion of reporting on countries with little physical or government infrastructure was the fact that their U.S.-based editors often deemed journalists’ stories obsolete.

I empathized with the reporters. My job was to plan and implement media events around the country to celebrate various reconstruction projects. I spent much time with the U.S. security detail assigned to protect President Hamid Karzai, who was employed by DynCorp USA under a contract with the Diplomatic Security Bureau of the State

Department. But the majority of them were a callous, unprofessional and dangerous lot with appallingly high salaries and zero code of conduct. Worst of all, they didn’t seem to care that every time they ventured outside the presidential palace they managed to humiliate Afghans. While protecting Karzai, they also directly undermined any sense of goodwill the American mission was trying to promote. When I tried to reason with the

American contractors about respecting our diplomatic and aid mission, they would often

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respond, Do you want him to die? Implying that we should never question their tactics if we wanted to stay alive. Most of the time, it was an unfair and condescending response.

When I contacted Washington to complain, I was told to focus on public affairs and not concern myself with security, as if domineering and humiliating security acts in didn’t affect public perceptions of America. My colleagues and I urged the Kabul press corps to write about our security contractors’ recklessness, whenever there was an opportunity. Whether we were the impetus or not, the New York Times’ October 2004 article, “The Intimidating Face of America” seemingly got the Diplomatic Security

Bureau of the State Department’s attention; they sent out an Inspector General to investigate.3 (Security contractor reform, however, would not happen until 2007, when

Americans employed with another U.S. security contracting firm, Blackwater, fired on and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.)4

In Afghanistan, we were another club of reporters and officials, trying to challenge assumptions by our respective colleagues in Washington. While some important stories were filed in 2004, the power of just a handful of people in Washington to shape the U.S. news landscape was even more stunning from the embassy in Kabul than from the West Wing. The dynamic would ensure that Afghanistan did not grab the conscience of the American public until 2009, when President Barack Obama would make the war a priority for U.S. foreign policy. Civilian missions and development goals, while essential in this conflict, rarely made for good copy and the lack of troops to fight a resurging Taliban made the security frame a difficult one to utilize and grab the American public’s attention.

Within my corner of the U.S. embassy, we were also confused over what our contribution to the Afghan news media should be. While, at first it was a delight to see our press releases printed verbatim on the front page of an Afghan newspaper, we would cringe shortly after – it was hardly the mark of a professional press. How should we support the development of Afghanistan’s first-ever free press? And how do we—should we?—support the development of our counterparts who worked for President Karzai?

The concept of press-state relations was entirely new. Was it within our purview to professionalize and develop the dynamics between Afghan “reporters and officials”?

While determining what the most responsible course to take was, the head of

South Asia public diplomacy at the State Department in Washington, Larry Schwartz, e- mailed me in February 2004. He wanted me to organize media tours for foreign journalists, giving them an incentive to come to Afghanistan and report on the progress that had been made. Since many weren’t covering Afghanistan issues from Afghanistan, he argued, we should bring them to the story. Larry suggested the first batch of journalists be from Pakistan. Although Afghan and Pakistan are neighbors, there were no

Pakistani journalists stationed inside Afghanistan; they were covering the story from

Pakistan, mainly through a mix of news sources and hearsay.

In April 2004, a group of 10 Pakistani reporters landed in Kabul, just a 30-minute flight from Islamabad, for the first time. I came to the airport tarmac to greet them. Most of them seemed amused to see me, a 25-year-old American official. I got the instant sense that this effort would backfire.

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The friendliest Pakistani reporter was Yousaf. He was also young, represented an

English-language daily newspaper, and had a smile that reveled a seemingly genuine excitement to be among such distinguished colleagues. His presence reassured me.

On the second day of their visit, the journalists sat down for a roundtable discussion with Ambassador Khalilzad, who the Pakistanis saw more as an Afghan than an American. Once the Ambassador made some welcoming remarks, the journalists all clamored to ask the same question: “Ambassador Khalilzad, should Pakistan be doing more?” The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, also known as the Durand line, imagined by colonial Great Britain in 1893 but traditionally rebuffed by the tribes that live along it, was a volatile, jagged space. Much of the fighting was along it and

Khalilzad was beginning to criticize Pakistan for its inability to stop the Taliban from crossing into Pakistan only to regroup to fight another day in Afghanistan.

My colleague and I looked at each other worriedly. Ambassador Khalilzad had been increasingly complaining about Pakistan’s seeming complacency with the Taliban, seeing the Pakistani military and intelligence services as using the Taliban as a kind of insurance policy: If the Americans left neighboring Afghanistan in chaos, the Taliban could be dispatched again to quell the violence and defer to Pakistan in matters of regional security. Washington had signaled their discomfort with Khalilzad being outspoken on this issue, as such criticism would jeopardize Pakistan’s cooperation in the war.

But, in his answer, Khalilzad gave a diplomatic response: “We all need to do more. The United States needs to do more, the UK needs to do more, the Europeans need to do more, the Afghans need to do more, and Pakistan needs to do more.”

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We relaxed as the reporters wrote down the answer. There were a few more questions, but not many. The roundtable was finished in 20 minutes, 25 minutes ahead of schedule. Ambassador Khalilzad looked at us, thrilled to be finishing early. We shrugged, and then led the reporters to the filing center we had set-up for them to write their stories.

Later, they returned to their guesthouse, slept, and the next morning, flew off to visit a military base in Paktika.

A day later, Larry e-mailed me with one line: “What happened?”

I looked at the Pakistani press clips the reporters had filed after their interview with Khalilzad. A majority of them had in the headline the phrase, “Pakistan Should Do

More.”5

I took the tape recording of the interview, put on my headphones, pressed play and started transcribing the discussion to assure Washington that the articles were a misrepresentation of the interview.

But the damage was done. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad used its weekly press conference to react to news reports of the interview. The spokesman said that Khalilzad "seems to be suffering from attention deficit disorder." The spokesman then declared, "We will lodge protest to the U.S. government on the foolish and irresponsible utterance of the U.S. ambassador in Kabul."6

We spent the rest of the day dealing with the issue as it reached the attention of

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who had to address their counterparts about the incident.

Later that night, the Pakistani journalists returned from Paktika. They were flying back to Pakistan early the next morning. With nowhere else to go, we brought them to the

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Marines’ chow hall for dinner on the embassy grounds, where they were served spaghetti and chicken fingers by Halliburton-employed Indian cooks, and then sat amongst the young American Marines to eat it.

I saw Yousaf and walked to him with my notebook. “A lot happened while you were gone,” I remember saying. I explained that we had gotten the news stories they filed from the Khalilzad interview with several inaccuracies, and that they had caused an unnecessary clash between Washington and Islamabad.

I handed him the transcript, “This is what he said.” Then, I handed him the story,

“And this is what you wrote.”

Yousaf, I recall, looked at both, nodded his head, and picked up his news story.

He said, “This is what we heard.”

I tried harder. “I don’t think you understand. This interview was inaccurately reported and has caused diplomatic tension between our two countries.”

Yousaf looked up and smiled wider. “It’s all over the Pakistani press?” I nodded.

He responded with satisfaction, “So now we return to Pakistan famous.”

My eyes widened and I stared at him while he, gleefully, looked back at his colleagues to inform them of the good news.

I felt incredibly naïve. I couldn’t say a thing.

I left Afghanistan in late November 2004, a year after I arrived. I also left the U.S. government and took refuge in my home city of San Francisco. In 2005, I began to work for The Asia Foundation and, among travel to other South Asian countries, returned to

Afghanistan and Pakistan periodically to handle some crisis public relations situations

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and conduct trainings for Afghan and Pakistani staff on how to work with their local -- and U.S. -- media. My experiences with a weak Afghan press and an animated Pakistani press repeated themselves in various permutations. I also continued to stay in touch with the U.S. reporters assigned to cover the two countries, especially as the Taliban began its resurgence in 2006. With each year, I realized increasingly that I wanted to channel my professional frustrations into a constructive, academic environment to discover how, if at all, these dynamics fit together.

I came to Columbia in September 2007 to examine several issues: the increasingly important place of communications theory in international relations; the inattention of

U.S. media to foreign news; the nonsensical abandonment of a U.S.-led war in

Afghanistan in U.S. news; the shaky development of media in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and the ever-changing digital and transnational landscape of news. Plus, I wanted to investigate why the U.S. constantly seemed to fumble public diplomacy, the current term for the active engagement between the U.S. government and foreign publics. Public diplomacy as an academic sub-field was beginning to generate interest and I wanted to help give it some academic grounding separate from the myopic rhythms of Washington.

Perhaps, I thought, an under-investigated component of America’s image in the world was our news: How our national story travels in the world and affects global public perceptions. With this dissertation, I wanted to produce something that showed how the traditional U.S. national security narrative, nurtured within the insular world of

Washington, was perceived overseas. And to question if, perhaps, what we tell each other as Americans to make sense of our role internationally could have an unintended effect in

the very countries we deemed vital to our national security in the first and second decades of the 21st century: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Part I: The Background

CHAPTER 1. The Afghan, American, Pakistani Entanglement

America is physically more than 5,000 miles away from Afghanistan and Pakistan, yet it has felt much closer than that to Afghans and Pakistanis during the past three decades. Directly and indirectly, the United States has been a central actor in their daily affairs since the late 1970s, when South Asia became a Cold War battleground.

On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Union, fearing that the Afghan Communist government was too weak to stand on its own, invaded the country and began a nearly decade-long occupation. Earlier that year, American President Jimmy Carter ordered the

U.S. government to begin covertly supporting the mujahadeen, or Afghan freedom fighters, against the increasing Soviet presence. Yet the U.S. could not do so without neighboring Pakistan’s support. Until then, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship had been contentious. In the 1970s, Pakistan relentlessly pursued a nuclear weapon to balance

India’s power and fulfill its energy needs despite the U.S. government’s disapproval. But after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan became an indispensible American ally.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration overlooked Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and gave it roughly $5 billion in economic and military aid to become a key transit country for U.S. arms supplies to the mujahedeen, and to support the millions of Afghans who took refuge in Pakistan almost immediately after the Soviet invasion.7

The three countries have been entangled in one another’s affairs ever since.

Once the Cold War was over, America moved on from Afghanistan. The Soviet military left in February 1989 and the U.S. largely withdrew its aid to Afghanistan and

Pakistan. Anticipating a power vacuum that mujahadeen leaders would rush to fill, the

U.S. suspended its embassy in Kabul on January 31, 1989. It moved its downsized

3 diplomatic mission to Afghanistan across the border to Peshawar, Pakistan and watched from there as Afghanistan began to plunge into a devastating civil war. With the Soviets no longer uniting them, the mujahadeen fractured into a confusing set of factions, their leaders becoming warlords who scrambled to control territory. In the process, they destroyed Afghanistan’s infrastructure. Kabul city, once the “Paris of Central Asia,” filled with Western tourists to in the 1960s and 70s, was in ruins.8

Through the 1990s, the Afghan refugee community in Pakistan remained at roughly 4 million people, putting an enormous strain on Pakistan’s resources.9

Meanwhile, President George H.W. Bush suspended all economic and military aid to

Pakistan in October 1990 upon suspicion that Pakistan was again pursuing nuclear weapons. Pakistan was: In May 1998, the Pakistani military conducted six nuclear bomb tests in reaction to India’s five nuclear bomb tests, shocking the world. Pakistan’s military leaders also actively sought solutions both to quell the civil war chaos in

Afghanistan and to control the Afghan leadership without American assistance. At the end of the decade, the Taliban became the Pakistani military’s panacea for the chaos that, in their view, the Americans had left behind in Afghanistan.

Taliban, by definition, means “students” in Pashto, a language spoken by the

Pashtuns that live in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and western Pakistan. They were known to be pious Muslims – some of them former mujahedeen – who wanted to create an Islamic state of Afghanistan. The Pakistani military’s intelligence wing, Inter-Services

International (ISI), supported their move into southern Afghanistan in 1994. At first, the

Afghan people welcomed the Taliban: They overpowered and then uprooted the warlords

4 who had terrorized communities and destroyed much of the country. Gradually, by 1996, the Taliban, gained control of most of the country, and took over the national government.

As the Taliban began its brutal regime, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the

United Arab Emirates recognized them as legitimate rulers.10 The American government largely ignored them. The Taliban enacted Shar’iah law, and their form of justice was swift, unforgiving and cruel. Women were not allowed to work, let alone out of their homes. Music and imagery were banned. Life became extraordinarily dull, and

Afghanistan was frozen in time, divorced from the world. While the Taliban government provided no services for their citizens, it welcomed Osama bin Laden and members of his al Qaeda network as their guests. They granted them safe haven as they planned attacks against the United States and the West.

The September 11, 2001 attacks solidified America’s place within the Afghan and

Pakistani public psyche; the U.S. became an everyday actor in the Afghan and Pakistani governments’ routines, and their media’s. More than a decade later, Afghans physically see tens of thousands of American soldiers, diplomats and aid workers who provide security and aid with mixed results. Pakistanis do not see American troops first-hand, but

U.S.-operated, unmanned drones attack militants in Pakistani tribal areas from the sky.

Since 2002, the U.S. has spent at least $529 billion on the war and given more than $29 billion in economic aid to Afghanistan; it has also given Pakistan $25 billion in economic aid and reimbursements to the Pakistani military for fighting “America’s war.”11 During this war on terror as during the Cold War, the U.S. made Afghanistan and Pakistan a frontline in a protracted conflict.

The task of explaining the U.S. government’s policies and the American nation’s attitudes has largely fallen to the journalists who report for U.S. news organizations.

American journalists’ easy access to U.S. officials, and their built-in understanding of

American-style democracy and political dynamics, has made their reportage invaluable to

Afghan and Pakistani journalists who have to live with the war’s ramifications. Afghans and Pakistanis see the U.S. government as having hegemonic control over global events.

They therefore assume that the American press channels government policy. They look to the U.S. press to describe the operations of the U.S. government. It was the American press that told the region that planes had hit the World Trade Center in New York and the

Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It was the American press that told them that the U.S. was waging war against terrorism in the sovereign state of Afghanistan on October 7,

2001. And it was the American press that told Afghans and Pakistanis that Osama bin

Laden had been killed on Pakistani soil.

At 11:35 p.m. eastern time on May 1, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama announced from the White House that bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan by a team of American Navy Seals.12 To Americans, bin Laden was a murderer and a terrorist. “An Emblem of Evil in the U.S., an Icon to the Cause of Terror,” was how the

New York Times headline described him on May 2, 2011. It was his vision and leadership that killed thousands of Americans and compelled President George W. Bush to start in

2001 what ultimately became America’s longest war. For many Americans who saw the twin towers fall, and especially for the younger generations that came of age in the post-

9/11 decade, the news was cathartic. Dan Barry from the Times described the American public’s reaction as the emergence of emotions that had been “stored for a decade…

[that] ranged from jingoistic bursts of boast to halting expressions of dread; from joyous shouts for the strike of a winning goal to somber reflections about that dish best served cold, vengeance.”13 The Washington Post called it, “a moment of national unity.” Dan

Balz explained the “spontaneous flag-waving crowds” outside the White House as “a small symbol of the emotional relief that swept across the country” after Obama’s announcement.14

This American narrative did not resonate with the Pakistanis. Pakistani television aired footage of the U.S. celebrations, but the Pakistani people did not rejoice in bin

Laden’s death.15 Pakistanis learned early their morning of May 2, 2011 that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden on their soil. That day, Pakistan’s Foreign Office released a statement confirming the news:

[in a raid] conducted by the U.S. forces in accordance with declared U.S. policy that Bin-Laden will be eliminated in a direct action by the U.S. forces, wherever found in the world…It is Pakistan's stated policy that it will not allow its soil to be used in terrorist attacks against any country. Pakistan's political leadership, parliament, state institutions and the whole nation are fully united in their resolve to eliminate terrorism.”16

The Pakistani government hadn’t been warned of the incursion. The U.S. government did not trust them to cooperate in the raid. The Pakistani media largely saw this as a major breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty, another humiliation that symbolized America’s power, and its ability to act with impunity outside its borders.

In 2011, 72 percent of the Pakistani public said that they did not know who was behind the September 11 attacks; 19 percent thought that the American government had instigated them to have an excuse to invade Afghanistan and flex its power in the region;

4 percent thought Israel was behind it, and just another 4 percent agreed with Americans

7 that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were the culprits.17 On Geo TV, Pakistan’s most popular television station, senior correspondent Ansar Abbasi said on May 2, 2011 that bin Laden was not a terrorist and that the Taliban and al-Qaeda “have never been enemies of Pakistan.”18 According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis concurred: only 14 percent of them thought that bin Laden’s death was a positive event.19 In an article in the conservative, English-language newspaper, The News,

Hamid Mir, the first and last journalist to interview bin Laden after September 11, insisted that bin Laden never took credit for the attacks, but now that he was dead, the

U.S. should stop its war in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan.20 Several pundits and newspaper editorials agreed with this sentiment.21

The Afghan news media and leading government officials also learned about the news from the United States. Unlike Pakistan, the Afghan news media welcomed bin

Laden’s death in Pakistan as a positive event – and a large majority of Afghan people agreed.22 But this was mainly because it confirmed to Afghans that Pakistan was the

United States’ main antagonist in the region, not Afghanistan.23 Tolo News,

Afghanistan’s most popular news source, almost boasted in its May 2, 2011 broadcast:

“Pakistan has always rejected the al Qaeda leader's presence in its territory, claiming that he was living in Afghanistan. However, the Afghan people and officials repeatedly rejected the claim.”24 Former director of the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security

(NDS) Amrullah Saleh said, “Now the world should realize that the Afghan people are right and had already accused Pakistan of providing sanctuaries for terrorists.” President

Hamid Karzai agreed, saying that the American discovery of bin Laden in Abbottabad

8 proved that Pakistan was the cause of turmoil in Afghanistan and that the U.S. should redirect its military resources there instead of Afghanistan.25

This was mainly the Kabul elite speaking. Education and information is grossly uneven in Afghanistan, and those who live in parts of the country that suffer the most from conflict are often left to speculate why things happen. In an earlier poll conducted in

2010, the International Council on Security and Development found that 90 percent of

Afghans living in the south, where fighting is the heaviest, did not know about the

September 11 attacks. They also did not know that the attacks were the catalyst for the

U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.26 They assumed, like many Pakistanis who did not believe al Qaeda engineered September 11th, that the Americans were there to occupy them to expand their empire. Just as the Mongols, Persians, British and Soviets before them.

***

Walter Lippmann famously said in Public Opinion (1922) that “the only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event.”27 Almost a century later, this is still true: We all relate to others and the complex world beyond through the “pictures in our heads.” And the source for the mental images we construct most often is news. In the United States, we can form opinions on domestic events and issues through direct experiences, or the experiences of friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. News media for domestic events, in other words, are influential, but not the only source for understanding an issue or an event: We

9 can relate to what happens within American borders through more channels than the world beyond American borders.

News reports on foreign issues or events, on the other hand, have considerable more power in shaping Americans’ mental images of the world – and the U.S.’s role in the world. Lippmann’s quote applies more to what is mostly intangible for Americans:

Foreign people, foreign cultures, foreign issues and foreign events. We are less likely to directly experience wars, disasters and systems of governance other than democracies. If we do, it is because we came to the U.S. to flee them, or because we travel to a sample of countries for leisure or work. We often turn to journalists, whose job it is to cover foreign news – either from the United States, the country being discussed or its neighboring region – to give us a snapshot of the issue or event so we can create a mental image of the place and its importance.

But Lippmann also made a second point in Public Opinion: Until “we know what others think they know,” he said, “we cannot truly understand their acts.” How can someone understand the perceptions of another? One way is to consume the news media of the Other: to read what they read, to watch what they watch, to listen to what they listen to. That can happen within domestic spaces – in the U.S. a liberal seeking to understand a strong conservative’s mindset may elect to tune into Fox News; while a conservative wanting to understand a liberal’s point of view may watch MSNBC. But this also applies on an international scale: Global citizens looking to understand a national mindset of another country can read or watch their news outlets within that country.

Specifically, for the purpose of this dissertation, citizens of other countries who are affected by America’s economy, military and/or global politics, like Afghans and

Pakistanis, can watch and read what U.S. policymakers and citizens watch and read to gain better insight as to how they think – and try to predict how they will act.

Today, that is not difficult to do. The U.S. news media is part of a transnational, instantaneously available digital media landscape in which information flows within and between nations faster and in more quantities than ever before in history.28 News is not confined to one national audience. Global journalists are exposed to several narratives each of which represents a distinct version on international agreements, disasters and wars. The imagery and narratives U.S. journalists provide for Americans can also be consumed by anyone in the world who speaks English and has access to the Internet, and/or satellite television. Global audiences for American news can produce unintended media boomerang effects: Whatever text is written, whatever pictures are taken, whatever words are said about a foreign land for a U.S. audience can travel back to the government officials, journalists and citizens of the nation American journalists are talking about.

What is created for one group of people living in a society can fairly easily be accessed, interpreted and relayed to another. The unanswered question is, what happens next?

American journalists mediate the space between the government and the public. But

U.S. foreign policy often affects global publics more than the American public, except for the small minority of U.S. citizens involved in military and diplomatic communities and international business. And global publics can share, too, in the public information provided for U.S. policymakers and the American citizenry – and look to it for insight into why America acts the way it does internationally. This is especially the case for foreign journalists who need to report on America’s impact on their respective countries.

Once news is reported, it becomes the common property of journalism and can be relayed

11 anywhere in the world as long as local news gatekeepers see it as having value.29 Yet for reasons of their own, journalists and editors select agendas and frames that help fix the identities of their people and their nations.

Some see this free exchange of news as having significant potential to bring global communities closer together.30 Lester Markel, for instance, the former Sunday editor of the New York Times, wrote in 1983, “We cannot have understanding – and thus peace – among the peoples of the world unless they come to know one another better, unless they have better, truer, information about one another.” This information cannot come from government-sponsored broadcasts like Voice of America, the BBC, or Radio Moscow, he said. “The main instrument for communicating such information, for bringing about such understanding is the newspaper…it is the day-by-day flow of the news.”31 To understand how the world communicates, it is important to understand the stream of news stories— and the way they come to stand for an entire nation in the imagination of outsiders. But

Markel’s assumption was that a greater flow of news and information could bring understanding and peace between peoples and nations.

U.S. news about the world, however, is understood ethnocentrically. U.S. journalists not only project a certain identity of the U.S. to Americans and the world, but the identity of other nations as well. How is that identity welcomed within the countries that are being written about? Does U.S. news encourage greater understanding between the United

States and other nations? Or does it remind Americans and other nations too much of our differences? Does it help transform and open worldviews – or does it harden the worldviews that existed before?

***

In the main, this dissertation examines how American news about the world travels, and, in particular, the role it has played in this decade-long war. It examines hegemony in

U.S. news, and how American news narratives resonated in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2010 to 2012. The study also looks at the sociology of news development in

Afghanistan and Pakistan since their media systems were freed in 2002, and the habits and underlying philosophies their journalists have created.

The core of this work takes the form of four working hypotheses. First, Afghan and

Pakistani journalists use American news as their principal source material for understanding America and U.S. foreign policy. They see elite U.S. publications (the

New York Times and Washington Post, especially) as authoritative voices on the United

States and ritually relay information from these publications in their own copy and broadcasts. Second, these journalists have a complex attachment to the American news media, which they scour for facts and insight, but also resent for what they deem to be negative news frames about their countries. They also take exception to ethnocentrism in

U.S. news reportage, which they identify in the close relationships U.S. journalists maintain with U.S. government officials. Third, Afghan and Pakistani reporters relay the

U.S. news within frameworks that make sense for their national audiences. There is some variance in how Afghan and Pakistani journalists reflect U.S. news because of their distinctly different relationship with the U.S. and the degree of maturity in their respective news medias. Fourth, Afghan and Pakistani journalists insist that they are professional and objective in their reporting, but also feel some responsibility to represent

13 their country and society’s interests, which is the same ethnocentrism they dislike in

American news.

A transnational news system in which national news narratives are shared does not foster transnational consensus: In an international media landscape, news narratives, themes and frames remain decisively national. Nationalism in the press is hardly an

American phenomenon. Most journalists see themselves as part of a nation they feel responsibility toward. Countries in conflict with each other can see the other nations’ news about it as troubling at best, since the narrative can often be negative.32 But there is a widespread, long-standing perception in developing nations that American and other

Western news media stain the reputation of people and countries throughout the world.33

Just as the U.S. exercises global hegemony in a material sense, the U.S. media is powerful in shaping the “pictures in the heads” of American and international publics. In the American news media’s attempt to inform and educate Americans on Afghanistan and Pakistan, they often create an image that the residents, journalists and government officials of those countries can perceive as being drastically oversimplified. The news stories they tell often create more friction than understanding.

The Chapters

This dissertation has four parts. The first aims to give the reader background on the scholarly literature that provides the framework for this study, and the U.S. news narrative about the war in Afghanistan and “Af-Pak” policy, as it is described in U.S. foreign policy parlance, the past decade. The second and third sections review the

14 sociology of news development in Afghanistan and Pakistan and how local journalists absorb U.S. news about their countries. These sections rest on 57 in-depth qualitative interviews that I conducted between 2010 and 2012 with Afghan and Pakistani journalists about their newsgathering habits, their perceptions of their news systems and American reporting about Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fourth part of the dissertation examines how the realities and worldviews of Afghan and Pakistani journalists conflict with

American journalists’ perceptions. I interviewed seven U.S. foreign correspondents who report for elite news organizations from Afghanistan and Pakistan on how see their jobs; their reaction to the Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ criticisms of them; and what they deem the future of Afghan and Pakistani journalism to be.

Part I: The Background. Chapter Two, the literature review, examines two bodies of work that are analogous, yet rarely linked together. The first is on hegemony in the

U.S. news media and its relationship with American society and government, especially how it pertains to international issues and events. This also includes scholarship on indexing and cascading; agenda-building and agenda-setting; framing; and reporting during conflict. The second is on the American news media’s relationship with the world, and nationalism as a phenomenon in international news. This includes examining the different kinds of press systems that exist globally, and how they interact with each other.

Chapter Three looks at the reality the U.S. news media has created about the war in

Afghanistan and the entanglement with Pakistan. It provides some background on U.S. news organization’s treatment of Afghanistan – and to a lesser extent, Pakistan – since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. It examines how the American news media largely indexed its coverage to the U.S. government and maintained an

15 ethnocentric bias after the attacks and the beginning of the U.S.-led war. The chapter then discusses the waning U.S. coverage of Afghanistan during the Iraq war and its increased coverage when President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Part II – The Pakistani Journalists. Chapter Four looks at how the privatization of

Pakistani electronic media in 2002 unleashed a fiercely competitive broadcast media system that regularly promotes sensationalism and conspiracy. Chapter Five explores how 27 elite Pakistani journalists perceive their media history and its current state. It also focuses on Pakistani journalists’ relationship with their government, both the civilian and military arms, which they treat differently due to a deeply embedded deference for their military. Chapter Six looks at how Pakistani journalists consume U.S. news media, what meaning they create from it and how they relay it.

Part III – The Afghan Journalists. This section is similar in structure to Part II on the Pakistani journalists, but it explores the distinctly different trajectory of the Afghan news media, the journalists’ relationship with government officials, and their use and perceptions of U.S. news about Afghanistan. Chapter Seven looks at the Afghan news media’s short history, which has been under authoritarian or hyper-partisan controls until the past decade. While there is much scholarship on the development and history of

Afghanistan,34 with the exception of non-governmental organizations, inter-governmental organizations and bilateral aid agencies’ white papers, there is little academic work about

Afghanistan’s media space.35 This chapter attempts to piece together what has contributed to the state of Afghan journalism today, and how the Afghan government treats their media.

Chapter Eight explains what 30 elite Afghan journalists think about the current state of their press, its future, and how the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai engages them. Chapter Nine begins to look at Afghan journalists perceive the “reality”

American journalists have created about Afghanistan and how they make meaning from it and transmit it.

Part IV – The American Journalists. Chapter 10 explores the views of seven

American journalists who report for elite U.S. news organizations in mostly Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan. It discusses their hegemonic role as purveyors of information to their intended audience, Americans, and to the unintended audiences of Afghan and Pakistani journalists. The foreign policy narrative in Washington is set by small group of people, comprised of U.S. government officials and a cadre of international news reporters and editors for elite news agencies, like the New York Times and Washington Post. This chapter examines how they perceive their role in this entanglement and their understanding of how their reportage reverberates within Afghan and Pakistani media systems. It focuses also on the Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ criticism that U.S. journalists serve to promote U.S. national interests, and sometimes closely align themselves with the views and policies of U.S. government officials. Chapter 11 examines how American journalists perceive the development of Afghan and Pakistani news media, and what they think their futures will be after U.S. troops withdraw from

Afghanistan in 2014.

The post-9/11 Afghanistan war provides a timely case study to understand how news systems in two emerging democracies struggle to make sense of the international conflict

– and the role of the United States in it – for their publics. A nation’s media system is deeply entangled with its government’s and population’s worldviews. Their journalists are profoundly affected by both the ills of their society and its successes. The current state of the Pakistani and Afghan news media show that they are eager to exercise freedom of speech and play a role in their young democracies. Yet, according to the journalists I interviewed in both countries, while they celebrate their relatively free press, they have enormous shortcomings in being a responsible press. In particular, they suffer both from massive self-censorship and government censorship. Afghanistan and Pakistan rank 150 and 151, respectively, out of 173 in the 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index.36 Yet the problem is even greater.

In Pakistan, the mainstream press is addicted to sensational news stories on security and political intrigue. Their news reports are overwhelmingly choked with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Pakistani media reflects a culture and society anxious for change, but without a clear direction on how to make it happen. Instead of investigating the sources of their society’s problems and guiding the public and the government toward constructive dialogue on solutions, they set out to shame political figures. They are obsessively fixated on the notion that a press serves to destroy power, and that has become the foundation from which they operate. Yet they selectively go after the power they feel safe contending, such as the Pakistani civilian government and the American government. They feel less secure taking on the Pakistani military and

Islamic fundamentalist groups.

In Afghanistan, the free news media is much more timid in taking on the many powerful figures in their country after decades of authoritarian rule. Independent

18 journalism is a new phenomenon and Afghan reporters fall into the habit of reporting about the government without skepticism. Its capacity to report and investigate remains weak, yet journalists with the more popular news organizations are becoming more emboldened and professional. This is a result, however, of the strong Western, mostly

American, presence in the country. Afghan journalists working for “free” news organizations rely on American economic support, on top of American news reportage on their country for information about the conflict, the U.S., and its own government.

Given the 30-year entanglement between the three countries, a recurring subject for both Afghan and Pakistani news media is America: What is doing, why it is doing it, and what its intentions are for future action in their countries. Global news outlets routinely examine and relay American news about U.S. politics and our celebrity culture to keep their audiences informed about the health of the American government, and entertained by Hollywood. Yet elite Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ relationship with American news goes much deeper.

Journalists who report for elite U.S. news organization are powerful but overlooked players in the international conflict. Not only do they influence U.S. policymakers and the American public, but they also represent the views of the United States in an accessible package that Afghan and Pakistani journalists (among others) can recycle for their audiences. In their eyes, the U.S. media is a credible purveyor of what the U.S. government wants the world to know. Therefore, U.S. journalists’ selection and representation of Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s realities, and the U.S. government’s policies towards both countries, make them unofficial diplomats for anyone seeking to understand U.S. thought about, and action within, the South Asia region. They are

19 effective and widely accessible liaisons. As U.S. foreign correspondents are the American public’s connection to a world unknown, they also serve as guides for the Afghans and

Pakistanis about an America unknown.

Yet Afghans and Pakistanis do not want to understand all of America anymore than

Americans want to understand all of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Each population wants to know how the other country will affect them. They want to put their country at the center and use their worldview as the lens. This ethnocentrism helps manage and simplify complexity like this entanglement. For American journalists, that means promoting a worldview in which liberal democracies are the ideal form of government, and in which

American material power must be used to keep the U.S. safe. American journalists may be holding the U.S. governments accountable for its actions, but Afghans and Pakistanis see no humility in their news coverage of their countries. They see a news media that follows the U.S. government’s lead and reduces their countries to one-dimensional, violent nations. For Pakistanis and, to a lesser extent, Afghans, a casual visit to the

United States through its news media hardens a negative view of the U.S. they began with and stirs resentment toward America as a nation.

CHAPTER 2. Nationalism in America, Nationalism Everywhere: Literature Review.

This literature review explores several different bodies of scholarship pertinent to this study’s question. It is separated into two sections. First, it looks at issues of hegemony, and the U.S. news media’s relationship with American society and the government. This includes scholarship on ethnocentricity and enduring values in U.S. news; indexing and cascading; agenda-building and agenda-setting; framing; and war reporting. Second, it looks at the American news media in a global context. This includes examining the different kinds of press systems that exist globally, how they interact with each other, and whether ethnocentricity and nationalism in news are universal.

While these two bodies of work are analogous, little work has linked them together and investigated how a U.S. national security narrative is received within a global context.

The global effect of American news products and their function in shaping global perceptions about the United States and its role in the world is underexplored. How does traditionally nationalistic American news travel, and is it duplicated—or altered—for foreign journalists’ own purposes?

In this dissertation, I focus on the elite U.S. news media. Elite media is defined as that

“which has an impact with intellectuals and opinion leaders,” is respected within their communities, and has “the biggest impact on the serious thinking of a nation.”37 For the

U.S., normally, it is just the elite brands – New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street

Journal and Los Angeles Times, among the highest – that establish which international issues are the most significant for the country and explain how those issues should be explained to the American public.38 The elite U.S. press has long been seen as the dominant news media in the international system not only because it is linked to the

21 world’s largest military power with dozens of bases around the world, but also because of its transnational reach. However, this global impact is disproportionate to the amount of information that Americans consume about the world. Traditionally, foreign news makes up less than 10 percent of total news content. But U.S. citizens and their elected officials depend on it for information about the world, as they can rarely rely on personal experience and interpersonal communication to understand events in the global arena.

Less than one third of Americans have a passport and most citizens use that passport to travel to neighboring Canada and Mexico.39 The news media therefore is a vital intermediary between the American public and the state on issues of national security and foreign policy.40

I. AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY NEWS IN AMERICA

Government Affects Media: Hegemony, Indexing, Cascading

Communications scholarship has long established that the idea that the press can provide unfettered, completely objective news is simply an ideal. And this is especially the case when it comes to foreign affairs reportage. A number of factors—not least expense and ignorance—limit the value of the coverage. Moreover, national security apparatuses thrive on secrecy. All in all, the image that U.S. journalists craft about

America’s role in the world is largely based on what U.S. officials tell them.41 Journalists’ rarely challenge the consensus between executive officials and legislators on foreign policy issues:42 The U.S. government has a hegemonic control over how the public sees

22 the world; when it comes to issues of foreign policy and national security, the press normally follows the U.S. government’s lead, giving it a kind of hegemonic control over how the public sees the world.

Todd Gitlin defined hegemony in The Whole World is Watching as the ruling class’s ability to persuade the subordinate class of a certain meaning of events, and the consent of that subordinate class that that meaning is correct.43 It involves, according to

Antonio Gramsci, the “penetration of ideology (ideas and assumptions) into their common sense and everyday practice; it is the systematic (but not necessarily or even usually deliberate) engineering of mass consent to the established order.” Indeed, the image journalists craft about the role of the U.S. in the world depends on a certain co- dependence between U.S. reporters and officials. 44 U.S. officials regularly establish the salience of a foreign policy for the governmental agenda45 and journalists regularly turn to official sources for information on it.46 When the salience of a foreign policy issue is being determined for the governmental agenda, journalists regularly turn to official sources for information and defer to their point of view – most especially during this policy formation stage.47

Journalists bolster U.S. government positions through a passive acceptance of the frame government spokespeople use to describe an event or issue, repeating official talking points and relying on domestic sources to inform them of international issues and events.48 The U.S. government has good reason to work closely with the U.S. press to build its case for policy and action, especially during crises and war: In the twentieth century, governments became more concerned with their own popularity because support of the citizenry meant its actions were legitimate.49 The extent of governmental

23 hegemony over the news agenda on foreign affairs is so vast, John Zaller and Dennis

Chiu argued, that the U.S. press was actually “government’s little helper.” Their analysis of media coverage of 35 U.S. foreign policy crises between 1945 and 1991 found that the press rarely strayed from the government views and policy.50 Similarly, Piers Robinson’s review of U.S press-state relations found that the U.S. press has consistently supported the U.S. government during times of war, most notably the Vietnam War, the 1991 Gulf

War and U.S. actions in Somalia in 1992.51

Indexing

Journalists, the primary conduits between foreign policy officials and the public,52 tend to give weight and credence to the views and opinions of the former.53 W. Lance

Bennett called this ritual reliance on government officials for source material – and journalists’ seeming inability to challenge the consensus between executive officials and legislators on foreign policy issues – indexing.54 He explained that journalists prefer to speak with officials—especially those in the executive branch—and to use them as principal sources in foreign policy stories.

The American president has unrivaled access to the news media, especially network television, and he both benefits (and suffers) from constant coverage.55

Reporters give more deference to the president and his executive branch than to the legislative branch, because they trust those closest to decision-making in Washington to explain U.S. foreign policy.56 For instance, Doris Graber found that from August 1994 to

July 1995, President Bill Clinton received over four times more network coverage than

24 members of Congress, making the American president the central figure for the U.S. press.57

U.S. news is indexed implicitly to the “range and dynamics of governmental debate,” and it is particularly relevant to issues that have a larger, global effect, which the public may not know much about without the media’s guidance – such as military, diplomacy, trade and macroeconomic policy decisions.58 This is especially pertinent to foreign because officials can control how the issue is framed – and a journalist rarely has access to intelligence or facts that could contest the official line.59 As Ole Holsti explained, “effective diplomacy requires… secrecy, speed, and flexibility,” which is not

“enhanced by more active public participation.” Government, especially the executive branch, has the opportunity to carefully select attributes of a foreign policy to win the support of journalists, and the public.60 When foreign news is breaking, foreign policy officials, especially those in close proximity to the president, have a commanding influence, alternative sources are absent or neglected, and news frames tend to reflect official rhetoric frames.61 In these early stages of offensive or defensive foreign policy decision-making, the press is just beginning to understand the story and reporters’ investigative functions are limited.

While journalists can consult pundits outside of government, officials are the most sought after because of their decision-making roles and access to classified information.

Journalists tend to deem few sources in the legislative branch, academia, and think tanks as credible without validation from the executive branch; and non-credible dissenting opinions are perceived as deviant. This essentially represents the paradox of Washington- beat reporting on foreign policy issues: because few people are “in the know,” journalists

25 deem insiders who control and promote policy to be credible sources for information and outsiders with dissenting views and not credible. This is especially acute during a time of crisis. O’Heffernan argued during his assessment of the 1991 Gulf War that reporters and officials have an “interdependent and mutually exploitive” relationship, which serves both their interests: the government wants to sell its policies, and the commercial media wants to sell papers or accrue high ratings.62 Over issues of national security and foreign policy, both reporters and officials cater to a patriotic and nationalistic norm to meet these goals.

To also maintain their access to government officials, journalists are also likely to remain cautious about making judgments against them.63 Meg Greenfield, a former

Washington Post editor and opinion columnist, argued that the need to protect and foster sources—compounded by the implicit code of conduct for Washington reporters to remain objective—demands that journalists bury their convictions and use of ideological frames to simply report what they are told.64 This is reflected in Bennett’s assessment of the U.S. news media’s handling of the 2004 Abu Ghraib story. Bennett found that while the event provided the news media an opportunity to act independently from the government and to raise the difficult issue of torture, the media framed the story as an isolated event—consistent with the Bush administration’s rhetoric on this issue—and did not provide an independent counter-frame to challenge the administration despite all the imagery and evidence that pointed toward torture.65 Bennett’s summary was that “event- driven news reporting, particularly in matters of high foreign policy consequence, is seriously constrained by mainstream news organizations’ deference to political power.”66

This idea of deferential journalism intersects with what Daniel Hallin defines as journalists’ oscillation between a “sphere of consensus” and “sphere of legitimate controversy.” The sphere of legitimate controversy includes the central positions staked out in elections and legislative debates, which are established as credible by political actors; the sphere of consensus is the space of “motherhood and apple pie,” within which the journalist is expected to serve as a patriot and an advocate of policy.67 For the reporters who cover the discourse over foreign policy issues from Washington, once a foreign policy issue is removed from a sphere of legitimate controversy and inserted into one of consensus, the story loses its salience, as there is little credible dissent – or skepticism – to index coverage to. Washington-based reporters therefore rarely challenge the political consensus over foreign policy decision.

Cascading

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, according to Robert Entman, confirmed that the news media “patrols the boundaries of culture,” but also challenged the idea that U.S. journalists are automatically accepting of U.S. government views: There are ways that elites, the press and the public can challenge the official government line, although it is difficult to do.

Entman built on the work of Hallin (1986) and Jonathan Mermin (1999) to create the cascade activation model68 that identifies when elite opinion – which index theory suggests is the main driver of change for news narratives on a particular issue -- can fragment.69 The model allows one “to measure the distance between the White House’s preferred versions of foreign affairs and the ways the media actually report them,”

27 examining how much and how thoroughly the thoughts and feelings that support a news frame extend from the White House and the executive branch to “other elites” (i.e.

Congress members and their staffs; think tank experts; former government officials; professors; interest groups, etc.) to the news media– and then down to the public.70 Each level of the model, too, has its own network of association “among ideas, among people, and among the communicating symbols (words and images)” and spreading interpretations within them is an automatic, largely unconscious psychological process.71

The cascade model acknowledges that not all elites are created equal; “some individuals in Congress or the media, for instance, can get attention for their ideas far more easily than others.” 72 For instance, at the media level, elite outlets – like the New York Times and Washington Post – set the agenda for other news sources.

The cascade model shows that how each level interprets an issue is not always pre-determined.73 At the top of the model is the presidential administration and at the very bottom is the public and “The farther an idea travels between levels on the cascade, the fainter the traces of the ‘real’ situation are.”74 The president and his staff enjoy the greatest power in selecting the mental images to associate with an issue and events, and then project them down the cascade. Ideas from the public, at the bottom of the cascade, can travel upward to change the media’s news frame, and then up to the elites, and then up to the executive branch – but this is rare. As Bennett explains it:

As is true of actual waterfalls also moving downward in a cascade is relatively easy, but spreading ideas higher, form lower levels to upper, requires extra energy—pumping mechanism, so to speak. Ideas that start at the top level, the administration, possess the greatest strength. 75

But if the news media can convince the elites and the administration that large swaths of the public have an opinion that counters the presidential administration and the elites’

28 collective perception on an event or issue, then the news media can affect how the leaders think about and act on them.76 It is possible, yet only to an extent.

Media Affects Government: The CNN Effect

The idea that media affects government, that it can shake officials out of complacency and force them to act, is popular among practitioners. This is the “CNN effect”: the concept that 24-hour news reportage and imagery can inflict pressure on the

U.S. government to act globally and therefore has major influence on setting the national agenda for foreign policy. Practitioners like government and non-governmental officials,

Bella Mody pointed out, have given credit to news agencies for stirring governments and members of the public to act – whether it be through donations or volunteer service. In

1992, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for instance, said, “The day that [the media] began to pay attention to Somalia, we began to receive the support of the member states. Then they were ready to give us planes for transport and to provide more humanitarian assistance and the forces to protect it.”77 Former U.S. Secretary of State

James Baker agreed. He wrote in his 1995 memoir, “In Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, among others, the real-time coverage of conflict by the electronic media has served to create a powerful new imperative for prompt action that was not present in less frenetic times.”78 And in 2005, the United Nations Emergency Relief Commander,

Jan Egland, emphasized that it wasn’t until news cameras arrived in Niger to document the famine that UN requests for donations were met.79 There is also the long-held belief in Washington that it was the news media that led to U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War.

Yet, while practitioners believe that media has power in policy-making and the

CNN effect is real, many scholars do not place much faith in it. News can provoke discourse on an issue among policy decision-makers, Steven Livingston conceded.80 But it’s only when an administration is the least certain about its policy—either in its initial conception or during its early implementation—that the press has the greatest chance of affecting that policy.81 Daniel Hallin argued that “Media are most active when the administration fails to maintain the initiative on a major public issue”82—or in other words, when the public isn’t hearing clear messages directly from officials in Washington.

Piers Robinson found that where policy on the issue is uncertain, and the media frames its coverage of the issue as one of critical importance and lends empathy to it, then there is a strong CNN effect. The media can be more convinced of the issue’s importance than the government, and its voice may therefore be stronger than the government’s. This was the case with two air-power interventions in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, Robinson found.

However, when policy was certain – as was the case with ground troop intervention in

Somalia and Iraq in 1991; the air war against Serbia; and the decision not to intervene with ground troops in Rwanda – there was either a weak or no CNN effect.83 Robinson emphasized, however, that the news media normally made a strong case for minimal intervention that advocates more for the use of military air power, rather than ground forces.84 And normally, if there is a CNN effect, then it is just a short-term response to a specific episode – it does not affect long-term policy decisions.85 Journalists, in other words, are not policy makers.

In 1995, Steven Livingston and Todd Eachus found that the “CNN effect” did not apply to the 1993 U.S. intervention in Somalia, despite Boutros Boutros-Ghali and James

Baker asserting that it did. They argued that although media content was an important factor in eventually expanding the U.S. role in Somalia, it “came in response to official initiatives, and not the other way around.”86 Mermin likewise found in his study of network news coverage of the civil war and starvation crisis in Somalia in 1992 that television likely contributed to but did not drive the George H.W. Bush administration’s decision to airlift emergency aid in August 1992, and then deploy ground troops in

November 1992. Evidence showed that “stories on Somalia appeared just after the articulation of demands for intervention in Washington in the summer and fall of 1992.

Journalists ultimately made the decision to cover Somalia, but the stage for this decision had been set in Washington.” Journalists, he found, may set the news agenda, but they do so in close collaboration with officials and elites in Washington.87

However, the idea of media’s influence on foreign policy, according to Mansour

Farhang and William Dorman, is “too intangible to be easily quantified and too complex to be comprehended in isolation from other sources of influence” such as information flows and information management within a complex web of decision-makers.88 Eytan

Gilboa agreed. “The linkages between media coverage, public opinion, and policy,” he said, “aren’t yet sufficiently clear, and researchers who wish to validate the CNN effect and rely on the assumption that the triangular mechanism is valid may be moving in the wrong direction.”89

At best, we know that the news media can be an input source for foreign policy decisions: the quantity of an issue’s coverage, content’s tone, and intensity can signal to officials which policies they may need to adjust. Or, the media can be an input source for foreign policy rhetoric: coverage of foreign news can influence how officials decide to

31 shape and deliver their messages on a policy.90 The media, through the frequency and depth of its coverage, can both directly and indirectly either confirm or refute which policies are most important.91 For risky, high-cost operations – such as one that require the deployment of ground troops – the CNN effect is a myth: Public pressure rarely calls for troops to enter combat. 92 It is also the same for policies in which the U.S. government is proactive and has taken the time to build a robust case with clear messaging that proves the case’s importance. Journalists’ use of official sources, and their own inclination to defend and promote their national identity, lead them to honor U.S. government policies and rhetoric. Again, the press can set the news agenda for the nation when it comes to foreign affairs, but they do so with government officials.

Agenda Building, Agenda Setting and Enduring Values

Agenda setting is the "ability [of the news media] to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda" by the frequency and prominence an issue receives in the news media, according to Maxwell McCombs’ and Donald Shaw’s 1972 definition.93

This concept has been the topic of hundreds of systematic studies on domestic policy,94 yet understanding how foreign news stories, which are reported less frequently, are selected for treatment is important in its own right. In 1963, Bernard Cohen, in his seminal work, The Press and Foreign Policy, systematically explored the nature and effects of foreign affairs reporting in the United States.95 He found that reporters have particular influence in setting the foreign policy agenda for the nation; “the press,” he

32 wrote, “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”96

In 2004, however, Wayne Wanta, Guy Golan and Cheolhan Lee contested Cohen’s argument that the media does not tell the U.S. public what to think – indeed, they argue, the news media does by giving the public an “agenda of attributes” – a second-level agenda-setting effect. Their research found that coverage of foreign nations in the news influences how important those nations are seen – and whether or not people have a positive or negative view of them.97 Second-level agenda setting, they argued, looks more deeply at the “transmission of attributes of actors in the news from media coverage of these attributes to the public’s recall of the same attributes—a much more subtle level.”98

In other words, first-level agenda setting suggests that the news media affects what the public thinks about, second-level agenda setting, much like framing, suggests that media coverage influences how the public thinks about it. Similarly, John McNelly and Fausto

Izcaray found that the news agenda for international issues and events that broadcast outlets selected do directly influence U.S. public opinion:99 The amount of news coverage and how they are framed, directly relates to how Americans perceive different countries – as positive, successful, or not.100 If a country is described negatively in the news,

Americans will likely have a negative view of that country.

The agenda-building notion, defined by Roger Cobb and Charles Elder, is an extension of agenda-setting and looks at how the media initially selects news and “why some controversies or incipient issues come to command the attention and concern of decision makers, while others fail.”101 Before reporting on a story, journalists make a series of assumptions about its potential impact. Whether or not a story is reported likely

33 depends on its timeliness, its newness, and whether or not it resonates with the American audience. These criteria do not always apply for foreign news, but if a story involves violence, conflict, disaster, or scandal, it is also more likely to be selected for coverage.102

The emphasis on violence and conflict means that, when media are selecting international news coverage, wars, riots, and massacres—as well as intra-government disputes that place an issue in Washington’s “sphere of controversy”— are priorities for print or broadcast.103

Political actors have a stake in agenda-building should they wish to keep an issue prominent in the media.104 Lang and Lang, in their 1981 case study on the Watergate scandal, argued that the public agenda is formed through four steps: the media highlight some events, activities, groups or personalities; these elements are then presented in a shared frame; the issue is then linked to “secondary symbols, so that it becomes part of the recognized political landscape”; and then government spokesmen promote these symbols that establish a feedback loop to media to increase coverage.105 While Lang and

Lang’s research was based on American political actors reacting to domestic issues, the research also suggests that, should American political or policy actors largely reach accord on a foreign policy issue, putting it in the “sphere of consensus,” its salience for the media agenda may decrease.

Indeed, conflict and drama – in Washington or overseas – involving foreign affairs issues is what drives most U.S. news media coverage of the world. How those realities are constructed depends on various decisions journalists make about which attributes to highlight: the amount of print space or airtime; the choice of vocabulary; the choice of events; and the U.S. role.106 What the elite news media decides is a story– and how it

34 covers the story -- sets the tone for the rest of the U.S. press.107 And elite news organizations, which have the most influence in setting a news agenda, usually abide by certain “enduring values” that limit coverage to a small number of countries and storylines.108

Herbert Gans’s influential sociological study of newsrooms in the U.S., Deciding

What’s News—written originally in 1979 but largely confirmed in his 2004 edition—goes into detail on how foreign news is often selected. American news, he explains, is primarily about our nation and society, which means that foreign news is largely concerned with depicting the nation as the unit. News, therefore, is U.S.-centric and

“deals either with stories thought relevant to Americans or American interests.”109

Because foreign news receives the least amount of print space or airtime in the U.S. news media, only “the most dramatic overseas events,” which normally involve pending or current conflict, are deemed newsworthy.110 Also, because American news values the U.S. as the most important and valued nation in the world order, news about foreign countries can include overt ethnocentrism and “blatant patriotism.”111 This makes U.S. foreign news less objective and prone to making “explicit value judgments that would not be considered justifiable in domestic news.”112

Philip Powlick and Andrew Katz, in their 1998 study of international news selection, agree with Gans that when media are selecting international news coverage, wars, riots, and massacres—and arguments between government officials in

Washington—are priorities for print or broadcast.113 But for the U.S., the factors that also determine international news coverage includes how the country ranks on the world stage

(i.e. is it considered to be a power? Are U.S. troops there?), the country’s degree of

35 economic development, its degree of press freedoms, and its cultural and geographic proximity to the United States.114 What countries make it into U.S. news depends on the position or material power that country has, either through nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, troop levels, or it’s GDP and how much it exports.115 Tsan-Kuo Chang found in his research of international news on U.S. television that the most powerful nations in the world were regularly covered in the 1990s, while smaller countries on the periphery were not normally considered newsmakers.116 News of international events is normally focused on events or issues that violate U.S. or western norms -- or on how it involves the United States, especially if there are U.S. troops deployed in the country.117

The U.S. press mostly ignores the developing world unless there is a disaster, war or other atrocity that shocks the world. The most frequent topics in international news rarely includes a country’s culture or society, it is mostly about their domestic government and diplomacy.118 Foreign news coverage, too, also had a particular impact on the U.S. public’s perceptions of foreign nations. Wanta, Golan and Lee’s qualitative analysis of 1998 newscasts and public opinion polling of Americans perceptions of foreign nations found that U.S. news provided the most negative coverage on Iraq with

329 negative stories, followed distantly by negative news coverage of India (85), Pakistan

(83), China (37), Iran (28), North Korea (28) and Mexico (22). Correspondingly, the

American public had the coldest feelings toward Iraq, followed by Iran, North Korea,

Cuba, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and Russia. They argued that this proved that “the media can show the public both how vitally important countries are to the United States and how negatively the countries should be viewed.” 119 Publishers and

36 editors in the United States still press for reporters to find the local angle in international news coverage.120

James Carey once referred to a lack of explanation in American journalism as part of the “dark continent” of journalism” – and this is decisively the case with foreign news.121 When international news coverage is included in the U.S. press, it is traditionally

“breaking news,” which is episodic, has less explanatory power and is therefore less meaningful to the U.S. public than thematic, analytical reports.122 Like Gans’, Simon

Cottle’s analysis of global crisis reporting shows that international reportage is shallow, intermittent and quick; it is determined by a sense of ethnocentrism, economic pressures, geopolitics and national interests.123 Christopher Beaudoin and Esther Thorson found that episodic news reports made up 73 percent of the Los Angeles Times’s international news stories.124 Paying sustained attention to a foreign news story often means that there needs to be an American troop deployment.125 Hallin and Gitlin found that during the 1991 Gulf

War, 20 of America’s 25 newspapers increased in circulation while the Cable News

Network (CNN), the only U.S.-based news agency in Baghdad during the time of the initial U.S. attack on Iraq, increased its audience share tenfold.126 Such coverage allows

U.S. news media to celebrate consensual values and show the public that they are being responsive to the soldiers who are in harm’s way.

The U.S. public wants imagery and narrative from the frontlines of war to try to understand the experience.127 War not only creates a supply of news, it creates a demand for it, a commentator told Harold Lasswell in 1927, after World War I.128 And for the U.S. public, it’s not any war – it’s our war; the U.S. news consumer must be invested in the conflict.129 Objectivity is only the norm in U.S. reportage, J. Herbert Altschull argued,

37 when it comes to domestic issues and events; when it comes to war or any kind of international conflict, looking at both sides of the story would be deemed unpatriotic.130

But it’s war that dominates foreign news coverage;131 it’s popular because it appeals to a sense of American ethnocentrism; which has been a core part of U.S. foreign correspondence since it began in the 19th century. Dell’Orto’s study of foreign correspondents from 1838 to 1859 found that “the most dominant discourse was of

American superiority, especially political, that was constructed repeatedly as the United

States’ providential mission to the rest of the world, either by ‘beneficial’ intervention

(on the American continent) or enlightening example (to Europe).”132 This “enduring value” is reflective in Entmann’s 1991 study that showed that U.S. journalists explained the Soviets’ downing of Korean Air flight 007 in 1983 as murder; but when the U.S. downed an Iranian airplane in 1988, it was explained as a technical accident.133

In sum, U.S. foreign affairs reportage is likely be periodic, to have a dramatic quality, to promote U.S. interests, and contrast that country’s values with American values. The developing world is largely ignored—unless there is a disaster or other atrocity that shocks the world, or if U.S. troops are involved in a war in the country.134 To American audiences, the U.S. is often positioned as the international community’s sole superpower, prepared to respond militarily to any threat against U.S. national security or the American way of life, or even in behalf of what are deemed to be larger “civilizational” values.135

These “enduring values,” alongside a dependence on U.S. officials for information, normally guide U.S. news professionals to establish the salience of issues and set their news agendas, but how these issues are specifically framed can affects how negatively or positively events and issues, and the countries they take place in, are perceived.136

Framing

Frames, Erving Goffman explained, organize knowledge by assigning issues and events categories, shaping one’s understanding of objects or situations, and then suggesting how one should act toward or within them.137 For journalists, frames are critical to sort out the world for news consumers as they “bundle key concepts, stock phrases, and iconic images to reinforce certain common ways of interpreting developments.138 As Gitlin described, an organized world helps journalists “package” information “for efficient relay to their audiences”139 and through frames, journalists can give news a storyline by selecting some aspects of a perceived reality—a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation—and make them more salient.140

And how an event or issue is framed affects how that event or issue is perceived; frames help people “negotiate it, manage it, comprehend it.”141 The most influential media frames, Entman argued in 1993, were ones that use “culturally resonant terms” for their audiences. This is especially pertinent to American audiences trying to digest international news and foreign policy issues: Filtering complexity by giving news a simple storyline within a frame is especially common, as foreign events are often mysterious for American audiences.142 Foreign affairs also depend largely on conventional news frames, or on how similar stories have been explained to the public in the past – especially news on terrorism and conflict. The news is often slotted into familiar categories, or conventional news frames that give meaning and order to complex

39 problems by assigning familiar storylines. This was the case with Sept. 11, 2001, when journalists gave the U.S. public “consistent, predictable, simple, and powerful narratives that [were] embedded in the social construction of reality.”143

These conventional news frames include three general categories to international news: “security,” “diplomacy” or “humanitarian.” Using them allows audiences to receive a snapshot of what the issue is, why it is important, and what the U.S. role is and should or should not be. But U.S. journalists frequently rely on the security frame and organize the world for Americans according to U.S. national security interests. This is certainly the case for countries that are at war – and especially for wars where U.S. troops are deployed. If a country is not described in security terms, then the country’s government, economy and its overall role in the international community are normally emphasized -- rarely does U.S. news include stories about a country’s culture or society, unless it is in the travel section or has a direct impact on the country’s commerce or politics.144

The conventional news frame allows readers to quickly interpret, categorize and evaluate conflicts without giving them due analysis. And, in this case, the public could see the world as a dichotomy, just as it was during the Cold War. Until the 1990s, the

Cold War news frame gave Americans a clean paradigm for the globe, but the

“intellectual coherence and narrative power” of the frame gave way when the Berlin Wall fell and Central and Eastern Europe turned into electoral democracies.145 September 11 gave the U.S. government and the media a “war on terrorism frame” to categorize the world again as U.S. friends or enemies. It was applicable to U.S. foreign policy as a whole, and simplified the narrative for the American public. Within this narrative, one

40 could lump together different facts and personalities, and “make sense of a range of diverse stories about international security, civil wars, and global conflict” all the while

“conveying U.S. foreign policy priorities to the international community.”146

Substantive news frames, according to Entman, define effects or conditions as problematic; identify causes; convey a moral judgment of those involved in the issue; and endorse prescriptions to the problem being discussed. 147 With September 11, the problem was the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens; the cause was terrorism; the moral judgment was to call the acts evil; and the remedy became war. “All four of these framing functions hold together in a kind of cultural logic, serving each other, with the connections cemented more by custom and convention than by the principles of valid reasoning or syllogistic logic. The two most important of these functions are the problem definition” since defining the problem sets the tone for the cause, the moral judgment and the solution. 148 A dominant frame, in which there is no other competing frame, “produces extraordinarily one-sided survey results” which discourage dissent – therefore further cementing the dominance of that frame – whereas the idea that there are two competing frames, or “frame parity” is the exception in U.S. news on foreign issues.149 There can also be several news frames to describe a news story.

The effect that news frames about September 11 had on the public was strong, argued Norris, Kern and Just. Heightening risks to U.S. national security in the news resulted in Americans thinking that the threat of global terrorism was much more than the actual reality: The State Department Patterns of Terrorism report in 2001, which had tracked global terrorism since 1969, found that the actual dangers from terrorism had fallen since the early 1990s – but American fears had sharply increased.150

While news reporters and government officials can engineer both news agendas and frames, frames can also be built through a less-conscious, socially constructed process. This is true not just for Washington-based reporters who are remote from the foreign environment they are writing about, heavily reliant on government officials as sources, and under deadline constraints to generate news—but also for the field-based, foreign correspondents who monitor that policy’s impact abroad. Pan and Kosicki suggested that frames can be byproducts of social norms and values, organizational constraints, interest group pressures, journalistic norms, and ideological or political orientations of journalists.151 Especially because frames may be manifest in nuances of wording or syntax, frames can have effects that are difficult for journalists to predict and control.152

Frames are both mental images that live inside our heads and social objects that are embedded in our discourses, routines and institutions; they are often assumptions taken to be truth.153 They also give shape to the larger environment in which reporters and officials operate and interact; they can give shared meaning to the U.S. journalists and

U.S. officials who are both working on national security issues or, in the case of this dissertation, working on policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. 154 This is especially the case for journalists who are working abroad. Foreign correspondents are part of a larger expatriate community in war zones that includes members of the diplomatic and

NGO communities. They are all part of a community of expatriates who are struggling to make meaning of the foreign environment, and be effective within it. Frames can make, according to Weick, “assumptions and definitions taken as given” and create a “shared definition” of an environment.155 For reporters and officials alike, they can “authorize,

42 enable, and justify specific practices and policies while precluding others” and create dominant practices that, after repetition, are taken as natural and for granted.156 Instead of generating a counter-frame, journalists and officials can easily apply new information to a dominant frame. While they do not cause action, they make action possible by establishing “the conditions of possibility for objects or events.”157 Journalists have considerable responsibility in not just seeking to see beyond their own biases to fully understand a country, but to also try to project that to an American public. But, the normative framework of American journalism limits that.

Political scientists like Barnett and Finnemore, Keck and Sikkink, have used frame analysis to understand international action, especially as it pertains to humanitarian movements involving non-state actors.158 Frames can shape how people decide what is a problem and what is not. In other words, problems are constructed and the American public’s shared definition of success and failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be completely different than what Afghans and Pakistanis think inside those countries.159 But how these officials and journalists define foreign events and issues and try to make sense of them – especially during conflict – can largely be a reflection of the sociological constraints they face in trying to do their jobs.

Constraints Journalists Face in War Reporting

Relying on a certain normative framework to understand complex and foreign scenarios is a crutch within the arena of war reportage, especially a war the U.S. is involved in. For U.S. reportage on international events to make sense to an American

43 audience, it normally needs to make the U.S. a central piece of the story and rely on a security frame to tell the story.

This is normally the result of sociological constraints that U.S. journalists in conflict settings, like Afghanistan and Pakistan, face that include battlefield censorship; deadlines; broadcasting standards; and security, language and cultural barriers. 160

Journalists covering conflict are mostly conveying what they can determine in a fog; it is not necessarily a full and accurate representation of reality.161 Pedelty, who conducted ethnographic research on U.S. foreign correspondents working in El Salvador, described foreign correspondents’ pace as “frenetic”; and the workday, Hannerz added, can also be

“ordered by two clocks, the one at home and the one on the beat.”162 Due to these demands, attributes of a story highlighted in a conflict setting are often ones that are available to the reporter, not selected.163 A foreign correspondent’s newsgathering routine can be a sort of trial and error process, and reporting fully on a conflict environment is impractical. This is where relying on both U.S. officials and established, contemporary news frames and storylines comes into play. Foreign correspondents must then find a news “peg”: an organizing device for drawing audience attention, which is normally a crisis, disaster, or conflict happening in the country—usually with importance to the U.S. interests.164 Foreign correspondents can revert to already-established story lines to organize news; and Washington-based editors are much more likely to “index” the foreign coverage to what is happening in Washington.165

There are also the issues of the physical location of the reporters, their tendency to self-censor, the means in which news is distributed and the communications efforts of the warring factions to influence the press. “These are indeed the pollutants which constitute

44 that overworked idiom: the fog of war.” 166 And that is mostly what journalists covering conflict are conveying, a fog; it is not necessarily a full and accurate representation of reality.167 The organizational impact on foreign correspondents is great. Van Ginneken explained that news agencies can “discipline” foreign correspondents’ work, “sometimes in such routinized and subliminal ways that individuals may be largely unaware of the forces constraining them, and determining not only which stories are covered but how they are framed.”168 There is often tension between the correspondent and their U.S.- based editor, who is removed from the foreign correspondent’s day-to-day reality and responding to pressures from his or her superiors. Sometimes the correspondent pitches a story to an editor but, because of the limited space available for foreign news reporting, is told not to bother pursuing it.169 These constraints rarely allow for “why” and “how” in addition to “what” and “where.”170

The reporter-official dynamic can spill out beyond Washington as journalists depend on the U.S. officials in the country they are reporting on. According to Cook, most news relayed by U.S. press during the 1991 Gulf War was gathered from the

Pentagon, State Department and the White House.171 Reporters do not set out to a combat zone with full independence to report what they see. Two forces normally send a U.S. journalist to a conflict setting: the U.S. government’s determination that the country in question matters to the U.S., and that journalist’s news organization’s determination that the country in question matters to their news coverage.172 The latter is more decisive because covering the world is expensive, particularly for television, for which the costs of newsgathering are the greatest and their priorities for coverage are rooted in commercial concerns.173

Another factor that influences foreign correspondence is “pack reporting,” which can also contribute to maintaining a consensual frame: If the majority of foreign correspondents choose one storyline, other ones can seem deviant and will often be perceived as biased.174 In Washington or in the field, diverging from the consensus can be considered fringe reporting and therefore dismissed as not credible. This is made all the more complicated when you factor in the reality that much coverage of war is not based on what the writer observes first-hand, but what he derives from secondary sources.175

This has increasingly been the case as foreign news bureaus shut down and agencies rely on local stringers and newswires for information.

While reporting from overseas, especially during a conflict, maintaining objectivity is a supremely difficult task. For Americans, a war can be ‘our war’ and a journalist working for a U.S. news agency can be seen as an American first, and then a journalist. A U.S. journalist, therefore, “walks a very thin tightrope attached to two cliff edges labeled ‘objectivity’ and ‘patriotism,’” Taylor explained, as the U.S. audience normally has a “subjective desire to see everyone support the national war effort.”176

Similarly, British journalist Max Hastings, during the 1982 Falklands conflict between the United Kingdom and Argentina, argued that when a foreign correspondent is covering his/her nation is at war, objectivity is impossible.177 Besides a sense of nationalism, there is the inevitable murkiness and uncertainty of wartime that yields confused reports throughout large swaths of the country – yet the journalist can only physically be in one particular location at one time.178

McLaughlin’s interviews with 15 war correspondents in 2002 found that they are not always thrill-seekers – or parachute journalists who want to jump into the chaos, get what

46 they think is the story and then get out. Talk to most foreign correspondents in-depth,

McLaughlin argued, and “they reveal the conflicts and dilemmas that constantly haunt their efforts to ‘get the story’ more than their more conventional colleagues on purely political or diplomatic beats. They want to find the stories that must be told, and no one would know about otherwise.”179 What they face in a modern war environment –

McLaughlin described as a “high-octane, high-risk space” – are a host of sociological constraints, including risks to their personal safety, plus “a range of military, political, technological and economic pressures” that include self-censorship, restrictions on movement and having to deliver for the 24-hour news cycle. All of this can push journalists to be, knowingly or not, selective with the facts.180

Moreover, editors may not accept news stories offered by their reporters unless they have already been reported by prestigious organizations and deemed by the journalistic community to be on the news agenda.181 When the Times, “runs an international story, it serves as a cue for other media outlets to pick up on the issue as well,” argued Powlick and Katz.182 Journalists are avid consumers of journalism – and, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, they often look to elite news organizations for cues on what to cover, and how to cover it. This leads to the concept of “borrowed news” or derivative journalism, which is the re-packaging of news stories already in existence instead of producing original reportage.183 For U.S. journalists trying to explain the world with all the demands put on them, this has become common.

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A scholarly consensus has been established: the depth and breadth of international news is limited, and often fits within a security frame because of a reliance on official sources, inherent ethnocentrism and other sociological constraints faced during the newsgathering process. Objectivity may be the glue that binds professional journalism together, but it’s hardly the norm in U.S. news about the world: The U.S. and the West are regularly promoted as the most significant actors in international affairs.184

But the focus of this literature reviewed so far has been how these dynamics affect the

American public. While U.S. communications scholarship has largely focused on interaction within the United States, the audience for American news is now transnational.185

The U.S. news media plays a mediating role not just for the government and the public in the U.S., but between governments and governments, publics and publics, and journalists and journalists worldwide. But even as the U.S. media are not confined within

U.S. territorial boundaries, the global effect of American news products, is largely unexplored.186 There are few answers on how American news – that normally focuses on crisis is episodic and inadequate in terms of historical context, and can give ethnocentric and racist descriptions of people in developing countries – is perceived and used abroad, especially in a conflict environment. 187

Carey said in Communications as Culture that “reality is brought into existence, is produced, by communication — by, in short, the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms.” Unless the American public follows presidential and congressional speeches, academic analysis, or experience foreign issues and events first- hand, it is often journalists who construct, apprehend and utilize symbolic forms to not

48 just influence how the public understands realities or how policymakers react to realities, but to create those realities.188 And, typically, the reality that U.S. news media constructs is based on a consensual way of talking about American society, American culture, and the place of the United States in the larger geopolitical structure.189 Even when we are talking about the world, we are still emphasizing our place in it – we are still talking about us.

The question is not just whether U.S. journalists objectively and fairly convey information about the rest of the world, or help legitimize official positions, or create realities for Americans -- but also how they create meaning for foreign audiences. Do U.S. journalists create the same-shared reality in other parts of the world? If not, how does this reportage reverberate inside the country that is the subject of the news coverage?

II. AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY NEWS IN THE WORLD

Transnational technology has created routes through the global news terrains, ensuring that news is not confined or beholden to a single national audience. Audiences for today’s news media, Reese argued, are “increasingly de-territorialized” and journalists must “navigate between [their] ‘vertical’ orientation aligned with [their] host nation-state and a ‘horizontal’ perspective—a global outlook characterized by more cosmopolitan, pluralistic, and universal values that transcend narrow frameworks.” 190

Because media can transcend boundaries, it has a “spatial” quality; because news is available to multiple audiences simultaneously, it also has a “temporal” quality.191

However, despite the span, interconnectedness, and “virtually real-time properties of globalized media” the national security narrative in the United States remains static, fixed,

49 and abiding by the patriotic norm. Satellite news and the Internet build a global arena, yet the American national security narrative rarely adapts to it. Rather, it maintains the U.S.- centric idea of the nation and the frames of conflict, disaster, and crisis. In other words, even when we are talking about them, we are still talking about us. But this is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

Nationalism Everywhere

The United States is the most talked about country in the world: According to

Wu’s 2007 comparative study of international news reported by 38 nations’ media systems, the United States was referenced and editorialized the most.192 Reporters, opinion writers, columnists, talk show hosts, headline writers, photo editors and cartoonists in other countries generate journalistic images and messages of the U.S. from their respective locations; and the few foreign news agencies that have the budget dispatch journalists to cover Washington to garner first-hand knowledge of a country that has a profound impact on the rest of the world. 193 U.S. news narratives can flow rapidly around the world and be picked up by another nation’s journalists, who then interpret and relay them. But no matter where they are reporting from, foreign journalists do not always see the world as American journalists do.

For instance, U.S. news on the Falklands War described the Soviet Union as a key antagonist that wanted to increase its military and commercial connections with Latin

America. It’s unlikely that Argentines saw the situation that way. The British, too, likely rejected American news’ view that their actions in the Falklands was reflective of British

50 imperialism, and that they were trying to resolve a political dispute with force, Wasburn argued. U.S. news, on the other hand, rarely described the U.S.’s deep involvement throughout the Western Hemisphere during the 1980s – in El Salvador, Guatemala,

Nicaragua, and Grenada – as being about American imperialism but rather a struggle for

“freedom” and “democracy.” 194 With Iran, many Americans become aware of the country through the Iran hostage crisis and not the Iran-Iraq war or, for that matter, the

American-sponsored overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953.

The revolution was explained by Ayatollah Khomeini’s taste for tension and martyrdom, not the dynamics of Iranian opinion.195 In general, the U.S. media has depicted countries going to war as being aggressive, but within the U.S., U.S. aggression is often rationalized as according with U.S. interests.196 What U.S. audiences see as information, foreigners often see as propaganda -- which can make them hesitant to accept the U.S. news media’s view of the world.

The traditionally nationalistic U.S. news frame on foreign policy was not echoed in British, Canadian, French, Indonesia, Japanese or Russian news coverage, Wasburn found in 2002.197 Likewise, Rusciano discovered – through his study of Arab, Chinese,

Indian, Israeli, Nigerian, Russian and U.K. news – that how the events that triggered the war in Afghanistan, the September 11 terrorist attacks, were framed and explained to U.S. and its western allies’ audiences was largely exclusive to the U.S. and its western allies.

While western newspapers described themselves as leaders in an international fight against terrorism that was in their national and moral interests, Arab newspapers did not trust those assertions and feared that Muslim nations would bear the brunt of the West’s

51 reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks. Other non-western countries, too, were wary of the west’s consensual narrative, and reaction to the events.198

Two studies of international coverage of the Iraq War in 2003 reiterated this finding that the U.S. media’s interpretation of events is different, but also found that, like

American national security news, other nations are also “culture-bound” and influenced by their nation’s own political context.199 Lee and Yang found that journalists from five different countries – Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the U.K. – who covered the same event – the return of Hong Kong to China in 2000 – employed their own national lenses to tell the story to their audiences.200 Sharma, likewise, interviewed journalists covering the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit and found that journalists from India and

Nigeria acknowledged that they used the angle of national interest in their reportage (the

U.S. correspondent interviewed, however, insisted he was detached from the subject and the U.S.’s stake in it).201

Every country has its own national interests and state governments can accuse news agencies of being unpatriotic if they challenge or criticize the national interests, or aims, of the country. This is especially the case when a nation is in conflict with another, either through trade wars, cold wars, combat wars, or other kinds of wars. It’s an

“undeniable historical fact,” argued Taylor, that a country’s “national media have helped the prosecution of wars far more than they have ever hindered them.”202 This is in part because governments have developed more sophisticated strategic communications techniques but also because, during wartime, journalists are just like their fellow citizens

-- perhaps more so, in that they’re occupationally disposed to pay more attention to the hegemonic ideology and sentiments about the war. During any conflict with a foreign

52 entity, patriotism will be high. In the mid 1990s, for instance, Wasburn found that the language and explanatory frameworks that made up Japanese news reports on trade disputes with the U.S. were staunchly pro-Japanese and served the objectives of the

Japanese state.203

Nationalism as a principle is universal, and each country has its own brand of it.204

Similar to the U.S., most news coverage around the world is seen through a “national news prism” and primarily produced by a national news agency for a national audience.205

Journalists reporting on the world normally report the world as they see it and, while there may be a global convergence on journalistic values, like professionalism and objectivity, Reese argued, in action, journalists tend to report on issues that are local, not global.206 Therefore, U.S. standards for what constitutes news about a country are rarely shared by the residents of that country: What is knowledge about Afghanistan or Pakistan to an American is not the same as what an Afghan considers knowledge about

Afghanistan, or a Pakistani about Pakistan.

Even the news agencies that are transnational have a physical headquarters in a certain country, where they make editorial decisions on content often based on their geopolitical location, Hafez found in his 2007 study on international news agencies.207

Mody, similarly, found in her study of news representations of the conflict in Darfur that how different news agencies describe cross-national foreign events depends on the locations and characteristics of the news organizations that create the news: national news agencies tell stories that will make sense to their audiences.208 If “objectivity were humanely possible, reporting on an event would be identical in all news media around the world,” she stated. 209 But, it’s not possible; ideas and events look drastically different

53 depending on where you are standing worldwide. While some believed that transnational news stations – like Al Jazeera, CNN, France 24, China’s CCTV and Russia Today – could help bring about a global civil society, news can have a decisively national feel.210

The CNN that one watches in Lahore, Pakistan is not the CNN one watches in San

Francisco, California: CNN distinctly tailors its programming for its audiences. As does the BBC World Service -- the news agency that comes closest to reaching all corners of the globe through radio, the medium that accesses the largest swaths of populations worldwide.211 Al Jazeera, too, Ayish argued in 2002, diverts from the principle of objectivity when it comes to issues that have a pan-Arab, public consensus.212 When given the choice, Straubhaar found, audiences around the world choose their national news broadcast over an international news agency’s broadcast.213 And national interest is the most frequently determined influence on media coverage throughout the world.214

The virtue of patriotism, indeed, is part of journalism thought and practice everywhere. Independent news outlets would commit a sort of commercial suicide if they didn’t support their country’s war effort, and nationalistic news coverage is also certain when the news is state-owned.215 For most of the world, the state controls the press: The

World Bank found in 2002 that, in 97 countries, state governments controlled an average of 29 percent of newspapers, 60 percent of television stations and 72 percent of radio stations; in 43 countries, the state had complete oversight over television.216 The government is most likely to control the press in poor countries with weak markets: Most state-owned media is in Africa, and most independently owned media in Europe and

North America.

The developing world’s press, much of it under control of the state, has long complained that western news agencies socially construct political conditions and events that maintain the national interests of their countries and that lend legitimacy to the international political structure and norms that keep their countries in leadership positions.217 But developing countries’ press corps, too, tend to construct news that aligns with their own political, economic and cultural interests. This is reflected, Wasburn found, in the coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, when the West and rich oil states were aligned against a relatively poor Third World country, Iraq. 218 During the 2003 Iraq War, Ravi similarly found that Indian and Pakistani journalists focused on Iraqi civilians points of view because they sympathized more with the Iraqi people than with the U.S. and its allies’ goals.219 This is, perhaps, one of the most interesting points of tension: Foreign journalists are dependent on the Western news narratives that reach their countries for content, but are simultaneously frustrated with the agendas, frames and tones of those narratives because they conflict with their nation’s news agendas, frames and tones. The journalists may need and accept the facts, but the worldview of the Other that frames the report is an annoyance.

Western Media in a Global Setting

U.S. news can have a global impact precisely because of the international reach of

U.S. based news agencies. Most of the global news flow is coming from the West, or

North, and flowing to the South – rarely does it go in the opposite direction. There exists what Tunstall and Machin call the “US/UK news duopoly” in the sense that both

55 countries news agencies -- the Associated Press and Reuters, and CNN and BBC World -

- seem to dominate western news flows.220 Ten years ago, the CNN News Group, with 42 bureaus worldwide, was available to 160 million homes in 212 countries and BBC World was available to 167 million homes in 200 countries.221 English is the lingua franca of international communication, and major western news institutions—not just through wire services or satellite, but through the Internet and/or the international publishing of western newspapers and magazines—have expanded their reach significantly because of increasing technology and a growing global demand for it.222

A country’s place in the international system depends on not just its material might and clout in international economic and political systems, but also how well it is covered in these news flows. As Chang said, “all countries [are] not created equal to be news” and global publics definitely sense that when they look at U.S. and western journalism.223 But the news agenda and frames western news agencies select can be contested and resented. Quantitatively and qualitatively, the west has been seen to create and reinforce images and stereotypes that are “harmful, biased, and unrealistic… concerned only with bad news—catastrophe, corruption, social disorder, and national failure” which a developing country cannot effectively challenge with their own news systems.224

In the late 1970s and 1980s, many in the developing world called this a kind of neo-colonialism: the West, they argues, who were former colonizers, were still controlling the news inflows and outflows from countries they once controlled.

Journalists in recently independent Asian, African and Caribbean countries that subscribed to Western wire services were disturbed by the news they read about their

56 countries.225 Controlling the news narratives and images of developing countries, dependency theorists argued, was a sort of neo-colonialism that could disrupt those countries’ ability to turn into developed, democratic societies.226 It was a popular argument that inspired international action.

In 1976, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) General Conference in Nairobi published the report One World, Many Voices, an overview of communications and society that focused on imbalances between the

Western and non-Western world. The one-way flow of communication, dominating from the West – or the North -- provoked calls for a New World Information Communication

Order (NWICO).227 In 1977, the Washington Post even ran a sympathetic editorial acknowledging the reluctance of letting U.S. journalists serve as the image-makers for a country: “One does not have to accept the third-world charges that Western news agencies are cultural and political predators in order to understand a country’s reluctance to have its picture of the world, and the world’s picture of it, drawn entirely by foreigners who are sometimes knowledgeable and sympathetic, sometimes not, but who nevertheless are foreigners.”228 And, in 1979, the MacBride Commission -- chaired by

Irish attorney, Sean MacBride and sponsored by UNESCO -- argued that it’s not the media’s job to inform, but to assist. It’s report stated:

What communication can do is focus attention, point out opportunities, attack indifference and obstruction, and influence the climate of opinion. Communication thus plays a supporting and participatory role in development, but its contribution can be significant. This applies to the mobilization of public opinion in developing countries, and to the spread of greater understanding in the developed.229

Developing countries that supported the commission called for an order to seek

“fair and balanced” coverage of the postcolonial states. The idea was that Western news

57 flows should focus on supporting the development of countries and not focus on their failures – or realities. The news agencies of the United States, United Kingdom and other

European countries responded that this was a kind of “pre-censorship” and that the commercial and political constraints already made reporting on these countries difficult.230 They pointed out that third world news was heavily loaded with government press releases – reflecting the very state controlled news systems that suppress freedom of information and the pursuit of truth. Despite pleas for a New World Order in communications a decade before, a 1985 follow-up study undertaken for UNESCO found that the richest countries with the most considerable sway over international politics continued to be covered the most in global news, with the U.S. in a big lead over France and the U.K., and Russia and Africa covered the least.231

The sway that geopolitics has on international news flows continues, many scholars argue. Roxanne Doty, in her 1996 book, Imperial Encounters, found that news representation reinforce the developed world’s hegemony over the developing world.232 A news organization that is based in a major power, and belongs to a strong military alliance and the G20, has considerably more influence than a new agency based in a weak country that is not a member of any exclusive, international clubs.233

Some scholars agree that Western institutions fundamentally misunderstand the problems of developing nations, and how Western states – especially colonizers – made states weak. For instance, Columbia University professor Mahmoud Mamdani has argued that colonialism continues to exacerbate tensions in Africa because the institutions it left behind encourage racism and division.234 Similarly, Severine Autessere has argued that Western institutions regularly frame issues broadly, and fail to understand the unique

58 local context of each issue.235 This has contributed to the media’s general mis- conceptualization of international affairs dilemmas, and therefore to misdiagnoses and misleading ideas about quick fixes.236 This fits with Bella Mody’s analysis of the U.S. elite media’s coverage of the Darfur crisis in Sudan. She found that American journalists frequently distorted the reality by referencing tribalism and ancient hatreds to describe the crisis without explaining the role colonial legacies. Susan Carruthers similarly explained Western media’s lack of context in its reportage on Africa “explanatory impoverishment,” which lets the West off the hook for setting some of the very conditions during colonialism and unfair trade practices that created or heightened the crises.237 The frame is security, and the constant direness of the developing countries – and not the scary odds that they face, and why the face them.

By dominating the global media market and global news flows, the Western press accentuates images and fixes identities around the world. Often, countries with nascent press corps, like Afghanistan and Pakistan, are dependent on Western-centric media for information, despite the ominous stories that are told of Afghanistan and Pakistan.238

Once news is broken it is a sort of common property that journalists can repeat; they only need to quote another outlet’s reportage if they use the exact wording.239

Foreign journalists reporting on the U.S. regularly seek U.S. news to aid them in their reporting on the U.S. For them, reporting a country fully and creating new knowledge from reality is not always a possibility; local media—radio, television, and print must serve as source material. In 1996, Hess found that The New York Times and

Washington Post had the greatest readership among the foreign journalists he surveyed, at 89 percent and 70 percent respectively; many of the stories in these papers were re-

59 printed for foreign publications.240 In one of the other few studies on foreign journalists covering the U.S., Wasburn found that the foreign journalists were very reliant on

American news sources, and especially the New York Times, which was perceived to be an agenda-setter for American policy.241 While several more American news sources were available—Washington Post, Economist, Newsweek, etc.—the Times was deemed to be the most important. Because of the American nation it represents, its arguably the most important news organization in the world.

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Journalists who report on foreign issues for their national audiences can virtually create the world for them.242 Hall argued that the question is not whether news media objectively and fairly represent reality, but how written representations give meaning for the realities that are reported: The news media can help form a consensus, which lends legitimacy to what is common sense and real for a society, and then marginalizes alternate accounts.243 Journalists everywhere are likely not to provide critical distance from their respective government—the focus on the national is normal for a country’s press corps. This much is well established in the scholarly literature. But the literature has not come to grips with the ways in which local journalists use American news to understand not only America’s conduct but also their own country. In Afghanistan, a country at war, where U.S. troops are fighting, do Afghan journalists look to U.S. news about Afghanistan to try to understand what Americans think they know so they can understand their acts? 244 How about in neighboring Pakistan, where the U.S.-led war in

Afghanistan and drone strikes along the border, has a substantial impact?

CHAPTER 3. Twice the Forgotten War: American News on Afghanistan & Pakistan, 2001-2012

On September 11, 2001, Barry Bearak, a New York Times correspondent, reported from Afghanistan that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, the rebel opposition group to the Taliban, might have been assassinated. The Taliban likely hadn’t killed him, he explained, but Arabs linked to al-Qaeda – Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network that the Taliban had granted safe haven to —might have. The Taliban’s foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, told Bearak that they weren’t responsible for what had happened to Massoud. "If we had carried out this attempt,” he said, “we would have announced it.”245 The killing was the precursor to both the September 11th attacks that would happen hours later in the United States and the consequential U.S.-led war in

Afghanistan.

The New York Times was lucky. The news organization hadn’t had a full-time reporter assigned to Afghanistan for decades, yet Bearak would be there to cover what would become the first U.S. ground war since 1991. He would also become the first resident of the Times’ Kabul bureau, the largest American news bureau in the country to this day. The story that originally brought Bearak to Afghanistan was essentially

American-centric: He was following the case of eight Western aid workers, two of them

American, affiliated with Shelter Now, a humanitarian organization operating in

Afghanistan. A month earlier, the Taliban had accused them of preaching Christianity to

Muslims, a grave offense to the fundamentalist government that lived by Shari’ah law.246

This was the biggest story to come out of Afghanistan since March that year, when the

Taliban destroyed the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan, respectively 175 and 120 feet high,

61 and more than 1,500 years old. Buddhist monks created them when Bamiyan, located in the center of modern Afghanistan, was part of the Kingdom of Gandhara – before the

Muslim Saffarids, who were part of the Persian dynasty, conquered the land in the 9th century. People of all faiths revered them for centuries. Yet the Taliban leader, Mullah

Omar, declared in 2001 that they had been “gods of the infidels” and ordered their destruction.247 International leaders were outraged, but the Taliban’s Minister of

Information and Culture told Bearak that he didn’t understand what the big deal was:

“The statues are objects only made of mud or stone,” he told him.248

Both stories – the destruction of renowned historical symbols and the kidnapping of aid workers – violated western norms and shocked the world. For U. S. international news coverage, two enduring values were at stake.249 And with the aid workers in captivity, Bearak was well positioned to re-introduce the American public to a country

U.S. news had largely overlooked since 1989, when the Soviets withdrew from

Afghanistan and the U.S. suspended its diplomatic mission there soon after.

After the Taliban took control of the country in 1996, Afghanistan had only received episodic coverage during events which editors classified as crises. Beverly

Horvit’s review of Afghanistan coverage in eight American newspapers250 from

September 11, 1996 to September 10, 2001, found that the Los Angeles Times, New York

Times and Washington Post ran an average of 50 stories a year about Afghanistan.251

Sixty-five percent of that coverage was about Taliban diplomacy and violence; 13 percent was about human rights, most especially the Taliban’s atrocious treatment of women.

Rarely was there analytical, in-depth reportage to increase American audiences’ understanding of issues and events in the country. The story of Massoud’s death on

September 10, 2001, though, was an indication that what happened inside Afghanistan would matter again for the West.

It was early evening in Afghanistan when the September 11th attacks took place in

New York, Pentagon City and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Shortly afterward, the Federal

Bureau of Investigation linked the hijackers to al-Qaeda and Bearak’s U.S.-based colleagues identified bin Laden’s home as Afghanistan.252 But the Taliban, Bearak reported, rejected the idea that bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks. A foreign ministry spokesman explained, “If we want peace for ourselves, we want peace for others.

But such coordinated attacks cannot be carried out by one man or by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” In August 1998, after bin Laden was suspected of bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. had launched 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles at what were suspected to be al-Qaeda camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Bin

Laden survived, but there were Afghan and Pakistani civilian casualties. Afghans, Bearak speculated on September 12, 2001, “may well come to dread a similar reprisal from the

United States, especially here in Kabul, the capital, and Kandahar, the city where Mullah

Omar [the Taliban leader] resides and Mr. bin Laden has recently been seen.”253

Less than one month later, on October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that Mullah Omar and the Taliban had refused to hand bin Laden over to the

Americans and to stop giving safe haven to him and al-Qaeda. The war began. With

Afghanistan firmly linked to the September 11th attacks, a November 2001 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of the U.S. public supported the U.S.-led war.254

Changing the News Paradigm

International reportage in the United States has traditionally made up a small percentage of overall news, but the percentage dropped considerably when the Cold War ended in 1989. The Cold War had been an organizing mechanism for U.S. policymakers and journalists alike: The idea of a bipolar world, the U.S. versus the Soviet Union, allowed them to neatly frame issues around this dichotomy. Within this worldview, issues and events were byproducts or manifestations of the Cold War. If the issue wasn’t specifically about the U.S. or the Soviet Union, then it was related to the ideological struggle between democracy and capitalism versus communism. As the Cold War ended, international news budgets were slashed. U.S. news corporations closed foreign bureaus and invested in more popular, inexpensive and local news stories.255

As the world became more complex in the 1990s, many journalists and scholars lamented that foreign news coverage was waning.256 Smaller conflicts plagued countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, making the world both more complicated and less reported. In 1994, former New York Times editor Max Frankel noted the high monetary cost of foreign reportage for U.S. outlets, and the general disinterest of

Americans in what happened beyond U.S. borders:

A great shroud has been drawn across the mind of America to make it forget that there is a world beyond its borders. The three main television networks obsessively focus their cameras on domestic tales and dramas as if the end of the Cold War rendered the rest of the planet irrelevant. Their news staffs occasionally visit some massacre, famine, or shipwreck and their anchors may parachute into Haiti or Kuwait for a photo op, but these spasms of interest only emphasize the networks’ apparent belief that on most evenings the five billion folks out there don’t matter one whit.257

In the early 1970s, 10 percent of U.S. news among elite broadcast and print news organizations was dedicated to international news; by 1990, it was less than 3 percent.258

In the 1980s, the average number of foreign news stories on U.S. network news was four stories per week; in the 1990s, the number dropped to two stories per week.259 After the

Cold War ended, U.S. news agencies had fewer permanent bureaus overseas – and the bureaus that existed were often one-man operations. Even more than before, U.S. news organizations relied on “parachute journalism,” meaning that a roving foreign correspondent would spend a limited amount of time in the country, yet be responsible for explaining its complexities to a national audience. News about the world became more general; in-depth reports decreased.260

However, September 11th gave American news organizations both a new paradigm to tidily explain the world, and a reason to re-invest in foreign news coverage.

President Bush presented a new dichotomous world order in a joint session to Congress on September 20, 2001 when he declared to a global audience, “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”261 U.S. government leaders, like others, often select language and symbols that will evoke support, pride and public unity for particular political and foreign policy goals.262 The aftermath of September 11th was also an opportune time for the president to encourage a sense of fierce nationalism in the American public. The Bush administration used the opportunity to, according to Robert Entman, “propound a line designed to revive habits of patriotic deference, to dampen elite dissent, dominate media texts, and reduce the threat of negative public reaction—to work just as the Cold War paradigm once did.” 263 Journalists could index news to President Bush as he described a

65 world of good vs. evil, one of terrorists vs. non-terrorists, with the U.S. once again cast as the force for good, as during the Cold War.

By highlighting certain events and issues, the American president can define the news agenda and bring drama and urgency to foreign policy.264 But the events of

September 11th were not just dramatic—they were traumatizing. As media sociologist

Michael Schudson explained, U.S. journalists abandon efforts to provide neutral reporting under at least three conditions: tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security. The September 11th attacks “combined all three moments into one.”265

In times of crisis, the American public, like the media, tends to become “psychologically reliant on the president”266 and to invest great trust in his words and actions. Framing issues as matters of national security traditionally signals that the president will “take care of constituents in any emergency; has the best access to needed sources of information in order to make policy decisions; and will always act in the best interests of the nation.”267 During a crisis, the U.S. media can rely heavily on official sources for information and journalists take their cue to act as patriots within the sphere of consensus.

They overwhelmingly trusted his decision to invade Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The Bush Administration’s strategic communications operation – “in which leaders craft their public language and communications with the goal to create, control, distribute and use mediated messages as a political resource” – after September 11, 2001 described a “war on terrorism” in which the invasion of Afghanistan would be the first step.268 President Bush’s remarks explaining the October 7, 2001 invasion framed the war in both security and humanitarian terms, which rarely intersect so clearly in U.S. foreign policy. With absolute policy certainty, President Bush explained the war as not

66 only a direct result of the attacks, but also a humanitarian act, in the sense that U.S. forces would liberate the Afghan people from dire Taliban rule and give them hope for a better life within a democracy. A November 16, 2001 Gallup poll found that a strong majority of the public approved of the president’s performance. He received an 89 percent approval rating, while his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, received 87 percent.269 The

American media, too, signaled support for the U.S. government and its new foreign policy. 270

Elite U.S. News Coverage of September 11, 2001

Crises habitually can consume American news organizations, but September 11th sent journalists, editors and producers into overdrive. That day, 3,025 people were killed on U.S. soil – 2,801 in the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in

Shanksville. This was second only to the number of U.S. casualties in the Civil War battle of Antietam.271 The Poynter Institute’s gallery of 190 front pages showed 119 mid- sized and large daily newspapers marked as “extra” editions, responding to a great demand for information on why the attacks happened and their impact.272 The U.S. news media was the conduit for the government and the public, and for the public to connect with each other. The American public turned to their news media for explanations and guidance; and to unite with the rest of the nation through sharing information and emotions.273 American journalists, argued Patricia Aufderheide, took on “a therapeutic role as grief counselor for the nation’s inner child, nurturing insecure viewers who had been stripped of their adult self-assurance by the shock of the attacks.”274

But the public appreciated this work. The Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Princeton Survey Research Associates reviewed almost 2,500 stories from television, magazines and newspapers in the first three months after September 11 and gave U.S. journalists high marks for their reportage, saying it was solidly documented, factual and straightforward.275 This coverage, they noted, may have contributed to “the first measurable upturn in public approval of the press in 15 years.”276

Americans were shocked by the September 11th events mainly because of the scale of death and destruction, but also because the U.S. had been isolated from such attacks for almost 60 years. Soon after, explained Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and

Marion Just, news stories about terrorism on network news skyrocketed “from around

178 in the twelve months prior to September 2001 to 1,345 stories in the twelve months afterwards, not counting, of course, the extensive number of 24/7 extended news bulletins, round-the-clock cable news, local news programs, news magazine special reports and documentaries.”277 And public anxiety about terrorism correlated to the scale of news coverage. When Gallup asked Americans what the most important problems facing the country were, ”the proportion nominating ‘terrorism’ shot up from zero in the three months prior to September 11 to almost half the population (46 percent) immediately after 9/11.” This number subsided, but remained high one year later when one-fifth of the public thought terrorism trumped economic or social concerns.278 But the press did not set this public concern into context. American journalists and commentators created a perception that what changed with 9/11 was an increase in the overall levels of international terrorism events, but they had not.279

The fear of terrorism led to the public’s and government’s significant and

68 complete support for the war that followed in Afghanistan.280 There was a large

Washington consensus in favor of it, and few dissenting, credible opinions that a journalist could credibly source.281 When the war began on October 7, 2001, elites, including congressional Democrats, who were in the minority, did not dissent from the president’s decision. Congress had voted overwhelmingly on September 14, 2001 – with only one dissenting legislator out of 531 – to give the president authorization to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determine[d] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”282 The media, therefore, had no credible opposition within the U.S. legislature to report.283

American journalists at U.S. news outlets have an ethnocentric bias. They hold the same beliefs and values of their fellow citizens and – in a time of crisis – their government leaders.284 They do not want to be seen as being too far out of step. News values that decide what makes it to print or air are part of a society’s political, cultural and economic structures, in addition to the institutional practices of a news agency.285

Editors, producers and reporters select and construct media messages to cater to what the public wants.286 This process is normally done “instinctively”; editorial decisions are not based on quantitative polling, but a “sense” of what the public wants or needs.287 With the commitment of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the American news media had a new war to focus its attention on and news professionals sensed that the American public wanted to know about it.

The September 11th attacks had given U.S. journalists – and the U.S. presidency

– a paradigm for world news coverage, but they didn’t develop the resources to fully

69 report the news from abroad. Most of the reportage was Washington-based. Just six daily newspaper groups – New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago

Tribune/Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor and Baltimore Sun – had foreign news bureaus. In 2002, these papers represented just 20 percent of total newspaper circulation in all U.S. dailies, but they syndicated to many more local papers. The

American newswire, Associated Press, also served as a linchpin for American news organizations.288 This small group of editors and journalists who worked for seven U.S. news organizations were the prime sources for foreign news for the American public.289

Nationalism permeated their news coverage. The New York Times and the

Washington Post, especially, focused on the domestic effects of the terrorist attacks.

Changho Lee’s analysis of their coverage found that the Times and the Post gravitated toward ethnocentric reportage.290 These elite papers have a more profound effect on the public and policymakers during crises; they are also less likely to take a critical stance toward the government during emergencies.291 U.S journalists fixated on the material aftermath of the attacks, and how they would affect the economy and security of the U.S.

They did not try to find reasons why the attacks occurred, or to investigate the social and historical roots and context of terrorism.292 They focused on U.S. officials’ actions on behalf of the national security of the U.S. The Post and the Times, especially, “became an important channel for transmitting the idea of war as a solution to the terrorist attacks,” explained Lee, without exploring its consequences.293

Both newspapers’ editorial boards, however, initially urged that the Bush administration be cautious with its plans for retaliation and ensure that they establish a

70 link between al-Qaeda and the Taliban before invading Afghanistan. The Washington

Post wrote on September 23, 2001:

The United States must make clear to other countries why it is sure that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were behind the attacks in New York and Washington, and it must work hard to line up allies for a potential battle with the Taliban…in this new kind of war, civilian casualties and suffering probably would strengthen rather than weaken al Qaeda, winning it new recruits in both Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim World.294

The New York Times’s editorial board similarly wrote on September 22, 2001:295 It is a reasonable presumption that the terrorists who attacked New York and Washington aimed not just to kill American civilians, but also to draw the United States into an indiscriminate and brutish military response that might attract Muslims around the world to their cause…Washington must be smart in selecting targets and cognizant of the political consequences that its military operations are likely to produce in the Islamic world.296

The Times editorial board prescribed that President Bush narrowly target groups that were involved in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks rather than extend “the fight to countries more broadly linked to international terrorism, possibly including

Iraq.”297

While the editorial boards initially urged caution, the U.S. mainstream media were largely supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan. Over time, both the Times and

Post editorial boards supported President Bush’s declaration of war against the Taliban on October 7, 2001.298 The Times wrote that the American people “will support whatever efforts it takes to carry out this mission properly…Mr. Bush has wisely made providing humanitarian assistance an integral part of the American strategy,” but it criticized the

U.S. government’s focus on building a coalition only with the United Kingdom at the time.299

Billeaudeaux et. al, too, in their research on the Times and Post’s editorials between the September 11th terrorist attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan found that the very high U.S. public support for the war in Afghanistan – and the overall war on terrorism – influenced other reporters, government officials and citizens. In 26 days, both papers ran 24 editorials that addressed the challenges and goals of the wars that set the agenda for other news organizations in the country.300 What was reported and opined in elite publications like the Post and Times mattered, Billeaudeaux et. al argued, because members of Congress (who voted overwhelmingly in favor of both the September 14,

2001 joint resolution on military action and the October 26, 2001 Patriot Act), government officials, academics and think tank experts regularly consume these publications. Moreover, they wrote, “not once in the 24 editorials analyzed was there explicit criticism of the Bush administration’s plans for or communications about the war on terrorism.”301

It was the most non-controversial start to U.S. involvement in a war in American history.

Elite U.S. News in Early Stages of the Afghanistan War

Once American intelligence determined that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network were responsible for the attacks, President Bush received an international mandate to pursue them in their known safe haven, Afghanistan. However, few

Americans, including the policymakers at the White House and the journalists covering their decisions, had personal experience with Afghanistan or knew much about its history or modern complexities. There had been no formal American diplomatic presence in

Afghanistan since January 1989. It was a closed society under theocratic Taliban rule, and had received scant attention from American media after the Cold War ended.

Once again, Pakistan and Afghanistan became focal points for the American picture of the world. Elite U.S. media agencies struggled to send reporters to the region to cover what they could. In the first weeks of the Afghanistan air attacks, eight western journalists were killed while trying to enter the country from Pakistan.302 In a country where the Internet was absent and less electricity was consumed than anywhere else in the world, broadcast and print journalists alike reported via satellite phone.303

The first international broadcast news organizations to report from inside

Afghanistan were the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Doha-based Al Jazeera.

With a bureau already inside Afghanistan, Al Jazeera immediately began to supply images of unfolding events in Afghanistan after the October 2001 U.S. air war began. 304

But they also served as alternative sources for the U.S. news media: ABC News’ Peter

Jennings, for instance, was able to report from an Al Jazeera feed given to CNN that there were explosions in Kabul on September 11, 2001. While then-Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld denied that the U.S. was involved in the explosions immediately after the attacks on the U.S., American reporters now had greater access to Afghanistan via al

Jazeera, the BBC, New York Times’s Bearak and some newswires.305

While wars are inherently dramatic, American-fought wars traditionally receive substantial coverage since they are deemed essential to American interests.306 But the

Afghanistan quickly decreased in relevance for the White House and the press. In 2001, the war was the most-covered news story on CBS, NBC and ABC. The U.S. press began to cover the homeland security efforts within the U.S., conventional fighting inside

Afghanistan, and the diplomatic efforts to maintain a global alliance to fight terrorism-at- large.307 By December 3, 2001, more than 2,000 foreign journalists had become accredited in Tajikistan to cover Afghanistan, separate from those journalists who entered

Afghanistan with the U.S. military.308 Still, one year after the Afghanistan war began, as the fighting in Afghanistan continued, American news reports diminished. According to the Tyndall Report, Afghanistan received 106 minutes of airtime on network evening news when the war started; by January 2003, before the Iraq War even began, it received

11 minutes; and by March 2003, Afghanistan news was reduced to a total of 60 seconds.309 By the end of 2003, Afghanistan had received only 80 minutes of coverage from the three networks, and it no longer ranked in even the 20 most covered stories of the year.310

This is mainly because Afghanistan was receiving less attention in Washington.

By the time of his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush defined Afghanistan as a conflict of more humanitarian concern than security; the security concern now extended to the larger war on terror. In the 2003 State of the Union address, President

Bush mentioned Afghanistan only three times, but he spent one-third of the speech building the case for the war in Iraq.311 The urgency and crisis associated with

Afghanistan had passed and many Americans got the impression that the war had been won.312

The second post-9/11, U.S.-led war began in Iraq on March 19, 2003. While the

New York Times, Washington Post, AP and other print news bureaus remained open in

Kabul, the networks mostly withdrew from Afghanistan and began to rely on stringers and parachute journalists to episodically cover specific events inside the country despite

74 the fact that U.S. troops were still fighting there.313 The new Iraq War had a certain

“displacement effect” on the war in Afghanistan: It supplanted Afghanistan on the public agenda, therefore shifting the public’s awareness and their ability to make informed opinions about the Afghan war.314

Unlike the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war became one of the most thoroughly reported in U.S. history. More than 600 accredited journalists were embedded in combat.

Hundreds more attended military briefings in Doha, Qatar, and more than 2,000 reporters covered the war without being embedded.315 And the press had largely echoed the Bush administration’s case in the build-up and initial execution of the war. The support was so intense that, in 2004, when the war in Iraq was increasingly spiraling out of control, the

New York Times apologized to its readers for “coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been” as the White House made its case for the war in 2002 and 2003.316

For American citizens to receive news about Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anywhere else in the world, they would have had to seek it out.317 The Afghanistan war had lost the

American government and media’s attention as they focused on another, more lethal conflict in Iraq. So while the Afghanistan war story began in crisis, by 2003 – perhaps because of the decreased intensity in conflict – the news coverage hit a plateau and then a decline by 2005.318 Since it is habit for news organizations to focus almost exclusively on the top story of the day, journalists typically wait for foreign news stories to explode.319

In 2006, with a resurgent Taliban dragging U.S. and European soldiers into intensified conflict, Afghanistan was preparing to erupt again.320

Elite U.S. News Coverage of “Obama’s War”

For eight years after September 11th, news on Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan largely ebbed. But in spring 2006, the Taliban carried out their biggest offensive since

2001. They infiltrated southern Afghanistan in droves; suicide bombings quintupled to

136 from previous years. More than 190 American and NATO troops died, which was 20 percent more than in 2005. The Taliban also set up checkpoints, burned schools and assassinated Afghan officials in the provinces. For the first time since the Iraq War began,

Afghanistan was as statistically dangerous for U.S. soldiers as Iraq was.321

On February 15, 2007, President Bush gave his first policy speech on Afghanistan in years, warning that the Taliban was rising again and that the U.S. and NATO needed to intensify their joint military and aid mission there. “The snow is going to melt in the

Hindu Kush mountains. And when it does, we can expect fierce fighting to continue,”

President Bush said. “Taliban and al-Qaeda are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense but to go on the offense…This spring, there's going to be a new offensive in Afghanistan, and it's going to be a NATO offensive."322 This speech merited some renewed American press attention to Afghanistan, though not much.

In 2007, Iraq ranged from 11 to 26 percent of the total U.S. news coverage and 33 percent of Americans thought that Iraq was the most important problem facing the U.S.323 The

Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, however, found that Afghanistan made up less than 1 percent of American news coverage in 2007 and 2008.324 Another American president, however, would ensure that U.S. media attention was focused on the first post-

9/11 war.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama made a campaign promise to focus on the war in Afghanistan and end the war in Iraq. In 2008, international issues consumed 21 percent of total media coverage, with more than half of that focused on U.S. foreign policy discourse inside Washington.325 In 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, news of foreign events was also at 10 percent – but coverage of U.S. foreign policy issues grew from 11 to 16 percent. Much of that was due to the increased coverage of Washington’s revised planning for the Afghanistan War under Obama.326 The president’s decision to take most of 2009 to decide what to do in Afghanistan made the issue hotly political.

News on Afghanistan and Pakistan was indexed to Washington, and followed the

President’s creation of a new “Af-Pak” paradigm, which determined that Afghanistan and

Pakistan were so intertwined that any policy needed to take both into consideration. In

2009, news about Afghanistan, which now frequently referenced Pakistan, received five times the coverage it had in 2007 and 2008, and more than double the coverage of Iraq during the year. The time devoted to the war on American television, from 2003-2009, peaked in 2009 at 9.26 hours while Iraq only received 1.33 hours.327 Much of this coverage occurred in the second half of the year as the U.S. strategy review of the war was completed.

In 2009, the Pew Center found that Afghanistan, or “Af-Pak,” news coverage was consistent among the five media sectors—television, radio, newspaper, magazine and online; it ranged from 4 to 5 percent of the total news coverage in each.328 As President

Obama made clear in the first half of the year that Afghanistan was a foreign policy priority, the country accounted for about 2 percent of the newshole. But coverage did not kick into high gear until late summer. The week of Afghan elections in late August 2009,

77 the topic accounted for 10 percent of total American national news—its single biggest week of coverage to that point. And then, in the last five months of the year, it was the third biggest U.S. news story, receiving 8 percent of news coverage, trailing only health care and the economy – a place it hadn’t claimed since October 2001.329 On December 1,

2009 the Washington debate was settled: President Obama announced at the U.S.

Military Academy at West Point that he would send 30,000 “surge” troops to Afghanistan on a counter-insurgency mission for 18 months.

In the eyes of the television networks, it was almost as if the war had begun in

2001, ended in 2002, and then started up again from scratch in 2009. When the networks

ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox re-established bureaus in Kabul in 2009, “news executives said they had taken their cues in part from the United States presidential election” that

Afghanistan would become a foreign policy priority.330 The elite print and broadcast outlets were quick to comment on the upsurge in media coverage of Afghanistan, and how they had overlooked it. Richard Engel of NBC News told Brian Stelter of the New

York Times in October 2009, “It’s like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009.”331 Lara Logan of CBS, an outlier who had consistently covered Afghanistan for the network, explained to Stelter that “Afghanistan has always been the poor man’s war” that wasn’t as exciting to cover for broadcast networks.332 Time magazine wrote in its feature story on October 12, 2009, “The War Up Close,” “If it’s true that sometimes we’ve let ourselves lose sight of Afghanistan, then as a start, let’s look here.”333

But the breakdown of sub-themes within U.S. news agencies’ Afghanistan coverage is telling: Throughout 2009, 46 percent of the coverage was devoted to the U.S. policy debate. Only 14 percent was about actual combat in the country and still less, only

9 percent, was concerned with the internal affairs of Afghanistan—much of that about disputed Afghan presidential elections.334 That almost half of the coverage was about policy deliberations in Washington reinforces the idea of indexing, which states that most foreign news in the U.S. is based on what the U.S. government says and does.335 This increased coverage of Afghanistan, particularly the U.S. policy debate aspect, was responsible for a modest uptick in overall foreign news, to about 26 percent in 2009 from about 21 percent in 2008.336

By 2011, however, news about Afghanistan had fallen back to 2 percent of total

U.S. news coverage.337 This was despite the majority of U.S. elite news organizations that continued to have bureaus in Kabul: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles

Times, NPR, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press all had full-time staff in country.

The New York Times, Washington Post and AP also had full-time reporters in neighboring Pakistan, becoming the most reliable sources for daily news coverage on the region.

Yet for these journalists, covering the region is dangerous and exhausting. In

Afghanistan, Times reporter Alissa Rubin told columnist Bill Keller that major news outlets don’t let reporters leave Kabul. “To travel with Alissa into the war-wracked countryside [of Afghanistan],” Keller wrote, “is to fully appreciate the meaning of the word ‘meticulous.’ Reporting ventures are planned, mapped and timed in exquisite detail, and everyone is alert to signs of potential danger.”338 Yet Keller insisted that having eyes on the ground in Afghanistan and other world tough spots is vital not only for the integrity of the Times but also for U.S. foreign policy. “Because, make no mistake, some

79 portion of the information governments call ‘intelligence’ is nothing more than an attentive reading of the news.”

The question now is how much longer the Times, Washington Post, and other elite

U.S. news agencies with Kabul and Islamabad bureaus, will deem Afghanistan and

Pakistan to matter. Much of it depends on U.S. policy, specifically how much longer the

U.S. government deems Afghanistan and Pakistan to matter. With President Obama maintaining a promise he made in December 2009 to bring the majority of U.S. soldiers home in 2014, many believe that U.S. journalists will leave the region with the troops.

Throughout this fluctuating decade of U.S. news coverage about the region,

American foreign policy has been central to both the Afghan and Pakistani publics’ daily lives. The two countries press corps have relied on U.S. news to inform them about how the American government and public understood their countries. But also, American reportage has become source material for Afghan and Pakistani journalists. The twisted entanglement between the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan has been captured by the three countries’ news media as they try to make sense of events, and each other. Just as Afghanistan and Pakistan rely on the United States for aid, they depend on the

American media to make meaning of America’s heavy involvement in their countries, and sometimes their own governments. And because Washington’s focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan have fluctuated so greatly the past decade, Afghan and Pakistani journalists have been left dependent on the whims of American policy for their own news.

PART II: The Pakistanis

27 Pakistani Journalists:

Abida Print, English-language. Aban Print, Urdu-language. Bahaar Television, Urdu-language. Danish Radio, Pashto-language Hali Television, Urdu-language. Hamid Print, Urdu-language. Imran Print, English-language. Jabbar Television, English-language. Ibrahim Radio, Urdu-language. Mahmood Print, Urdu-language. Malik Print, Urdu-language. Muhammed Print, English-language. Mumtaz Radio, Pashto-language. Nadia Print, English-language. Nabeel Radio, Pashto-language. Omar Radio, Pashto-language. Parvez Radio, Pashto-language. Raheem Print, English-language. Rao Radio & Print, Urdu & English-language. Salim Television, Urdu & English-language. Shaid Television, Urdu & English-language. Sharif Print, Urdu-language. Usama Print, English-language. Wali Television, Pashto-language. Yousaf Print, English-language. Vazir Print, Urdu & English-language. Zafar Television, Urdu-language.

CHAPTER 4. From Quiet to Chaos: Pakistani Media History

In 2002, the look, rhythm and impact of Pakistan’s news media drastically changed with the introduction of private electronic media.339 The change was driven by geopolitics, but not necessarily by the September 11th attacks and the U.S.’s subsequent invasion of Pakistan’s western neighbor, Afghanistan. General Pervez Musharraf, dual- hatted as Pakistan’s president and chief of the army, was focused on Pakistan’s eastern neighbor: India. Hoping that Pakistani media would strengthen national identity and advocate for his foreign policy, he decided to allow for private Pakistani television and radio stations for the first time in the country’s 55-year history. To understand his decision, some background is needed.

Since the bloody partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the government and people have seen India as their enemy. In particular, the question over who owns

Kashmir in the north has kept the two countries in seemingly perpetual conflict. (At present, the Indians control 43 percent of Kashmir, the Pakistanis 37 percent—and the

Chinese 20 percent.) Kashmir is a symbol of ongoing tension between the two countries and a reference point for the state of their relations. The dispute has also helped to consolidate the Pakistani identity not just as Muslim, but also as anti-Indian.340

In May 1999, under the orders of General Musharraf – then just the army chief –

Pakistani soldiers and insurgents, who were also fostered by Pakistan’s powerful military infrastructure, invaded Kargil, an area nestled high in the mountains in the Indian- controlled part of Kashmir.341 The act was a de facto declaration of war by Pakistan. It

82 was also the first major military engagement between the two nuclear powers, who had fought previously in 1948, 1965 and 1971.342

Pakistan retreated from Kargil at the end of July and the crisis between the two nuclear powers was defused, but the tension remained. Pakistanis’ animosity toward

India is entrenched in Pakistani identity, seemingly part of their genetic make-up. A strong majority of Pakistanis see India as an existential threat, in part because they perceive it as not acknowledging Pakistan’s right to exist.343 The core of this is religion:

Indians question how a state can be based on religion, as Pakistan is on Islam. Shireen

Mazari, the influential editor of the Pakistani English-language paper, The Nation, wrote in 1997: “From the Pakistani perspective, the Indian leadership continues to be perceived as one that persistently refuses to accept the finality of the creation of the state of

Pakistan.”344 It’s a view than an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis hold. Even in 2012,

78 percent of Pakistanis had a negative view of India and 59 percent say that India – not the Taliban or al Qaeda – is the biggest threat to Pakistan.345 Sixty-eight percent still see

Kashmir as a “very big problem” for their country.346

Despite the hostility, for nearly a decade, elite Pakistanis became acquainted with

India and Indians through satellite television. In 1991, satellite TV arrived in India, making it the third largest cable television market in the world, behind the United States and China, with approximately 85 different stations featuring news, music, sports and entertainment programs.347 Pakistanis, on the other hand, had just three Pakistani state television stations—all featuring the official view of the Pakistani government—to be informed and entertained by. Over time, middle class and elite Pakistanis began to

83 acquire satellite dishes and watch Indian television for views beyond their own, one-sided state broadcasting agencies.

The 1999 Kargil conflict had been the most televised war in India and Pakistan’s history. Journalists on India’s robust, private network of television stations virtually never questioned the Indian government’s Kashmir policy and were fiercely pro-state. In an effort to attract ratings, Indian television stations had become competitive in how jingoistic they could be with coverage of the summer war, and the Indian public seemed attracted to the real-life drama and glorification of it.348 All of this became strangely valuable to Pakistanis for information on what was happening in isolated Kashmir, and the South Asian region.

When the war ended, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was so angered by the

Pakistani state-run media’s inability to win the media war against India that he set up a government inquiry to see how Pakistani state television could improve, and how

Pakistan could get more favorable coverage from the international stations that the state media often borrowed from, CNN and BBC.349 However, Sharif didn’t have much time to remedy it: On Octpber 13, 1999, Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a bloodless coup and made himself the new head of state; he would technically serve as the “Chief Executive of Pakistan” until taking the title of “President” on June 20, 2001.

Three years into his tenure, Musharraf, like Sharif, was bothered by the encroachment of India’s nationalist media into Pakistan – and the Pakistani state media’s inability to energize the public, or to support him. Musharraf’s failure and retreat from

Kargil haunted him. In addition, Pakistani-based militants had hijacked Indian Airlines flight 814 on December 24, 1999, re-routing its path from Kathmandu to New Delhi to a

84 circuitous and terrifying journey from Amritsar, India; to Lahore, Pakistan; then to Dubai,

UAE; and, finally, to Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where the Indian government agreed to release Pakistani insurgents who were jailed in India. With both

Kargil and the hijacking, it seemed as if India had won the regional media war against

Pakistan. Pakistan’s electronic media was completely inferior to India’s.350

Pakistani state television was loyal to the Pakistani government, but newspapers had led the criticism of Musharraf’s policies. Musharraf wanted a deferential national press corps that would support him and his national security policies the same way

Indians – and Americans – supported their government leaders in time of conflict. The state-controlled electronic media didn’t satisfy the Pakistani citizenry, he recognized, especially now that they had been subjected to the diverse media possibilities in India, and the world beyond, via satellite. He wanted a Pakistani media that could offset the threat from India—one that would rally behind his foreign policy efforts in a volatile neighborhood.351

In 2002, Musharraf created by fiat new liberal media laws, which broke the

Pakistani state’s monopoly on electronic media and allowed for private licenses for TV broadcasting and FM radio. He hoped that after liberalizing the media, he could still keep it in line with the Pakistani national interest. It was a risky proposition as there were no guarantees that the private channels would be pro regime. Soon, however, Pakistani journalists would become powerful players in Pakistani politics and society.352 Their sharp ascent would contribute to his ultimate downfall.

Pakistan’s Media Origins

In the 1940s, near the end of British India, several newspapers began to advocate for a partition that would give Indian Muslims their own country. Nawa-e-Waqt,

Pakistan’s first Urdu-language newspaper, was first published in 1940 and strongly supported the views of conservative Muslim elites who supported an independent

Pakistan. The English-language newspaper, Dawn, first published in 1941, was similarly dedicated to advancing the idea of an independent Pakistan that would be home to South

Asia’s Muslims.353

Pakistan’s partition from India in 1947 sparked two diverging opinions about the kind of country it should be and Pakistani newspapers reflected this uncertainty. For

Pakistan to make sense, to have gone through the horrifyingly violent partition from India, it needed its own defining characteristics. Pakistan’s national poet, Allama Iqbal, wanted

Pakistan to be an Islamic state, an instrument to establish God’s law. Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, on the other hand, wanted Pakistan to be a secular state that protected the socio-political and economic rights of Indian Muslims. However, in

1948, just a year after partition, Jinnah died – unable to steward the young nation between the two competing claims on what its state identity should be. The post-Jinnah administration found itself promoting the religious narrative of Iqbal and, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, the Pakistani government and its people “found refuge in the religious concept of the state.”354

Pakistan’s first constitution was not agreed to until almost 10 years later, in 1956, when the country was declared an Islamic Republic.355 The constitution largely relied on

86 the old British-installed constitution and established Pakistan as a liberal country; in law, it made conservative religious forces subordinate to the state.356 But an ongoing clash between liberal and religious forces began. To appeal to the public, government officials often used religious rhetoric and symbols as tools for their own survival.357 State institutions, education and the media were all utilized to advocate Pakistani unity and nationalism, with Islam binding the country together.358 Article Eight of the constitution guaranteed freedom of expression in Pakistan, but it was compromised by a penal code that explicitly stated that the press could not criticize the state.359

The Pakistani media evolved under these socio-political circumstances. For the majority of the Pakistan’s media history, the Pakistani government controlled the press:

Constitutional controls, along with the lack of democratic norms and weak institutions to protect the press, made the news media a weak component of Pakistani society that was subject to state controls for decades.360 The government also kept control over the press by granting – or withholding – advertising funding, which was crucial in a country with a weak economy and media market.361

However, newspapers proliferated: By 1959, there were 85 daily Pakistani newspapers. While only one percent of the public understood English at the time,

English-language publications were the most influential with urbanites, the military and government officers, academics and businessmen.362 Pakistani state media, though, often weakened the voice of independent print media, which was certainly the case when the

Pakistan Television Corporation, or PTV, was established in 1964.363

For almost 40 years, PTV monopolized electronic media as the only television network in the country. Independent print media carried the burden of serving as

87 watchdogs of the Pakistani state. But they could only do so to an extent. In addition to the constitutional clauses that forbid journalists from going against the “interest of the glory of Islam” or “the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan,” the Pakistan’s Press and

Publications Ordinance of 1963 set up the National Press Trust, a regulatory body of government that oversaw the print media – arresting journalists and closing publications it could not control.364 Despite this, a pattern seemed to emerge with print journalists:

While they were nationalistic about the idea of Pakistan, they took a critical stance against the actions of Pakistani state authorities.

1970-1988: General Zia’s Military Dictatorship

Pakistan’s ruling elite believed the media, and all of civil society, should be subservient to the government and, by the 1970s, just a handful of newspapers survived various press crackdowns by intolerant, military rulers.365 The Pakistani civil war of 1971, which saw the partition of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now

Pakistan), brought on cataclysmic change – strengthening Pakistani identity as both

Islamic and anti-Indian. India had inserted itself into the war, supporting Bangladesh’s independence. Many elites looked to this as proof that Jinnah’s vision for a secular

Pakistani state was not strong enough to unite the many cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences among Pakistanis – only religion would unite them.366 In 1973, Pakistan’s constitution was revised to reflect changes from the civil war, making Islam the state religion and requiring that both Pakistan’s prime minister and president be Muslim.367 For the media, Article Nineteen of the new constitution technically provided for freedom of

88 speech and freedom of press.368 However, it also included that citizens and the press will be:

…subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, (commission of) or incitement to an offense.369

In other words, the government expected the media to be nationalistic and unquestioning of its efforts to unify the country.

And then, beginning in 1977, Pakistanis witnessed a series of events that made the

United States, along with Islam and the military, powerful and central actors in Pakistanis’ daily lives. Pakistan’s second military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, ousted Prime

Minister Zulifikar Ali Bhutto on July 5, 1977, and took control of the country. On April 4,

1979, Bhutto was hanged. Zia began an intense period of Islamization which would continue for over a decade, making Jinnah’s version of a secular Pakistan increasingly irrelevant.370 And, on December 25, 1979, the Soviets – allied with India – invaded neighboring Afghanistan. Zia, fearing a communist takeover of Pakistan, quickly aligned

Pakistan with the United States to help fuel an anti-Soviet insurgency inside Afghanistan.

The Pakistani press had a difficult time contesting these policies. In Zia’s Pakistan, the United States, Islam and the Pakistani military became dominant themes, and the

Pakistani press seemingly could not reset the national agenda from an intense focus on religion and security. They had reason to be timid: The constitution and Pakistan’s Press and Publications Ordinance gave the journalists little space to question Zia’s actions.

Pakistani newspapers therefore provided monotonous accounts of events with little analysis; journalists weren’t well trained or equipped to provide any real investigative

89 work – or to even follow-up on previously reported stories.371 Zia’s military regime controlled the news media and could say little or nothing without their approval.372

In 1985, however, the print media boldly opposed the presidential election, which included no political parties and served only to legitimize Zia’s power. Only state-owned media approved the elections. While subservience to the government was still the norm in the Pakistani news media, journalists started to intelligently criticize the government.373

Three years later, Zia died in a mysterious plane crash. Pakistan’s second military dictatorship ended and Pakistan’s Press and Publications Ordinance was repealed, giving

Pakistani journalists the space to pursue a slightly more independent course.

1988-2002: Democracy

In the 1990s, Pakistanis could still only receive electronic information through state-controlled radio and television, but the Pakistani print media grew in reach and depth. Print journalists were hardly defiant—part of their strategy for self-preservation entailed abiding by government views. But some dynamic, independent Urdu- and

English-language newspapers and magazines emerged that gradually gained credibility, and survived despite the wishes of government regulators.374

The 1990s also spawned a new generation of journalists who were eager to see, write, observe and analyze events from their own perspectives. The content of Pakistani newspapers increased considerably with news feeds by the Associated Press of Pakistan, a state-controlled newswire, and the private Pakistan Press International, Network News

International and Pakistan Press Agency. They also began to receive uninterrupted news

90 coverage from the international newswires, especially Agence France Press, Associated

Press and Reuters.375 A monthly magazine dedicated only to investigative reporting,

Newsline, also emerged. Some Pakistani journalists felt as if they were re-inventing themselves by representing diverse viewpoints that often quarreled with government rhetoric.376

But while Pakistani journalists became more vociferous, they didn’t necessarily become more professional, investigative or vigilant enough to discover news on their own— even when stories originated in Pakistan. In 1995, for instance, they relied on international news, especially CNN, for information on the arrest of Ramzy Yousf—one of the masterminds of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—in Islamabad. News on

U.S.-Pakistan relations, too, largely came from U.S. newswires and not original reporting inside Pakistan.377

The 1990s were, nominally, a time of democratic rule in Pakistan, a reprieve from

Zia’s military rule. But electronic media remained under state control: Imagery of events inside Pakistan was largely left to the Pakistanis’ imaginations. Pakistan had two television stations: Pakistan Television 1 (PTV1) and Pakistan Television 2 (PTV2), which reached 85 percent of the population and broadcast normally for nine hours a day.378 A third station, the Shalimar Television Network (STN), episodically carried foreign news programming—most notably CNN and BBC—but it was monitored by

Pakistani government press censors and pulled from the air if the censors did not approve the content.379 This was the case with any CNN coverage on the 1999 Kargil conflict, the

1991 Gulf War and the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque in India.380 Such censorship fed into the public consensus that the electronic media was a publicity arm for the

91 government, rejecting any programming or commercials that did not advance its agenda.

(In one case, PTV refused to air a commercial that Imran Khan—a celebrated cricket player, at the time—had created asking for charitable donations to his cancer hospital because, presumably, he had also began to dabble in opposition politics.)381

As the 1990s progressed, though, Pakistanis found a way to get the information their state-controlled press was not giving them. They began to access news through satellite dishes that were in high demand and available in local markets, in affluent and poor areas alike.382 In addition to CNN and BBC, Pakistanis with television satellites could now receive Indian stations such as Zee TV and Vee TV that provided Hindi- language entertainment, news and music.383 Some Pakistanis complained about a “culture invasion” from satellite imagery coming from India and the West, but largely the

Pakistani public—especially the elites— became accustomed to accessing views that contested the narrow vision of the world that their Pakistani government preferred them to see.

Pakistani print journalists, too, worked within the boundaries of the constitution – and the general intolerance Pakistan’s civilian rulers in the 1990s, Benazhir Bhutto

(1988-90; 1993-96) and Nawaz Sharif (1990-93; 1997-1999), had for them. Bhutto and

Sharif moved toward liberalization of the new media, but the solidification of democratic norms – one of them being a free press—were slow-moving.384 Both leaders made it known that they saw an emboldened Pakistani media as a nuisance. In April 1998, Sharif stated that “newspapers should not give verdicts like judges.”385 Later that year, Bhutto, reacting to a widespread, one-day Pakistani newspaper strike protesting newspaper taxes said that she “would not mind if the press goes on strike for 365 days this year.”386 Other

92 politicians and government leaders, too, were consistently disturbed with what they described as an “over-empowered press.”387 But, according to a 1998 report by the

Pakistani Media Association on the state of the Pakistani media, the more government leaders lambasted the press, the more popular and significant it became with Pakistani society: “Media in general have become a link between various, yet converging processes of economic, social and political development in the country,” they stated.388

This dynamic created a pattern in Pakistani press-state relations not unlike that prevailing in western democracies: Pakistani politicians would nominally state support for a free press, but then resent unfavorable coverage and try to control it. But the resumption of military rule in Pakistan in 1999 set 21st century Pakistani media on a course of fluctuating press freedoms, a growing sense of nationalism, yet a simultaneously adversarial—even hostile—stance against the Pakistani government and the United States.

Musharraf’s Rule: 1999-2008

In 1999, when Musharraf took power from Nawaz Sharif in a military coup,

Pakistan’s latest attempt at democracy had failed. In 2000, the media continued its deferential treatment of the new ruling elite, finding their interests best served by supporting them.389 Few newspapers operated with a democratic ethos that embraced professional values—most seemed to have fallen into a pattern where they just reported what they were told to.390 But it was under Musharraf’s period of military rule, from

1999-2008, that the most profound change in Pakistan’s media occurred: Seeking allies

93 for his foreign policy against India, Musharraf privatized electronic media. The amount of Pakistani television stations went from three state-owned stations to more than 70 independent ones. Simultaneously, print media continued to evolve. In 1997 the total number of daily, monthly and minor publications was 4,455; by 2003, only 945 remained but the daily circulation of publications increased to 6.2 million for a population that was

44 percent illiterate.391

In March 2007, Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry for refusing to condone his extra-constitutional assertion of a dual role as both president and army chief. The chief justice was the closest to a personal embodiment of “the law” to be found in Pakistan. His arrest enraged Pakistani citizens.392 Pakistani media – most especially Geo TV, Pakistan’s first independent station, established in 2002 – rallied behind Chaudhry and the country’s lawyers, giving them a national platform.393 At the time, the New York Times described the Lawyers’ Movement, as it was popularly known, as “the most consequential outpouring of liberal, democratic energy in the Islamic world in recent years.”394 This was a turning point for Pakistani media, civil society and

Musharraf’s political career. Realizing that he had little backing from either civil society or the army, which sensed the popular outrage against Musharraf’s action, Musharraf re- instated the chief justice and called in July for a presidential election to challenge his rule.395 As a result of that election, held in October 2007, Musharraf became Pakistan’s democratically elected president. But the press and the judiciary declared it to be fraudulent, and television anchors openly called for his resignation.

In response, Musharraf imposed a national state of emergency on November 3,

2007.396 All private news networks and international broadcasters, including CNN and the

BBC, were taken off the air as part of a national media blackout.397 As in the 1990s, only

PTV1 and PTV2 were available to the public.398 The Pakistan Electronic Media

Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) required that all private electronic media sign a 14-page code of conduct before they could resume transmission. By November 16, 2007, 15 broadcasters agreed to the new restrictions and were back on the air. But Pakistan’s four most popular independent news broadcasters—ARY, OneWorld, AAJ, Geo and Dawn

TV— remained shuttered until December 15, 2007, when the state of emergency ended.399

In December 2007, according to the English-language newspaper Dawn, more than 70 percent of Pakistanis surveyed said that they were opposed to closure of private television channels and to the general state of emergency.400 When the blackout was lifted, the electronic media—with pent-up resentment and more ammunition than ever against

Musharraf – intensified their fierce criticism. On August 18, 2008, facing mounting pressure and threats of impeachment, General Musharraf agreed to resign as president.

He fled the country quickly after.

With Musharraf’s exit, the producers and journalists of Geo TV, especially, felt as if it they had become crusaders for democracy. Geo was Pakistan’s most popular news channel and had quickly established itself as the agenda-setter for the country’s news media. In addition to the 2007 Lawyer’s Movement, the network had campaigned in 2006 against Islamic laws that equated rape with criminal adultery (in other words, if a woman was raped, she was not a victim but an adulterer) a project that even critics acknowledge led to the laws’ amendment.401 But Geo was also accused of instigating hate. The 2008 assassinations of two leaders from the Ahmadi minority sect – defined in the Pakistani

95 constitution as not being true Muslims – were widely attributed to being inspired by the hate-laced comments of Geo’s religious talk show guests.402 But despite confronting

President Musharraf for keeping his chief of the army title, Geo rarely challenged the

Pakistan’s military as an institution.403 Geo was nationalistic but not blindly loyal to its civilian leadership. Much of its nationalism stemmed from being anti-Indian – and anti-

American. The station was a fierce opponent of Musharraf’s relationship with U.S.

President George W. Bush, which they saw as acquiescence to American power. It acquired high ratings for its style of pro-Islam, pro-Army and anti-American coverage – and other Pakistani media followed its lead.

Pakistani Media Today

Pakistan’s privatization of electronic media came at a time when the country was becoming more violent, more unpredictable and more insecure about its place in the world. Violence inflicted by the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda and other militant groups led to thousands of casualties and internally displaced persons while weak governance failed to keep the country together. The Pakistani media struggled to make sense of this all.

With the market for media quickly expanding, the information trickle most Pakistanis were used to for over half a century became a deluge they could not live without.

Within eight years, Pakistan had more than 90 television stations in seven languages, creating a rich media ecosystem for Pakistani society. In 2010, one-third of

Pakistan’s 180 million people had access to it via cable and satellite.404 Television became the most popular medium for a country where the literacy rate is 54 percent – 68 percent for men and 40 percent for women – and the average per capita income is

US$840.405 More than one- quarter of these television stations are round-the-clock news stations.406

Pakistani state television, however, is the only network that provides terrestrial services to all of Pakistan’s population; private channels have licenses for satellite or cable service only. This gives PTV a great advantage in influencing rural audiences, who do not have access to cable or satellite television. PTV also has another financial advantage over private stations: It receives 70 percent of the Pakistani government’s public advertisement budget, estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.407 The remaining 30 percent is normally allocated to news agencies that are sympathetic with government policies. The Pakistani state also has the largest nationwide audience share, with 31 stations covering 80 percent of Pakistan territory and reaching 96.5 percent of the population.408 In addition to more than 90 television stations, Pakistan has more than 130 radio stations on the air. In rural areas, where electricity is sparse, radio is especially influential.

There are also approximately 10, 000 newspapers in Pakistan, but only 142 of which, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, are “proper” ones, meaning that they offer consistent content and are ran by professional journalists and editors.409

The “improper” ones are largely vanity publications that surface occasionally to promote a narrow purpose. Total newspaper circulation in 2010 was estimated to be approximately 3.5 million nationwide.410 While television is overwhelmingly broadcast in the Urdu language, the official and dominant language in the country, print media demographics, on the other hand, reflect a multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic and stratified class society with a clear divide between Urdu- and English-language media – and a

97 smattering of media in the vernacular languages, such as Pashto (spoken mainly in the tribal areas along Afghanistan and Pakistan), Punjabi (spoken mainly in Punjab) and

Sindhi (spoken in Sindh and Balochistan).411

Urdu-language newspapers are widely read by the majority of Pakistanis who live in rural areas, where it continues to have an impact on public opinion due to a tradition of communal and collective newspaper-reading that is deeply embedded in the Pakistani culture.412 And Urdu-language newspapers, especially, aim to entertain: They are religiously conservative, sensational and often folkloristic.413 The two threads that tie the very diverse Urdu news media together are a pervasive sense of Pakistani nationalism and Muslim identity in each news article and editorial. Most coverage also provides analysis that is critical of local and national politics.414

English-language news media, on the other hand, is urban and elite-centric. It is widely considered, especially by its readers, to be more liberal and professional in comparison to the Urdu news media and to have greater leverage with Pakistani’s elite: the opinion makers, politicians, the business community and general upper strata of society that are fluent in English.415 When compared to Urdu-language and other vernaculars – including the Pashto language, which is spoken in the tribal areas along the

Afghan border – only 300,000 of the total newspaper circulation of 3.5 million is reserved for English-language newspapers.416 The English-language press is also confined to reporting from five urban areas: Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.

This is compared to Urdu newspapers, which are published in nearly all of Pakistan’s 130 districts.417 News provided in English matters, however, because English in Pakistan is, according to Pattanaik, “the language of bureaucracy, the language of the educated class,

98 and the language of the foreign policymaking.”418 Elites often read and write for the

English-language press to solidify themselves as elites; they aim not to sway the minds of the general public, but to influence decision-makers. Amir Ahmed Khan, editor of the

English-language monthly magazine, Herald, stated that Pakistanis who speak only Urdu

“do not have an understanding of complicated issues involving foreign policy decisions though they may have strong views” which the policymakers want to appeal to.419 But the information and opinions espoused for the English-language press are also regularly translated, and eventually make their way into the more mainstream, Urdu-language news.

Such a mass mediated Pakistan requires substantial manpower. Pakistan is the seventh most populated country in the world, numbering approximately 182 million people – at least 72 million of whom cannot read. The number of journalists in 2002, before private electronic media, was 2,000; today, it is estimated to be 17,000.420 Before the electronic news transformation, journalism was an unglamorous career. Today, its celebrity-making power has attracted scores of young people to the craft. The average age of a journalist is now 23-years-old.421 Their habits, attitudes, and inexperience drive media culture and it is that reality which makes Pakistani media uneven in its professionalism yet simultaneously powerful in its impact.422

Most of Pakistan’s journalists claim to be professional and hold a strong sense of ethics. A study of journalists in 21 countries – from the U.S. to Uganda to Pakistan to

China to Bulgaria to Brazil – found a large consensus when it came to deficiencies in journalistic ethics. In Pakistan, however, journalists claimed to be more ethical in their work than other global journalists. On a scale of one to five, with five being the strongest, the answer to “I do not allow my own beliefs and convictions to influence my reporting”

99 averaged 4.11 globally, but averaged 4.55 in Pakistan. In the U.S., it averaged 4.11. To the statement, “I remain strictly impartial in my work,” the global average was 4.11 – with Pakistani reporters saying 4.41 and American reporters saying 4.02.423

But remaining impartial is tough in a country whose public holds such overwhelmingly unified views in how they feel about their civilian government, their military, Islam and the United States. In June 2012, a Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that 68 percent of the Pakistani public believed their media was having a positive influence on Pakistan (down from 76 percent in 2011); 77 percent of them trust their military (down slightly from 79 percent in 2011); 66 percent of the public trust their religious leaders (up from 60 percent);424 and 76 percent has a negative view of their civilian government. Pakistanis’ faith in their democratically elected leaders has eroded significantly since 2009, when 40 percent thought the civilian government was having a positive effect. Their faith was even higher in 2007 – the year Pakistan’s judiciary and media sought General Musharraf’s overthrow. At that time, 59 percent approved of his government; in 2002, 72 percent did.425 In the June 2012 poll, 85 percent have an unfavorable view of President Zardari (while only 54 percent unfavorably viewed

Musharraf). This number is comparable to the 88 percent who had a negative opinion of the U.S – and 74 percent believed the U.S. is their enemy.426

Pakistani journalists inevitably fall into the strong majorities that see the U.S. and their civilian governments negatively, but trust their media, military and religious leaders.427 According to Dr. Mosharraf Zaidi, in an article for The News in January 2010,

“Pakistan’s media…is a reflection and an extension of Pakistan at large.”428 It is also, according to journalist Anatol Lieven, a proxy for justice. Journalists cannot punish

100 corrupt politicians, dictators and military leaders, as those are matters for the government, military and the judiciary, but they can publicly shame them.429 More than any other time in Pakistani history, journalists can hold Pakistan’s leaders accountable. As journalist

Nasim Zehra stated in January 2012, in Pakistan, “the independent media has ensured that every move by every player on the national power scene is examined threadbare.

This exercise in itself is both a leveller [sic] and a restrainer.”430 But whom, exactly, the

Pakistani journalists want to hold accountable for their actions depends on the time, situation and general relations between the military, civilian government and general public.

It also depends on what stories will bring high ratings. With the prevailing conflict within Pakistan and its neighbor, Afghanistan, one could argue that violence and turmoil have demanded the attention of journalists. But television stations are under intense competition for viewership. And the desire to make money and acquire high ratings has trumped the quest for quality journalism.431 As a result, producers, journalists and talk show hosts habitually shun coverage of social issues and gravitate toward providing sensational programming; hourly news has relied on violent conflict and politics, which can be dramatized further for entertainment.432 In order to meet a perceived consumer demand for excitement, there is also a fair amount of debate and disagreement over not just political and military affairs, but religion.433

The general tilt toward sensationalist reporting also applies to news and commentary about the United States, which is central to the nationalistic Pakistani narrative. Anti-Americanism is a unifying theme in Pakistani society, and therefore a

101 common refrain in the Pakistani news media. Saleem Safi, a talk show host on the Geo network, summarized the surefire rule for the news media as this:

If you are a journalist and you want high ratings, start verbally abusing America. If you abuse the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Pakistani establishment, you face threats to your life — people say you are a non-Muslim. If you are talking against America, you become a hero.434

Anti-Indian and anti-U.S. sentiment has become so entrenched in Pakistanis psyche that moving away from it could be commercial suicide for the media, and the governing elite.435 For the Pakistani political and media culture, focusing on the negative and wanting to “score points” is habitual; this makes forming any kind of conciliatory policy in Pakistani society extremely difficult.436

Media Ownership

The people who often drive the culture are the owners of three, national media corporations. In a 2010 study on global journalism, Pakistani journalists said that owners of media groups pressured them the most to shape their reporting.437 They can force journalists to sensationalize their stories for higher ratings – or to report on issues that will favor a certain political party or agenda, government policy, military action, or social or religious movement.438 The power in Pakistani media today is dispersed between three major media groups. First, is the conservative Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest, which publishes the Urdu-language Daily Jang and the English-language The News

International (among other less-read publications) and owns the Geo television network.439 The second largest media group is the more liberal and moderate Dawn,

102 which runs the popular English-language newspaper, Dawn, and the Urdu-language television station by the same name.440 Then there is the ultra-conservative Nawa-i-Waqt

Group, which publishes the Nawa-i-Waqt paper in Urdu—Pakistan’s oldest newspaper-- and the English newspaper, The Nation.441

Trusted by two-thirds of the Pakistani public, the Pakistani press can determine the most salient issues for the nation and guide their reactions. Political, religious, military, corporations and social groups all want to impact the public through the Pakistani press – sometimes by punishing its practitioners with violence.442 According to the Committee to

Protect Journalists (CPJ), Pakistan ranked in the top-five deadliest countries for journalists between 2005-2011.443 From 1992 to 2010, extremist groups or government authorities had a “confirmed motive” to kill a total of 36 Pakistani journalists. In 2011, one of the most talked about cases was the torture and death of Syed Saleem Shahzad, a freelance reporter for the Asia Times. In May 2011, Shahzad had written a story on an al

Qaeda attack at the Pakistan Naval Air Station Mehran that killed 10 Pakistanis associated with the base. In his report, Shahzad alleged that the attack was punishment for the Pakistani military’s crackdown on sailors who had been plotting to kill Americans with al Qaeda operatives.444 Essentially, Shahzad had exposed connections between the

Pakistani military and Islamic militants – a humiliating report on the heels of the U.S.

Navy Seal raid in Abottabad on Osama bin Laden.445 He was allegedly abducted and murdered by Pakistan’s ISI, the intelligence wing of the military.

The Pakistani civilian government normally applies pressure on the media indirectly. The government can cut off unfriendly media from public advertising dollars and/or the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) can silence

103 broadcast media by suspending their licenses or simply threatening to do so. There is plenty of precedent so: After Musharraf blacked out media nationwide in November 2007,

Zardari did the same in March 2009, singling out Geo television exclusively.446

The civilian government can also be incredibly passive to extremism in Pakistani news. Huma Yusuf, a columnist at Dawn, wrote in June 2012 that the civilian government does little to counter the extremist narrative: “Rather than articulate clear and consistent messaging against militant groups, the government stood by while the mainstream airwaves were hijacked by extremist viewpoints.” Politicians do not use the press to run campaigns against fundamentalism or to promote social causes. Instead, they play the role media producers want. They “use media appearances to raise their individual profiles and trigger political storms. Their time on air is about being argumentative rather than developing and sustaining a coherent argument around a relevant issue; it’s about reactive politicking rather than proactive, issue-based politics,” she wrote. The Pakistani government has no clear stance on any major policy issue.

Yusuf continued,

To be clear, the only reason this government has not invested in communications strategies is because, despite the hue and cry about democracy, the concept of consensus-building among the public remains alien. The impetus to earn legitimacy for political action by winning public support — in other words, representative politics — does not yet exist. 447

Until 2002, the Pakistani news media was struggling to hold their government responsible for its words and actions. In its most recent, electronic form, it has branded itself as being so adversarial to the civilian government, so hooked on conflict and sensationalism, that lessening the rancor would be a dramatic turn. The news in Pakistan

104 reflects a culture and society eager for change for a stable and liberal society. But with a powerful military, weak civilian government, and Islamic extremists operating with impunity within Pakistani borders, the press has no clear direction on how to make that change happen. As we will see in the next chapter, Pakistan’s more moderate journalists feel overwhelmed by the dynamic.

105

Chapter 5. “We realized our power”: The Pakistani Journalists’ Experience.

From March 2010 through May 2011, I interviewed 27 Pakistani journalists who work for elite Pakistani news organizations in Islamabad, Lahore, New York and

Washington. Some of them were eager to share their own reflections on Pakistani media history and its explosive growth since 2002. Many of the journalists began their careers in the 1990s, a time when print journalism became bolder, mostly because of the events they witnessed – and largely kept silent about – in the 1980s under the rule of General

Zia ul-Haq.

During the 1980s, Pakistani progressives were “largely disillusioned,” Sharif, an

Urdu-language journalist, explained, because they watched the United States embolden a military dictator. The U.S. Congress and Pentagon particularly, he said, “turned a blind eye to General Zia’s human rights violations because they needed his support next door in Afghanistan.”448 Journalists felt they could not fully expose Zia’s wrongdoings—nor could they count on the United States to do so. Rao, another Urdu-language journalist, admitted that that absence of private television and the suppression of Pakistani media made for less public protest. There was much violence in Pakistan, especially along the border with Afghanistan, but “because there was no media there was no hysteria, no panic,” he said.449 But the lack of news media meant, too, that the public was largely ignorant of the host of problems and general dysfunction within the country. The journalists became increasingly determined to not let these facts go unspoken.

The 1990s saw more intrepid reportage, but the Pakistani print media also began to “indulge in bashing” of the Pakistani state, Shafqat, an Urdu-language journalist,

106 explained, and of their society as a whole. Sometimes journalists and editorial writers offered constructive criticism, but most of the time they were out to humiliate Benazhir

Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and their respective administrations.450 Nawaz Sharif, especially, did not tolerate media criticism of his administration and, depending on his mood, he would shut newspapers down, recalled Shafqat.451 But that just made newspapers – and journalism, as a career – more popular. Journalists certainly became more defiant against the Pakistani government and were, “growing up,” explained Urdu- language journalist Sharif, and seeing for themselves the value in an independent press that challenged government authority and kept it accountable to the Pakistani public.452

By 2000, the journalists were about to embark on a new era of Pakistani media with Musharraf’s decision to privatize television and radio. Before, Pakistanis had no choice but to turn to Indian news channels to try to understand what was happening in

Kashmir, and the rest of the world, remembered Rao, an Urdu-language journalist.453

There was little alternative to understanding the world beyond Pakistani state television – and no broadcast outlet for them to report news independently. The journalists interviewed uniformly revered Musharraf’s decision. Yousaf, an English-language journalist said simply, “Thanks to General Musharraf, there was suddenly much freedom of expression in Pakistan.”454 But this freedom also allowed the long-suppressed journalists to chastise their head of state more openly – freedom they had wanted with

General Zia, Prime Minister Bhutto and Prime Minister Sharif, but were long denied.

Musharraf’s decision was the “proverbial genie out of a bottle” Rao said.455 And what happened after privatization, the journalists said, was not what he intended.

Musharraf, in their view, had hoped to wean the Pakistani public from Indian television

107 by opening the Pakistani media space, and then regulate Pakistani media agencies heavily.

But the journalists unleashed on Musharraf decades of pent-up resentment against

Pakistani governments.456 On television, they constantly questioned Musharraf’s legitimacy as an unelected head of state and the simultaneous head of the Pakistani military. By holding both titles, explained Yousaf, Musharraf was bucking the laws and rules of the constitution – and he couldn’t publicly refute the criticism brought on by the electronic media.457 And that criticism, Hamid, an English-language journalist, told me, was brought on consistently.458

It was from 2007 to 2008, in the final year of Musharraf’s rule and his ultimate downfall that the journalists realized they had power. Essentially, explained Wali, a

Pashto-language journalist, the Pakistani media “wanted Musharraf’s ouster” so bad that they heavily promoted the 2007 Lawyers’ Movement.459 Months after the movement, when Musharraf relinquished his military title and was elected as a civilian president in

October 2007 after a questionable electoral process, he imposed a state of emergency in

November 2007 that shuttered Pakistan’s five-year-old independent television stations.

The value of the news media in Pakistani society became more obvious to the Pakistani public. Urdu-language journalist Salim recalled receiving a phone call during the blackout that another military coup was taking place. There were many disruptive rumors.

After five years of independent information, he explained, the Pakistani public was again consuming mainly what the government wanted them to. The public realized that they could not live without Pakistani independent media, especially television.460

With the blackout over, the journalists’ sense of purpose heightened. Wanting to hold government accountable, they realized that they could provide news and imagery in

108 real time that refuted the official government line and ignited public sentiment. This was especially so among the 40 percent of the public who could not read and had, until then, relied on state-controlled radio and television. While the Pakistani journalists appreciate

Musharraf for expanding their press freedoms, they told me that they feel stronger than the Pakistani government – at least the civilian government.

“A Huge Explosion of Media”

With the increase from three to more than 90 television stations, Pakistani news media has undergone what Sharif called “a huge explosion of media.”461 It is now, according to Rao, the freest in the entire Islamic world – and as vibrant as anywhere else in the world.462 Some, like Wali, said that this freedom was ideal, but others, like Salim, an Urdu-language journalist, said it was difficult to say if such a mass mediated Pakistan would be a good change for the country.463 In the current state of the Pakistani media, more news outlets can make the field more competitive and, to attract ratings, this means more sensationalism and falsehood.

Television is at the core of this pride and concern about the future of Pakistani news.

A majority of the Pakistani journalists told me that television news is more entertainment than information—a dangerous reality as it lends towards conspiracy thinking in the society. Television is popular especially for Pakistan’s illiterates, but it also gives them a false sense of knowledge: they feel as if they are being informed without having to read or consult a wide range of sources.464 Pakistani citizens watch the news intently and are influenced greatly by the language and imagery, but television, said Rao, is “chocked

109 with opinion and little fact.”465 Broadcasters, agreed Imran, an English-language journalist, are more celebrities than journalists.466

Professionalism Is Inconsequential

The journalists I interviewed believe that their peers often report stories incompletely before printing or broadcasting them, and that where they lack information, fabricate details to make the story complete. They believe that, to assert authority, their peers never admit they do not know something, and construct reality instead. While they chastise their civilian leaders, Pakistani journalists are often too quick to fault Pakistan’s neighbors – especially India and Afghanistan – for their country’s volatility. Their peers often worry about what the United States – what they think is the most powerful actor in their domestic affairs -- thinks of them and will do next.

Vazir said Pakistani journalists are almost a self-loathing group that doesn’t inspire confidence.467 Many who pursue a career in journalism, he noted, do so because of its celebrity-making power and desire to be rich and join the elite class. They are eager to be on television and score high ratings, and ignore professional standards in favor of sensational storytelling. Most of them work in the Urdu-language news media, are from the traditionally conservative, lower middle class, and are normally sympathetic with jihadist ideology and fundamentalists.468 The education that they do receive emphasizes respect for the military, police and judiciary -- and deference to authority. Journalists are not just poorly educated but poorly compensated, corrupt and imprisoned in tribal loyalties. My interviewees thought their peers have no sense of ethics and are

110 unaccountable. There is no culture of fact checking, for it would get in the way of a good story, Vazir said.469 There are no repercussions from fabricating material: “You can report one thing and you can get away with it. No one will come after you and ask why you reported stuff when it's not true.”470

Usama, an English-language journalist, agreed that journalists, eager to keep up with information, often do not stop to analyze events. He gave the example of U.S. drone attacks on Pakistani territory, a popular subject with the Pakistani media. Many rail about how the U.S. is undermining Pakistan’s sovereignty by allowing for the drone attacks, which are said to target the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militants along the Pakistan-

Afghanistan border. Usama posed a question that reflected Pakistan’s tendency to look externally for a cause of its problems, rather than internally: “Why aren't we talking about the fact that we’d already lost our internal sovereignty to the [homegrown] terrorists” who are the targets of these drone strikes?471

Terrorist suicide bombings spur instability in Pakistan. Between 2002 and 2011, there were over 300 suicide bombings in the country – a phenomenon that did not occur before

2002, when the U.S. began their sustained presence in Afghanistan. These bombings have killed more than 4,800 people.472 Mahmood, an English-language journalist, explained that suicide bombings and political assassinations (including Benazhir Bhutto’s in

December 2008) have pre-occupied the media.473 And almost always, the conclusion drawn was that a “foreign hand” was to blame for the events.

Pakistani journalism may have the veneer of professionalism but it thrives on conspiracy theories proven with cherry-picked or outright fabricated information.474

Mainly, journalists are trying to stay in business and please their corporate owners.

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Because liberal, moderate opinion does not sell in Pakistan, Pakistani journalists are in the business of selling “half truths and half lies to cater to public opinion,” Hamid explained. Editorial writers and talk show hosts, he said, “play to the lowest common denominator” in Pakistani society.475 Journalists lean toward sensationalism and conservative thought, Omar – a Pashto-language journalist – agreed, because of a perception that the audience wants it.

The disproportionate divide in Pakistan between those who can read and those who cannot is further divided between those who can speak and read English, and those who cannot. Pakistanis who are highly educated and can speak English, Omar said, amount to

20 percent of Pakistanis. Within that fifth of the population, he estimated, 40 percent of them are inclined to be conservative -- and 60 percent of them are liberal. By his estimate, that means that only about 12 percent of the Pakistani public is liberal and seeks moderate views in their news, while the majority of Pakistanis is not educated and automatically sympathizes with conservative and religious news agencies for information and analysis.476 Most Pakistanis, too, Vazir said, are drawn to Urdu-language newspapers because they are cheap and entertaining: The Pakistani public is “addicted,” he said, to fabricated content that speculates about the actions of the Pakistani, Indian and American governments and often encourages conspiracy theories.477

Pakistani journalists, in short, are unprofessional by Western standards. Young

Pakistanis seek a career in journalism more for fame and money than for the pursuit of truth and constructive contributions to Pakistani society. They want, the journalists told me, to be powerful, to take down a president, the way they did with Pervaiz Musharraf in

2008. They want to sell newspapers and achieve high ratings for more advertising dollars

112 to please their corporate owners. The journalists interviewed for this project said that the majority of their peers seek a career in journalism for their own personal enrichment and glory and not as a public service.478 The interviewees considered themselves atypical in this regard as they described themselves as being part of a respectable minority that wants to report news to serve the public’s best interests and not give in to the sensational news refrains.

Pakistani Public Overwhelmingly Influenced by the Press

A strong majority of the journalists supported the idea that the media—especially the broadcast media—has become stronger than the civilian government.479 They uniformly answered that English-language journalists influence the elite, including policymakers and diplomats, while Urdu-language journalists influence the masses.480 For this reason, in Pakistan, the Urdu-language journalists have much more power than the English- language journalists. As Malik explained, “Whatever comes up on Urdu-language television broadcasts is how Pakistani public opinion is built.”481

At least 90 percent of the Pakistani public, Hamid declared, was strongly influenced by the Pakistani press.482 Public trust in the media – which the Pew Global Attitudes

Project said was at 68 percent in 2012 – has been high, Shaid said, ever since the 2007

Lawyers’ Movement. Both the judiciary and the media are seen as “agents of change who are working to break the status quo.”483

Television is the most popular source of news for Pakistanis. It speaks to the illiterate and offers frequent flashes of sensationalist imagery and entertainment. The journalists

113 were quick to point out that when the new Urdu-language television stations debuted in

2002 (only one Pakistani television station is in English), many Urdu-language print journalists who were known for their jingoistic and conservative views migrated to television. Because of the high illiteracy rate, the uneducated masses of Pakistanis began to listen to and watch these journalists very carefully.484 Yousaf agreed that uneducated

Pakistanis “blindly believe in news reports…and they totally think that what the media is reporting is correct.”485 There is a very big difference, he said, between how literate and illiterate Pakistanis respond to news.486 Illiterate Pakistanis see what is broadcast on television and take it for reality, while educated Pakistanis are more skeptical.487

Wanting to appeal to their audience, the news began to entertain, Usama explained.

Owners wanted high ratings and advertising dollars, and they saw an audience of

Pakistanis who wanted to see reflections of themselves on television and hear the conservative views they subscribed to – views that sometimes dangled on extremism.

News narratives were certainly pro-military, pro-Islam and hostile to the United States,

India and the civilian government. This is why, Usama said, that so many news stations exist today: they want the 44 percent audience share of illiterate Pakistanis.488

The public appeal of the media in Pakistan is that it gives ordinary Pakistanis a voice: People see it as their medium to talk back to the Pakistani state, something they could not do for decades.489 Journalists, and those who work in news media, believe they are representing the Pakistani people – and the Pakistani people are engaged regularly with the news. Pakistanis live in a politically charged society; reading, digesting, and talking about news is a social act, Salim explained. “If you go to a barber’s shop you will find every other person crowded against one person reading a newspaper, discussing

114 politics for whatever knowledge they have. The only topic there you will find politics.”

There are many other problems in Pakistani society that transcend politics, but the

Pakistani people prefer to stay fixated on politics both inside Pakistan, and the international politics that define the region.

The average Pakistani, said Salim, is “very, very politically aware – more so than the average American man.” The idea that Pakistani people are engaged and have a curiosity about Pakistan’s role in the world is a point of pride; Americans are seen in Pakistan as being more insular, uncurious people.490 But the Pakistanis’ national pastime is politics, and the evening talk shows are their preferred forum for making meaning amid great uncertainty about Pakistan’s economy, domestic government and security. Talk show hosts can construct meaning for otherwise intangible events.491 But the meaning that is offered is often just conspiracy theories, Usama explained. The hosts can solidify

Pakistani public perceptions of misdoings; they have such sway over Pakistani public thought that “if it is day and the talk show hosts say it is night, then people are going to buy that it is night.”492 Yousaf agreed that people see what is broadcast on television as reality and subscribe to the opinions espoused by talk show hosts and anchormen.493 In this view, the news media indoctrinates the public. Yet it is more likely that the public looks for to the news for validation and not to be outright manipulated.

The journalists also argued that the average Pakistani does not have time to question what he is told by people held up to be authoritative figures. Sharif, an Urdu-language journalist explained, “It’s human nature that people come back from their work, they switch on the TV and watch a sitcom, listen to news, and then they go to sleep.”494 They do not have time to “delve deep” or question news when they are caught up in their own

115 lives. The norm in Pakistan for decades has been to deeply mistrust the Pakistani head of state, and news narratives feed into this mistrust. The Pakistani public watches the news to hear their thoughts reflected back to them in a punchier, apparently fact-based form, without having the time to pursue any extra investigation or analysis of their own. If, according to the elite Pakistani journalists interviewed for this project, Pakistani television is a medium that entertains and confirms suspicion, then the majority of the public is living in a comfortable echo chamber.

Some of the journalists, however, believed the public’s fascination with their electronic media is decreasing, for as journalists become more powerful, the public is growing suspicious of them, too. Salim explained: “People have realized that some of the news outlets have their own agendas and they've become too strong.” As a result, some people think the press should be held more accountable. Yet the public has also become used to a certain volume of information, so much that the quantity and pace of news will not likely be scaled back. As Hamid explained, “I think we have now become so used to such great information flow that we can’t do much about it.”495

Media is the Government’s Rival

While American communications scholarship sees the U.S. press as the mediator between the public and the government, in Pakistan, the media is largely perceived to be the rival of the civilian government. One could find traces of this trend in the 1990s, but the liberalization of the press and the success of the 2007 Lawyers Movement—in addition to the subsequent downfall of President Musharraf—emboldened journalists to

116 take a seemingly automatically aggressive stance against the government’s domestic and foreign policies, warranted or not. This is especially the case when it comes to the

Pakistani government’s relationship with its disenchanted alliance with the U.S. government.

The journalists interviewed largely see the media as being more powerful than the civilian government because they are able to change “the opinions and thinking of the people,” which the Pakistani civilian government cannot.496 Part of its power, Rao said, is also in the fact that the media sets the public agenda for the country – much more so than the government.497 Pakistani journalists do not follow what the Pakistani president or prime minister project to be the most important issues for the country; the journalists aim to define for the public what the priorities are.

The journalists conceded that they enjoy a remarkably high level of free speech, despite government attempts at censorship and military and insurgents’ threats. Salim, an

Urdu-language journalist, acknowledged that the dynamic between the media and the government, was surprisingly, “not that bad.”498 Politicians and civilian government officials largely accept the criticism, even when broadcasters and talk show hosts are

“clubbing the government,” he said, “they take it.” They do not impose media blackouts or threaten to revoke media licenses as much as they could – or used to. But, it’s because of the Pakistani media’s popularity that the government doesn’t have any choice but to tolerate the press a majority of the time.499 The Pakistani media today is a fragmented landscape, but they are united in their opposition to the government. If the government tried to shutter one media group, than the others would set off a rally cry for the public, said Salim and oppose any action the civilian government would take against the press.500

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The Pakistani press—print, and now electronic—is adversarial toward the government, varying only in degree. Pakistani journalists, she also pointed out, are not mature, ethical nor constructive when it came to Pakistan’s government.501 Abida, an

Urdu-language journalist, thought that while the conflict between the media and government had been tempered, the general level of friction is a fixture in press-state relations.502 To be credible in the eyes of the Pakistani public, he said, the media must take on the government on both domestic and foreign policy issues. Shaid, an English- language journalist, concurred that the media is serving a critical role at this stage in

Pakistan, as the media is the “counter balance to [Pakistani state] power.” The media can quickly “galvanize public opinion” for or against the Pakistani government, although it is usually against the government.503 No news agency – with the exception of Pakistani state television or the Associated Press of Pakistan (a Pakistani government operated news agency, not affiliated with the Associated Press) – wants to be perceived as being pro-Pakistani government. “No channel in Pakistan can survive with being too close to the government,” Shaid said, as the Pakistani public will not trust it.504 This may change in 5-10 years, speculated Shaid, but for now it is the norm.505

This normative framework for press-state relations bothered Malik, an English- language journalist. “The Pakistani press is so powerful,” he said, “but it’s still hugely underdeveloped.”506 He suggested that members of the Pakistani press corps do not realize that being automatically critical of government policies can be destructive for

Pakistani society. If journalists have a substantive argument against the government, with ample evidence to prove wrongdoing, then that is serving as a watchdog. However, he insists, that is not the usual case. Pakistani journalists, he said, tend to “go on and on and

118 on about one thing without substantiating their criticism” and often “run campaigns against the government.”507 Anchors and talk show hosts on Geo TV, especially, said

Malik, make predictions of when the Pakistani government will fall. In sum, he said,

“opinions drive news in Pakistan.”508

Hali, an Urdu-language journalist, agreed with Malik’s assessment. She also saw the

Pakistani press as not being supportive toward the Pakistani civilian government or as serving the Pakistani public. Geo TV, she said, is especially “very hostile toward the

Pakistani government.” In Hali’s view, this type of journalism is not providing a public service, but holding the country back from much needed progress in democratic governance: “In all, the Pakistani media is not being constructive—just finding opportunities for constant criticism.”509 Abida agreed with Hali and Malik; he, too, was frustrated that the Pakistani media often did not realize it could play a constructive role in

Pakistani society. Journalists criticized the government’s incompetence, he said, but then presented no solutions to domestic problems.510

The fixed mindset and mission of Pakistani journalists is to selectively look for the negative. Salim said he finds many recent actions of the Pakistani government positive, such as providing aid to people in Balochistan – an impoverished province beleaguered by abject poverty and a growing insurgency. However, no media has highlighted the positive news, he said, because the mindset of most journalists is that they should “have an adversarial relationship with the government.” He warned, though, that his fellow journalists were acting simultaneously like opposition politicians and members of a national jury, ready to “topple the government.”511 This was wrong, said Salim, because the role of journalism is to “strengthen the democratic system” and offer constructive

119 guidance.512 Salim distanced himself from his Pakistani colleagues by emphasizing that the approach of his English-language newspaper toward government is “very neutral,” offering both criticism and praise when it is warranted.513

The Pakistani government has traditionally been opaque to the Pakistani public. How it makes its decisions about ensuring for the welfare of Pakistani citizens and the security of the Pakistani state has long been a mystery to them and the journalists are determined to put pressure on the government to become more transparent. Raheem, an English- language journalist, gave government officials credit for trying to at least engage with

Pakistani journalists. Government authorities give interviews and they show up for appearances on talk shows, but they, too, do not know how to have a constructive dialogue with a press system that seems hell-bent on bringing the government down.514

Usuma, too, explained that Pakistani officials show up for interviews, but they then do not offer much information or try to disabuse the journalists of their misperceptions.515

The politicians also do not make compelling arguments, Salim said, which causes the politicians and journalists to talk past each other.516 Both the press and the various government officials from the civilian and military sides appear to constantly be on the defensive. Seeking explanations from government officials really amounts to a meaningless exercise, Rao explained. While the Pakistani government should be “the largest repository of information, officials are not trained to be forthcoming with information.” This is why so much Pakistani journalism is not just critical, but

“conjecture and imagined,” he said. It is also why his peers produce highly opinionated journalism with little fact.517

Most of the journalists interviewed spoke about the Pakistani government in broad

120 terms, but Hamid acknowledged that journalists react very differently to civilian authorities than they do to military authorities. Specifically, they criticize the civilian government exponentially more than the military.518 But they have a right to be a fierce watchdog of the civilian government, Hamid explained, because it has been elected and

“most policies in Pakistan are not being implemented as part of the rules.” Hamid mentioned at one point that he thought the Pakistani media was much more confrontational with the Pakistani government than the U.S. media was with the U.S. government. When I asked him why he thought that was, he replied, “Most of the policies

I think in the U.S. are not against its law…but in Pakistan, most of the policies in

Pakistan are not being met per rules and regulations.”519 The military, however, is a revered institution that has long been perceived as untouchable and has more of the public’s trust than any other Pakistani institution.

The Pakistani media does not like the Pakistani government, Vazir reasoned, mainly because it is seen as being too close to the Americans and the normative framework in

Pakistan is to be anti-American.520 While Pakistani journalists criticize the civilian leadership, its bureaucracy and politicians,” when it comes to the military, “you can't do anything. That is a red line you can't cross.”521 Despite its close amount of coordination with the U.S. military, the Pakistani military is acutely conscious of pervasive anti-

Americanism and presents itself to the press as being anti-American. They largely promote fear, he said, to keep themselves relevant and in a powerful standing with the public. The tragedy of Pakistan, Vazir said, is that the Pakistani military is the state. So when the Pakistani public and media say that want a revolution of the state, they can’t

121 produce one – because they can’t overthrow their military. The military maintains its strength and centrality to Pakistani politics by adapting to political change in Pakistan.

The military also maintains its strength by threatening and bribing journalists. Vazir noted that the Pakistani military’s inter-services intelligence agency (ISI) – its spy agency, which is part of the military – especially threatens journalists and keeps Pakistani journalists on its payroll. The journalists take the money because they are unethical, ignorant, or intimidated. Vazir frequently receives threats from the ISI either directly or through messages sent to his colleagues and family.522 This is why Pakistani journalists, he said, will never investigate and criticize the military as much as it does the civilian government: Pakistani journalists have tried, and been killed. Fifty-one Pakistani journalists have been killed since 1994, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and 55 percent of them have been intentionally murdered. Twenty-five percent of those have been crime related, 39 percent related to the war, and 61 percent related to local

Pakistani politics.523 In the case of murder, 96 percent of the suspects have had complete impunity.

The Pakistani media’s newfound power makes them want to eliminate whatever other power they can. After years of media oppression, they want to hold their leaders accountable with a vengeance – but only the ones they feel safe doing so. They are eager to criticize and investigate civilian government leaders, but are more reticent when it comes to the military. They are also very cautious with Islamic extremists. This narrative of anti-government, anti-American but pro-military and – at times – pro-extremists, seems to fit with the Pakistani style of populism. Since the privatization of broadcast

122 media, Pakistani television stations have seemed to adopt one mission: destroy power.

While some see this as holding authority responsible, it is, many journalists acknowledged, not the same. Part of this is a sense of vulnerability within Pakistani society. Since they cannot change their military structure or Islamic extremism, they fixate on two other power sources: the civilian government and the American government.

The journalists interviewed see these dynamics as unprofessional and disturbing, but do not think they can stop it. To them, mass sentiment and market forces are so strong that espousing moderate views would be commercial suicide. The safest way to move toward financial and physical security is to stick to a hyper-nationalist, anti-American script. This is especially the case with Urdu media, and to a lesser extent, with the

English-language media that appeals only to a fraction of the population.

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CHAPTER 6. ‘So Much America Here, It’s Staggering’: Pakistani Journalists’ and America

In Pakistan, the topic of security dominates discourse in politics and the media.

America is a dominant actor in Pakistan’s short history, and current reality. Since the

September 11th attacks and the government’s support of U.S. military efforts in neighboring Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda a safe haven, the Pakistani public feels as if they have seen a dramatic influx of violence within their borders. For instance, before the

U.S. war in neighboring Afghanistan began, suicide attacks in Pakistan were rare. But since 2002, roughly 300 of them have killed more than 4,800 Pakistanis and injured more than 10,100.524 Since 2009, the U.S. counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan have also led to a 100 percent increase of drone strikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which have killed between 607 and 993 people, according to various estimates.525 The return of the U.S. to Pakistanis’ internal and foreign affairs is linked to a new phase of violence and Pakistanis perceive the U.S. to be a key actor in their state affairs. The

Pakistani public associates the U.S. with the chaos within the country and feels that the

U.S. contributes to their sense of vulnerability as a nation.

America in Pakistan

Each journalist interviewed for this study stated that the United States plays a central role in his or her daily media cycle in the sense that they both consume U.S. news and report on U.S. thought and actions toward Pakistan, and bordering Afghanistan.526 As discussed, Pakistani journalists are largely nationalistic, yet strongly contest the conduct of their civilian government leadership. They are suspicious of that leadership for

124 duplicity and conspiracy and also, automatically, suspect U.S. government leadership of the duplicity and conspiracy. Pakistanis see the U.S. as much more powerful than

Pakistan – and that power is often equated with efficient manipulation: The shared assumption is that every U.S. diplomatic or military action toward Pakistan or

Afghanistan, and every consequence of that action, is planned; there are no mistakes. And there are enough empirical examples to prove that the U.S. does not respect Pakistan’s sovereignty – two of the most glaring being the ongoing U.S. drone campaign in the tribal region to kill insurgents, which is carried out with the support of the Pakistani government, and the May 1, 2012 Navy Seal raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin

Laden, which was coordinated without the support of the Pakistani government.

Afghanistan is a recurring topic in the Pakistani media, and the sizeable increase of

U.S. troops there in 2010 meant that news narratives about Afghanistan often involved the U.S.; what is happening to Afghans, it seems to Pakistanis, is also happening to them.

“The U.S. is an everyday reality here. More than Americans can ever imagine because everything here [in Pakistan] centers around security,” Rao, an Urdu-language journalist, explained. The emphasis on security within Pakistan means that the presence of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan and drone attacks in the tribal areas inspire much reportage and speculation on the threats the U.S. poses to Pakistan.527 Pakistanis used to fixate only on the threat of India, Rao explained, but after September 11th, “Afghanistan has had a deep bearing on everyday Pakistan because our foreign policy, economic policy, national security policy centers heavily on it.” The war in Afghanistan also simultaneously gives

Pakistani government officials, journalists and citizens a distraction from Pakistan’s troubles. Rao, who was critical of his government, journalism peers and fellow citizens

125 said, “at best, we are resource starved, deeply unorganized country, and we find that instead of focusing on our people and improving the economy, we just talk about what is happening in Afghanistan.”528 Focusing on U.S. actions in Afghanistan, and their spillover effects into Pakistan, is a comfortable – and therefore habitual – news narrative for Rao and his colleagues because it does not challenge them to provide constructive criticism for how to address their challenges at home.

“There’s so much America and Afghanistan in Pakistani media—it’s staggering,” agreed Ibrahim, an Urdu-language broadcaster.529 Salim, an English-language reporter, also concurred that his fellow journalists “love to attack U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan” and to make their case about hostile and destructive U.S. action, often using U.S. news report as source material. But because Pakistani journalists also widely distrust their own government, they “love to also try to prove that Pakistan is cheating on

America,” he said, and therefore want to worsen the distrust between the two governments.530 Often such assertions are conspiracy theories that media representatives contribute to by reporting the facts, and then speculating about the Pakistani or American government’s intentionality. Still, these stories help Pakistanis who are looking to quickly make sense of the chaos within their country and the region.531

This proclivity toward thinking that both the United States and Pakistan have malicious intents is a norm in Pakistan, Malik, an English-language print journalist, said.

He explained that routine, widespread illiteracy and low levels of education in Pakistan spurred conspiratorial thinking, but educated Pakistanis also widely believe in conspiracy theories. During my interview with Malik, he pointed to his office television screen; the television was on, but the volume was on mute. The night before – on July 1, 2010 – two

126 suicide attackers had walked into the Data Dabar shrine in Lahore and killed 38 people.532

Black-and-white surveillance footage released to television stations showed the bombers enter the shrine. The first one entered the front area alone and, five seconds later, detonated a bomb hidden underneath his clothing. A mob of worshipers ran away from the explosion and toward the gate that served as the entrance and exit. But then, another suicide bomber entered the shrine to kill the people trying to flee. That day, this 10- second footage ran repeatedly on Pakistani news stations.

With the television on mute, Malik could not hear what the correspondent standing in front of the Data Dabar shrine was saying, but he guessed that the reporter was repeating a popular refrain in Pakistani storytelling: The bombers were neither Pakistani nor

Muslim; a “foreign hand” was responsible. This was despite the fact that the video footage of the attackers showed that they might very well be Pakistani.533 The logic for the Pakistani people, Malik explained, is that the attackers cannot be from Pakistan or of the Islamic faith—they must be agents of a foreign power that wants to harm Pakistan and Islam. This foreign power, he said, could be the United States or India.

The United States looms so large in Pakistan that it is part of a trifecta of power within the Pakistani consciousness. “In Pakistan,” Mahmood, an English language print journalist, told me, “three things matter: Allah, America, Army.” This, he said, is what is popularly known as the “Triple A concept.” According to this thinking, the U.S. is on par with the Pakistani Army and Islam; it is therefore stronger than the Pakistani civilian government – and certainly stronger then Pakistani civil society, including the media.

This introduces a sense of powerlessness that Pakistanis feel toward the U.S. Mahmood explained that while Pakistani journalists like to take credit for President Parvaiz

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Musharraf’s downfall in 2007, journalists also simultaneously perceive his demise to be the work of the American government. Yes, Mahmood said, the Pakistani people “came out to the streets” for the lawyers’ movement to protest, and the Pakistani media encouraged them to do so. But some Pakistanis also believed that the Bush administration weakened Musharraf because, after taking $20 billion from the U.S. government since

2001, Musharraf had failed to stop the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan or to help capture Osama bin Laden.534 Mahmood explained that Pakistani journalists and the public strongly believe that “Americans instigate these kinds of things [government overthrows] because America is so powerful and efficient.” While the Pakistani people and media are proud of the role they played in weakening Musharraf, they believe they are subject to an even more powerful force: the hand of America, which overpowers all.

This sense of vulnerability leads them to blame the U.S. for many of Pakistan’s woes.

Some Pakistani journalists and pundits bash the United States in news narratives to feel stronger, and anti-Americanism can increase ratings and therefore bring in advertising dollars. So this practice is a fixture of their modus operandi. The practice is so habitual and pervasive that it would be an act of commercial suicide to promote a moderate view of the U.S. during a broadcast or in a newspaper. In order to be successful, Pakistani media must be focused on politics, anti-Americanism and Islam, Mahmood explained.

Sticking to this formula is “the success of every news organization that’s coming into being, or whichever will come after.” There is a simple rule for creating content: When in doubt, criticize the Americans.

This is especially true for the Urdu-language press, for which criticizing the United

States is a “favorite pastime.”535 Sharif, an Urdu-language print journalist, agreed that his

128 colleagues often say that “America is the source of all [of Pakistan’s] problems and its presence in Afghanistan is the source of all [of Pakistan’s] problems.”536 This is largely because, according to Yousaf, an English-language print journalist, Urdu-language papers portray America negatively to gain the support of a largely impoverished and deeply conservative section of the public. This is certainly the case for the Daily Jang, the most popular print publication that is known to print articles that cater to popular conspiracy.

But its true for the English-language press as well. The English-language newspaper,

The Nation, owned by the Nawa-i-qat group, maintains the same anti-American bent that

Urdu-language papers have. The Nation came of prominence in the 1990s for its investigative reporting, explained Malik, but has since “become mainly an anti-American paper.” Pretty much any Westerner, he said, is considered to be a CIA agent.537 Malik alluded to the practices of The Nation’s editor-in-chief, Shireen Mazari, who received her doctorate in political science from Columbia University in the 1980s. Mazari left her position as editor-in-chief of The News – another conservative English-language daily owned by the Jang Group – after naming a U.S. embassy official, Craig Davis, as a spy in an August 26, 2009 column. The column that stated that the U.S. was “increasingly occupying Pakistan with their covert and overt armed presence.”538 When the U.S. ambassador at the time, Anne Patterson, complained to the Jang Group that Mazari had put an American official’s life in danger, Mazari left for The News’s competitor, The

Nation. Two months later, under Mazari’s leadership, The Nation published the article,

“Journalists as Spies in FATA?” It accused the Wall Street Journal’s South Asian correspondent, Matthew Rosenberg, of working for the CIA, Blackwater and Israeli intelligence. Given that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asian

129 correspondent in 2002 was kidnapped and then beheaded by Khalid Sheik Mohammed (a member of al Qaeda who the 9/11 Commission defined as the “principal architect of the

9/11 attacks”)539 for being “an Israeli spy” in Pakistan, both the western diplomatic and journalistic communities were outraged.540 But less than two weeks later, The Nation published a front-page article titled “Mysterious U.S. Nationals” with a picture of an unknown westerner, accusing him of being a CIA agent in Peshawar.541 The westerner turned out to be Australian photographer Daniel Berehulak.542 In a November 21 letter to

Mazari, Getty Images’ senior director of photography Hugh Pinney wrote that he was appalled by the photo and caption, clarifying that Berehulak, his employee, was not a

CIA agent and has “never pursued any agenda other than, as a photographer, to capture important moments and events on camera for the historic record.” Pinney asked Mazari for a correction; Mazari has not obliged.543

The Nation and The News are largely English-language versions of their Urdu- language sister newspapers. The English-language reporters interviewed who had a more liberal bent than these two papers admitted that they reach a small percentage of the

Pakistani people. Mahmood, a self-described liberal, said that he tried to seek a pragmatic course in his reporting that does not habitually rely on American-bashing to sell papers.

He wanted his paper to represent solutions-oriented journalism and identified religion in

Pakistan as part of the problem. His reporting and editorials encourage “developing some kind of logical friendship and meaningful friendship with the Americans” since U.S. support is important for Pakistan’s development. Yet, he emphasized that while America needs to pursue its national interests, Pakistan also needs to pursue its own.544 And the struggle to define Pakistani national interests vis-à-vis American national interests,

130 combined with this sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis America, Mahmood explained, means that “Every view, every perception of the American media on U.S. foreign policy or on the South Asia region is taken very seriously.”545

Pakistani Journalists’ Need American News

News reports and columns from the U.S. are pervasive in the Pakistani media landscape, and there was little difference between how journalists reporting for English,

Urdu and Pashto-language news agencies used U.S. news. Because of the large American presence in the Pakistani media – and what might be called the country’s public psyche –

Pakistani elite journalists turn to U.S. news copy for a greater understanding of American policy thought and action in the region. But it is also to understand their country and government. As Vazir explained, “Because of structural deficiencies in the Pakistani press—the lack of education, lack of good pay, lack of habits of investigative reporting – the Western press steps fills the void that the Pakistani news media leaves.”546

Since September 11, 2001, American media has been an especially rich source of information for Pakistani reporters. The world is looking at Afghanistan and Pakistan,”

Wali, a Pashto-language broadcast journalist, explained.547 And the fact that Pakistan became a more prominent news story in the U.S. after the 2009 U.S. troop surge in

Afghanistan made Pakistani journalists’ jobs easier because there was an abundance of

American news material of them who write about the U.S. and/or Afghanistan, actually travel to either country. Pakistani journalists develop their perceptions of the U.S. from

American newspapers and television, and many of their perceptions of Afghanistan from

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American newspapers and television.

The Pakistani journalists’ newsgathering routines differed, but they generally included looking daily to U.S. news either online, via news websites, or via online search engines to check for news relevant to them. But while U.S. news was source material, the

Pakistani journalists repeatedly emphasized that they only used U.S. news about Pakistan,

Afghanistan, India or the larger South Asia region. 548

The New York Times and the Washington Post hold a prominent place in Pakistani journalists’ newsgathering routines, as they report on South Asia more than other U.S.- based news agencies.549 These two papers are, according to Shaid, an English-language journalist, “on the must-read list [of] at least all the senior people in journalism.”550 They look to it as source material for reportage on terrorism and security, U.S.-Pakistan relations, U.S.-Afghanistan relations, and other diplomatic issues in the South Asia region. Hamid explained that to understand what the liberals thought about U.S. policy and the world, he had to read the New York Times, and to understand the Washington consensus on issues, he had to read the Washington Post (he did not mention where he looked for the conservative angle on news).551 He mentioned the New York Times several times during our interview; when I asked him if he felt that the Times played an agenda- setting role with the Pakistani media the way it did for American media he replied, “Yes, very much so.”552 Parvez, a Pashto-language broadcaster, agreed, saying, “Particularly from the New York Times, we get some of the best stories.”553 And Vazir went so far to state that the best reporting on both U.S. policy and Pakistan came from the New York

Times or Washington Post.554

Other U.S. newspapers that had full-time correspondents in the region – the Wall

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Street Journal,555 Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, for instance – also mattered to the Pakistani journalists.556 Newsweek, Bloomberg and the

Economist were also looked to as source material.557 The Associated Press was routinely checked and incorporated into Pakistani elite news reporting, but unlike the U.S. newspapers, the U.S.-based newswire was perceived to be an “international agency” and not categorized as an American one. This is due to its fact-based reporting that rarely provides analysis that gives a pro-U.S. slant.558

Pakistani journalists also look to U.S. broadcast news, although less now than they had in the past.559 CNN, while it provided one of the few windows to the world beyond

Pakistan when Pakistani Television (PTV) carried it in the 1990s, became obsolete for both the Pakistani public and Pakistani journalists as Pakistani television stations proliferated after 2002.560 The American broadcast station that was the most useful to some Pakistani journalists was Fox News, not because it provided credible reporting on

Pakistan and the region, but because it explained the popular psyche of the United

States.561 Salim said that Fox became important to Pakistani journalists after September

11, 2001 because it was seen as the “relevant mouthpiece” of the Bush administration.

Today, Yousaf, an English-language print journalist, looks to Fox News because “it is against the Obama administration” and he wanted to understand the criticism against

President Obama.562 No matter who is in power, though, Malik, an English-language journalist stated, Fox News has a powerful effect on the American public so it is an important media agency to track.563 He also saw parallels between Fox News and

Pakistan’s own conservative Urdu-language press – both of which, he said, produce

“mind-boggling” news narratives.564 (Three of the journalists consulted American think

133 tank reports and statements for their reporting, especially the Council on Foreign

Relations, Brookings Institute, U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Center for Strategic and

International Studies.)565

While a majority of journalists may not look directly at American news, Malik believed that “basically every newspaper and television newsroom has people who go online and scan news,” making it a routine part of virtually every Pakistani news organization.566 But not all of the journalists in the sample look to American news in- depth. There was one outlier: Bahaar, a broadcaster, explained that his U.S.-news consumption routine was to just read headlines and not the content because American news “is not real news.”567 It is simply a reflection of the U.S. government.

U.S. Reporters & Officials On the Same Team

A majority of the Pakistani journalists interviewed think U.S. journalists align themselves with U.S. government officials, as if they were part of one team whose goal was to advance U.S. interests in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the entire South Asia region.

Some reporters said that there is a clear difference between American journalism on domestic and foreign issues: On domestic issues, they think, U.S. journalists are adversarial toward U.S. policy and politicians; on foreign issues, they are deferential.

The American press, Wali, a Pashto-language broadcaster, said was “the most free in the world” when it reports on domestic news. He gave the example of the 1998 scandal over President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. To him, the press’s reaction to that event showed how much they could question and berate the U.S. presidency

134 without fear of repercussions. However, he said, “On the international level, the media is serving the U.S. administration.”568 He felt adamantly that the New York Times and

Washington Post are “just representing the thoughts of the U.S. government, not challenging them.”569 Hali, an Urdu-language broadcaster, likewise admired the

American media because it is “very mature,” holds itself to ethics and standards, and provides “constructive criticism” for U.S. politicians on domestic policies.570 But when it came to U.S. foreign policy, she too said that U.S. journalists are usually deferential to the U.S. government. The same was the case for Bahaar, an Urdu-language broadcaster.

U.S. journalists, for instance, can question President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, he said, whereas Pakistani journalists are reluctant even to acknowledge the fact that

President Asif Ali Zardari spent eight years in jail on corruption charges.571 On the other hand, Bahaar said, the U.S. media narrative for U.S. foreign policy is “totally dictated by the State Department.” He did not think that U.S. news agencies do any independent reporting on foreign policy issues (“whatever is told to them by government officials, they just air it”) and they are not allowed to contest what they are told—all U.S. reportage on foreign policy had a uniform, pro-U.S. government angle.572 “American foreign policy news is always of one point of view,” he concluded. “There is no investigation and there are never two points of view” or any real pursuit of “the truth.”573

When Pakistanis think about the U.S., Danish, a Pashto-language broadcaster said, they think of “one big monster that’s ready to swallow you” – and that monster is composed of the U.S. government, media, civil society and the public.574 Therefore, it is natural for Pakistanis – including journalists – to think that the U.S. media works with the

U.S. government to advance its goals. Mumtaz, another Pashto-language broadcaster,

135 explained that Pakistanis see the U.S. media as a reflection of the U.S. government, and that both have a hidden agenda toward Pakistan, which includes a possible U.S. invasion of Pakistan to acquire Pakistan’s nuclear weapons once the U.S. military mission in

Afghanistan ends.575 He also said that many of his journalistic colleagues believe that the

U.S. media and the American people “are working together, with the government to take over the world – and to kill Muslims.” He also explained that many Pakistanis believe that there is also an Israeli dimension to U.S. news and that the Israeli government specifically controls U.S. media coverage about foreign issues. As a result, “no one wants to believe what the New York Times said, or what CNN said because they are just

[spouting] Jewish propaganda, Zionist propaganda.”576 While Mumtaz separated himself from personally holding these perceptions, these thoughts are so pervasive in Pakistani society that it is possible he was disguising his own beliefs.

While the other elite Pakistani journalists say they do not agree that the Israeli state controls U.S. news agencies, they do largely assume that the American public is apathetic about U.S. foreign policy’s effect in the world and, therefore, American journalists are writing for—and in support of—U.S. policymakers. 577 After reading news copy every day from the New York Times on Pakistan and other U.S. foreign policy issues, for instance, Sharif, an Urdu-language print journalist, determined that “the New York Times is very close to the State Department.”578 And because U.S. journalists’ are mainly writing for U.S officials, the journalists want to partner with and please them. There is also a certain symbiosis between reporters and officials, Malik, an English-language journalist, emphasized. The New York Times especially is “taken like a gospel truth in the

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American government.” The officials hear their words in the press and take that as affirmation, that their policy thoughts and actions are legitimate.579

Most of the logic is that U.S. government officials reserve their most authentic opinions for U.S. journalists. U.S. government officials may make official statements from The White House, State Department, the Defense Department – or other government agencies – but they are sanitized for diplomatic purposes and therefore artificial. The Washington Post and New York Times, especially, present “the real story” – the expanded story – which government officials also control but do not want to say forthrightly in an official statement and rather hide behind U.S. journalism. This is why secondary source material is more significant to Pakistani journalists than original source material: New York Times and Washington Post reveal the U.S. government’s true sentiment when it comes to U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Imran, an English-language print journalist, offered that overall, the reason why U.S. journalists based in Washington and in the region cared about Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010, was because these countries were “full of western interests” that journalists were required to cover for the benefit of U.S. officials, to see the impact of their policies.580

Raheem, an English-language print journalist, especially subscribed to this view.

He checked the Washington Post regularly, he said, because “The Washington Post is the mouthpiece of the U.S. government.”581 The U.S. government, he said, often leaks information to the Post because officials know that it has an international audience and can possibly sway global actors to sympathize with the U.S. He also agreed with Mumtaz, among others,582 that both the Post and the New York Times are receptive outlets for U.S. government officials to explain their honest motives and actions without having to be

137 quoted on the record; that way, they have plausible deniability and need not take full responsibility if a press reports sparks controversy.583

An example of such “hand-in-hand” cooperation between the U.S. government and press was the 2010 Faisal Shahzad story, some journalists said. On May 1, 2010, Faisal

Shahzad, a Pakistani-born, naturalized American citizen was arrested on an airplane bound for Dubai; from there he was ticketed for a connecting flight to Islamabad.

Shahzad was accused of abandoning a sports utility vehicle packed with explosives near

Times Square in New York City. The explosives failed to detonate. U.S. news agencies – such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and CNN – almost immediately linked the failed terrorism attempt back to Pakistan, where some had reported Shahzad received training by militants in the Pakistani tribal regions. On June 21,

2010, Shahzad confessed in a federal court in Manhattan to training with the Pakistani

Taliban in Pakistan, calling himself a “Muslim soldier.”584 But Shaid dismissed this story as a “gimmick,” saying that, “Pakistan was targeted in this story for no reason.” To the

Pakistani journalists, Shahzad was an American and it was an internal, American issue.585

He reasoned that the U.S. journalists must have been encouraged by U.S. government officials to blame Pakistan for this event, and that they obliged.

On American domestic issues, Muhammed, an English-language print journalist, said, the U.S. press is independent of, and adversarial toward, the U.S. government. But on most issues, he explained, American journalists may begin with skepticism, but they eventually closely align their views with the U.S. government’s. With Pakistan, for instance, U.S. journalists often said in 2009 that Pakistan was betraying the trust of the

United States. Then, U.S. officials—especially the late Richard Holbrooke—would say,

138 according to Muhammed, “No, no, no, what the Pakistanis’ have done is very good and it has helped our war efforts in Afghanistan.” Then the U.S. press overall would soften their attack on Pakistan.586 Muhammed did not offer an example but he believed that the U.S. government sets the tone, the pace, and the language for U.S. news coverage.587

It’s the norm of providing objective news stories, Salim, an Urdu-language journalist, said that links U.S. journalists so closely to the government when it comes to international issues. American journalists provide balanced reporting on the government instead of being critical of it. Objectivity, he said, is a tool that U.S. journalists use to play it safe and an excuse from going after tough stories, he said.588 U.S. reporting on foreign policy should be far more adversarial. Salim also said that he does not personally see the U.S. media as an automatic, unfettered reflection of U.S. policy thought. But he acknowledged that the New York Times usually says that Pakistan is being supportive when U.S. officials emphasize that Pakistan is being supportive to U.S. policy goals.

However, the U.S. press will also print stories a couple days later that talk of Pakistani duplicity, showing that it has no problem being critical of Pakistan.589

American journalists often get their best information on the government’s intentions through leaks from U.S. officials, but leaks are also what bind them to the government.

U.S. officials want to leak information to sway the public and other policymakers toward their point of view, and reporters love a good scoop.590 U.S. journalists rely on U.S. officials for reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan – and on their interpretation of what is most salient about the two countries—because of their access to secret information. The

Pakistani journalists interviewed almost uniformly said that U.S. government officials want to put pressure on Pakistan, but they also want to officially maintain good ties with

139 the Pakistani government. This is why, they reason, you will find U.S. news stories that echo U.S. government rhetoric, but then also see U.S. news stories that pressure Pakistan: because U.S. officials leak information to reporters. This is also why U.S. news reports are perceived to be a more authentic reflection of U.S. government thought than official, diplomatic statements are.

U.S. government leaks to the press—whether about drones, aid funding, or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons—are all “about keeping Pakistan under pressure,” said Rao. And because American journalists decide which leaks to publish, they are “siding with the

American government’s view.”591 The widespread suspicion about leaking in Pakistan,

Rao said, “rests on the timing of the stories.” Big revelations are normally indexed to U.S. government official’s announcements or visits to Pakistan, which signals to the Pakistani journalists that American journalists are complicit. “Whenever somebody’s coming over here, you get several stories in American papers…you can’t really ignore the fact that if

Mullen is coming over, there is going to be a leak about drones. If it’s Gates, it’s going to be something else.” American journalists who work on the State or Defense Department beats are assigned to cover American officials travels overseas, but the news stories, he said, are predictable in the sense that they will abide by whatever U.S. foreign policy is-- and will rarely offer an original thought.592

U.S. government officials often leak news stories about Pakistan to U.S. newspapers, especially the New York Times, Vazir, an English-language journalist said,

“to make Pakistan feel bad.”593 Vazir worked once for an American newspaper in

Pakistan and, after his experience, learned first hand that the U.S. news media is not independent from the U.S. government when it comes to foreign affairs. And throughout

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Pakistan, U.S. news – especially the Times or Post – is seen to be a reflection of the U.S. government. American journalists are only reporting from Pakistan to serve U.S. national interests.594 “The New York Times,” he said, “is seen as being part of America, by extension.”

Vazir also offered at least two recent cases that, he claimed, proved that U.S. journalists often withhold information out of deference to the U.S. government, feeding into the perception that American reporters and officials were on the same team. One was the New York Times’s decision to not immediately report on the capture of the Taliban’s second in command, Mullah Baradar, in Karachi, Pakistan in a joint raid by Pakistan’s

ISI and the CIA in February 2010. The Times reported on the capture on February 15,

2010, but admitted in the news story that it knew about it on February 11, 2010.595

Reporters Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins explained in the February 15 article:

The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials, who contended that making it public would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort. The officials said that the group’s leaders had been unaware of Mullah Baradar’s capture and that if it became public they might cover their tracks and become more careful about communicating with each other.596

They only reported the capture because U.S. government officials acknowledged that the news was becoming widely known in South Asia. Another was the case of Raymond

Davis, a CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistanis in downtown Lahore on

January 27, 2011. The ISI’s Chief, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Vazir explained, knew

Davis worked for the CIA and wanted that to go public. Pasha told many Pakistani reporters, who then reported Davis’s affiliation. They also told the New York Times. But the State Department’s spokesman, P.J. Crowley, called the Times’ executive editor, Bill

Keller and asked him not to repeat this affiliation from the Pakistani press. “His concern

141 was that the letters C-I-A in an article in the NYT, even as speculation, would be taken as authoritative and would be a red flag in Pakistan, Keller later explained to the Times’

Public Editor. Crowley was worried about Davis’s safety in a Pakistani prison. The

Washington Post and Associated Press also agreed to comply with the U.S. government’s efforts to create “as constructive an atmosphere as possible” to defuse the diplomatic crisis. But Pasha, also confirmed Davis’s identity to the U.K.’s Guardian.597 On February

20, 2011 Declan Walsh with The Guardian reported that Davis worked for the CIA but that U.S. news agencies “have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration.” It was only then that the New York Times, Washington Post and AP linked Davis to the CIA.598

Yet this perception of U.S. press-government complicity also derives from

Pakistanis’ experiences at home, Vazir emphasized. In Pakistan, there is a perception that the Pakistani military has the most power in society and over the civilian government, and it is an open secret that Pakistani journalists work closely with Pakistan’s Inter

Services International (ISI), the primary, and much-feared intelligence agency. This domestic experience, he explained, is what informs Pakistanis’ worldview. “So why would they expect things to work differently in the U.S.? Why wouldn’t they expect that

American reporters are on the CIA’s payroll?”599 To the average Pakistani journalist, it is only natural that they would be.

So far, we have established five major themes with about the beliefs and practices of the 27 elite Pakistani journalists interviewed. First, Pakistani journalists are a young, largely untrained – yet powerful – component of Pakistani civil society; and they were

142 largely influenced by the privatization of electronic media in 2002. Second, part of

Pakistani journalism’s identity is to be adversarial—even hostile—to the Pakistani civilian government, and its alliance with the United States. Third, the U.S. plays a central role in Pakistani media. Fourth, a majority of Pakistani journalists—or their colleagues in their news agencies—monitor American news on Pakistan and its immediate region, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post. Fifth, those papers are regularly reviewed because they are perceived largely to be influential with the

U.S. public and the U.S. government. Most of the journalists interviewed see them as working in lockstep with U.S. government officials; either because they rely on official statements for news, cannot resist the opportunity to expose leaks of classified information, or are naturally inclined to support U.S. foreign policy and protect American national interests. But, given all these factors, what do Pakistani journalists think about the way in which the U.S. depicts Pakistan to not just the primary American audience, but also to the global journalists and publics that similarly rely on American reporting for information?

American News Frames about Pakistan

Most Pakistanis put a high premium on their global image, and therefore are greatly concerned with how the U.S. explains Pakistan to the world.600 To understand how the U.S. sees Pakistan, they look to how U.S. journalists package Pakistan in certain frames, ready for relay by Pakistani, global and other American, media. For them, the

U.S. media is a tangible way to grasp the “real” U.S. government view on Pakistan and

143 neighboring countries, including India and Afghanistan. American news is a window into the U.S. public’s and government’s perceptions of Pakistan, and that perception is overwhelmingly negative.

“U.S. News Blames Pakistan, and Islam”

The first theme the Pakistani journalists saw in U.S. news coverage of Pakistan is that the U.S. is blaming Pakistan for not just violence in Afghanistan but global terrorism.

Some journalists expanded the theme to another frame: That the U.S. is blaming Islam for calamities.

The security news frame is one that the Pakistani journalists think U.S. journalists use as a crutch in their reportage, an easy way to report news. Blaming Pakistan is a routine theme in the New York Times, Jabar said, as it routinely spreads disinformation about Pakistan—and journalists at both U.S. and global news agencies follow their lead.601 The storyline that American reporters like the most, Imran, an English-language journalist, said is that Pakistan is a dangerous “center for terrorism” and that its leaders are always playing a “double game.”602 The case of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, is one example of U.S. reporters blaming Pakistan for global terrorism when they should be looking inward, he said. Shahzad was an American, Imran emphasized, not a Pakistani and blaming Pakistan for the May 2010 attempted terrorist attack attempt in Times

Square was unfair. The U.S. press, he said, must “give a more positive image of Pakistan instead of blaming it.”603

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U.S. journalists often discuss how Pakistan is the U.S.’s most important ally in the war on terror, but the U.S. press consistently frames Pakistan negatively, Bahaar, an

Urdu-language broadcaster, said. The American media was “hostile” towards Pakistan:

“None of the [9/11] terrorists were Pakistanis,” he said, “but the Pakistanis are blamed for everything.”604 As another example, Bahaar talked about the November 2008 attack in

Mumbai, India, when Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists launched 11 different attacks at sites throughout the city that spanned four horrifying days. Within 10 minutes of news coverage about the attack on Nov. 26, 2008, he recalled, U.S. journalists were saying that the terrorists were from Pakistan. If there are any acts of terrorism like that worldwide, he said, “the first thing U.S. journalists will point out is that Pakistan has terrorist training camps.” The U.S. press also omits U.S. foreign policy history in their explanation of events, Bahaar said. “You will never hear that in the 1980s the Americans were supporting Pakistani jihadists in the fight against the Soviet Union” which, he said, directly created a culture of militarism in Pakistan. The insurgents in Afghanistan, he said, are all Afghans, but American media insists that they are crossing the border from

Pakistan and this is false. But the U.S. press blames Pakistan “for each and every thing.”605

It’s not just that the U.S. news media blames Pakistan, but American journalists also blame Islam for transnational terrorism. Yousaf gave the case of Shahzad, explaining that the Pakistani media and public believed he was an American with no ties to Pakistan.

Shahzad was acting individually, Yousaf insisted, and U.S. news media “should not connect him with Pakistan and Islam.” He emphasized that when U.S. journalists explain terrorism issues as being associated with Pakistan, the Pakistani public thinks the

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American media is blaming the Pakistani people—not just the Pakistani government,

Pakistani Taliban or the other extremist factions in the country. He said the Pakistani people believed the U.S. news media is not just “against Pakistan” but that it is “waging war against the Pakistani people, the Pakistani army and Pakistan itself.”606 But the

Pakistani people, too, also believe that U.S. policies and the U.S. media are against the

Islam religion as a whole because “The U.S. media makes a big story about anything

Islam.”607 While Hali largely admires U.S. journalism for its investigative and analytical reporting, she also agreed that the “U.S. media makes a big story out of anything Islam” which includes most stories about Pakistan. She too gave the example of Shahzad, saying that U.S. journalists “correlated him to Islam and Pakistan…and blamed Pakistan.” I then asked her to clarify: Was it that the American media was directing suspicion on the extremist groups within Pakistan or the Pakistani public-at-large? She clarified, the

“American media is blaming Pakistan as a country, not just non-state terrorist actors within Pakistan.”608 That her country was being labeled as a home to terrorism frustrated her immensely, and she did not think it was fair. Rao, too, lamented over how Pakistanis, instead of being seen as citizens of a democracy, are seen as Islamists. “Islam is just one part of our life, not the 80 percent part of our life,” he explained. 609

Aban, an Urdu-language print journalist, adamantly believed that the blame pointed at Pakistan by U.S. news, which derives mainly from U.S. government views, is detrimental to the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. “American media is not promoting good ties with the Pakistani people,” he said. In contrast, however, he believed that the Pakistani news media is trying to promote good ties with the U.S. as a proxy for the Pakistani government, but that this is not being reciprocated. The U.S. news media exists only to

146 advance U.S. policy goals, he said, and “is publishing stories against Pakistan” while unfairly favoring India.610 And Nabeel, a broadcaster, thought that American reporters,

“don’t believe in Pakistan” and therefore do not put any story into context. Instead, they rush to blame Pakistan for global terrorism and violence in Afghanistan.611

Some of the Pashto-language journalists presented a more curious finding than their

English-language and Urdu-language counterparts. Mumtaz, a broadcaster, agreed that

American journalists “always look for the bad story” with Pakistan, repeatedly framing

Pakistan as America’s enemy.612 But Parvez, another broadcaster, believed that while the

U.S. media finds stories that are “indirectly or directly connected with terrorism” he thought it was a fair representation of Pakistan.613 So did Omar, a Pashto-language broadcaster. He believed that during the last nine to 10 years that he has been following

U.S. news media, it has been dealing with Pakistan, “very fairly whatever they write they write it fairly.” But, simultaneously, he thought that U.S. journalists should go deeper in their reportage on Pakistan and “not just write about what is of interest for the White

House or Congress.” Omar suggested that U.S. journalists should write for the Pakistani people and show them a more accurate picture of a Pakistan that is an emerging democracy. U.S. journalists, he said, should write about the “democratic institutions” of

Pakistan and help support their development. Omar believed the U.S. news coverage about Pakistan is mainly about violence and security, and does not touch enough on the

Pakistani society and democratic governance issues of the country.614 U.S. elite news media was so pervasive in Pakistan that he thought that U.S. journalists should not just think of the Pakistani audience, but feel a responsibility to guide them along a constructive, democratic path.

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“Pakistan is Chaos: Terrorists and Loose Nukes”

The second theme that the Pakistani journalists interviewed see in American news about Pakistan (and Afghanistan) is employs another security frame: Pakistan is a chaotic place where militants run amok and the country’s most valuable asset, its nuclear weapon arsenal, lays vulnerable to them. All of the journalists interviewed agreed with this sentiment.615

If you were to look at a U.S. newspaper, Jabar said, you would think that a small minority of Pakistani extremists are the most powerful, the most influential members of

Pakistani society-at-large. U.S. journalists “give this minority a voice” and they do not care, he said, about “the majority of Pakistanis who are not a threat.” Instead, western journalists, especially American ones, prefer “to project an image of paranoia.”616 He gave an example of a June 2010 report from the Crisis States Research Center at the

London School of Economics, which stated that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was not secure and was therefore vulnerable to Pakistani jihadists, and that it was official policy of the

ISI to support the Taliban.617 The American press, he said, had covered that report widely.

This practice of using Western sources to confirm Western media suspicions of Pakistan instead of speaking with the Pakistani people was tiresome.

The U.S. media’s version of Pakistan’s reality is inconceivable to anyone who lives in Pakistan, Salim, a print journalist agreed. “At times, frankly it’s difficult for me to recognize the Pakistan they talk about,” he said. American journalists talk about

Pakistanis as if “we are all militants and we want to blow ourselves up.”618 The most

148 repeated storylines in U.S. news about Pakistan, Bahaar, an Urdu language broadcaster said, were about “terrorist training camps, or how Osama Bin Laden is in Pakistan.” He continued, “Nowadays you'll only hear about Osama being in Pakistan; the Generals in

Afghanistan are saying that” and this reflects negatively on Pakistan.619 (Note: 11 months after this interview took place, Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on

May 1, 2011). Sharif, a print journalist, believed that U.S. media portrays Pakistan as

“backward and full of extremists” and that commentators and editorialists absolutely simplified Pakistan to be a violent, failed state. This assumed need to attack Pakistan and claim it to be evil, he said, was simply “childish.”620

U.S. journalists, in Yousaf’s opinion, rarely discuss how “Pakistan is also victim of the terrorist groups” it just focuses on the impact it has on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Muhammed, a print journalist, likewise summarized U.S. news storylines about Pakistan as being America-centric: “you need Pakistan to fight al Qaeda, but you cannot trust it” and “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons can be used against the U.S.” Muhammed is frustrated with what he saw as a double standard over how U.S. journalists talk about India’s nuclear arsenal versus Pakistan’s. This is especially annoying, he said, since Pakistan aligned with the U.S. during the Cold War when India aligned with the Soviet Union.

“Even when India was in the Russian camp nobody said that the Indian weapons can be used against America” but now, Pakistan is America’s ally and the U.S. news media discusses how the weapons could be used on America. What is the reason for this double standard? The reason, Muhammed offered, is not because India is the world’s largest democracy, but because Pakistanis are mostly Muslim and Indians are not (Muslims make up 13 percent of the Indian population). Americans have “a feeling that Indians are

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‘among us’ [because there is not a Muslim majority in India] and therefore, India’s nuclear weapons that cannot be used against the U.S..” America is simply afraid of a

Muslim state having nuclear weapons, no matter what system of governance it has.

Mainly, U.S. news stories regarding Pakistan are about how nuclear weapons can fall into the hands of terrorists inside Pakistan, Rao agreed. Rarely, he said, do U.S. journalists clarify that Pakistan’s nuclear system has elaborate structures to keep the arsenal safe – structures that many international inspectors have confirmed are strong.621 This feeds into the perception that Pakistan is a chaotic, even failed state.

Each time a news story about Pakistan appears in the U.S. mainstream media, Ibrahim said, “It is either about a suicide bomber or a mullah or someone being raped or something like that.” But his frustration was that U.S. journalists not only were determined to portray Pakistan as a violent country, but also as a poor country. Ibrahim continued, “I mean people drive Porsches and stuff in Pakistan. We make homes not of wood, but of stone. There are pretty well off people...pretty intelligent people.” Instead, he said to me, “You keep thinking everyone in Pakistan is bad.”622 This statement defining those who are materially well off as good, virtuous people was a curious point.

But Ibrahim clarified that the U.S. government and news media think of Pakistan as being mainly tribal, with no educated class to steer it in a positive direction of strong governance and economic prosperity.

The fragility of Pakistan is also a common theme, Salim said: “Suicide attacks, terrorists safe haven, rogue state, rogue state that is about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists, and more suicide attacks” fills American news about his country. Americans also read about how Pakistan is a “state that is about to break up into ten thousands of

150 different pieces” that will cause endless bedlam. Add to this, he said, the imagery of

“people wearing towels on their heads – or sand negroes, or whatever you want to call them –who have long beards and they want to go out and blow themselves up.” He concluded, “Chaos. That’s it. As far as the average American is concerned” chaos is

Pakistan.623 If it is not a story that depicts chaos and terror, then U.S. journalists project an attitude of “indifference, indifference, and indifference” toward Pakistan. This leads him to believe that U.S. journalists do not cover Pakistan, they cover how it affects

America’s war next door in Afghanistan. U.S. journalists have no interest in accurately representing his country.

“America Only Cares about America”

The last major theme that the Pakistani journalists interviewed saw in American news was ethnocentrism. They see U.S. policymakers and the media alike narrowly pursuing

U.S. interests in the region. For some of the Pakistanis, this is frustrating as they perceive the U.S. as having power over Pakistan. They hold an irreconcilable feeling that the

United States does not care about Pakistan nearly as much as Pakistan cares about the

United States.

The U.S. news media isn’t famous for its coverage of foreign news, Malik explained, but it tends to make foreign news into “American national security stories.” Despite many cuts in foreign news bureaus, Pakistan and Afghanistan have maintained consistent coverage in U.S. news since Sept. 11, 2001 because the countries were directly tied to

U.S. national security. The central question, Malik explained, that a U.S. reporter asks

151 before covering any news story is: “How is this going to affect American policy or what kind of impact will it have?” Asking that question automatically restricts the scope of the story and, in part, allows for journalists to choose the story’s frame before reporting it; the news story will likely be one-dimensional and focused on the national security of the

U.S.624 Malik saw this coverage as being detrimental to U.S.-Pakistan relations, and frustrating for the Pakistani public. “If it is only related to the national security of the

United States, then you also try to see everything from that prism. That's where things go wrong.”

Because an oft-repeated storyline about Pakistan in U.S. news is that “Pakistan is playing a double game,” U.S. journalists are also implying, Malik said, that Pakistanis should just blindly follow American interests. Pakistanis then see the U.S. pursuing its own interests in Pakistan without respecting Pakistan’s interests as “a betrayal.” They feel as if America owes Pakistan more consideration. A U.S. news reports that speaks of duplicitous Pakistani official behavior toward the United States, “has had a very negative impact [in Pakistan] because… it fuels this conspiracy theory that Americans are not actually Pakistan’s friends but want Pakistan to serve their narrow, national interests.”

Why not consider fairly the position the Pakistani official is in? This can create twin resentments among the Pakistani journalists toward both the United States and the

Pakistani civilian government. U.S. journalists based in Pakistan may cover the Pakistani public “burning the American flag, or effigies of the President of America.” Malik said to me, “This hurts you. And it should.” Most of the Pakistani public, however, doesn’t see what the Pakistani government is doing to make their lives better, either.625 Therefore, when Pakistani journalists and citizens see no reason to be positive about Pakistan’s

152 future from their own government or from the U.S. government—as reflected in the U.S. press—they lash out at both.

Mahmood, a print journalist, too believed that American media “is not concerned about the common people of the country.” This is unfortunate, he said, and also a disservice to U.S. policymakers. This is because foreign policy toward a country cannot be effective if policymakers and foreign policy experts do not understand the intricacies of the country – and journalists should help shape that understanding.626 By not explaining the realities of everyday people, the U.S. news media was sustaining the U.S. government’s security-oriented, narrow policy toward Pakistan.

U.S. foreign news, overall, said Bahaar, is too U.S.-centric, too sheltered from the realities of international relations—and it never honestly confronts how the United States is perceived globally. Bahaar believed that the U.S. public does not receive a sufficient overview of the countries affected by U.S. foreign policy. He gave an example of the

U.S.-led Iraq war: U.S. news coverage was not about events inside Iraq, but on the death toll of American soldiers. American news reportage about all wars the U.S. is involved in, he said, focus on a local, domestic connection inside the U.S. For instance, if an

American soldier in Iraq were killed, American news would cover a parade that honored him, but not the Iraqi civilians who were also killed alongside the soldier. In U.S. news,

“There is no international news. News should be significant, something affecting all people” but American news agencies focus just on the American people. 627 Ibrahim, a broadcaster, too, saw in American papers a frustrating imbalance on the focus on U.S. casualties versus Afghan or Pakistani casualties. He explained:

Say there is an article in the Washington Post about, let’s say, a Marine. And you have a six-page article about him, his life, etc. How about an article about the

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[Afghan] translator who got shot because he saved a Marine’s life? How about his story? How about his family, his mother, sister, daughter, nephews, nieces? What about their point of view? What about them? What about the guard? What about the chef? At the base in Kandahar, the chef who served beans everyday to the Marines, and one night he was riding his bike home and made two bucks a day, and he was riding his motorcycle back home and got brutally shot and beheaded? No one did a story on that poor guy. But imagine if someone in the U.S. had done a story on that?

Ibrahim’s point, he later elaborated, was that American readers might not have cared about what happened to the Afghans who were also killed alongside the Marine, but that reporting for U.S. news is essentially “an international gig.” He continued, “there are no borders here anymore. U.S. journalists need to think global” and their allegiance should not be to an American audience, but to a worldwide audience.628

In the pages of America’s newspapers, Salim said, Pakistan is a “one-dimensional country, it’s all about terrorism.”629 But he also seemed to understand that the main driver of U.S. news frames about Pakistan is the simple fact that there is little space—and demand—for news on Pakistan in the United States. He asked, “how much does Pakistan really matter to the Americans? Pakistan will always be a distant reality, because the focus isn’t broad enough for the Americans.” This, however, is paradoxical to how the

Pakistani public thinks about the United States, he pointed out: “for Pakistan the reality of the Americans is prevalent.”630 It is that gross imbalance between news narratives about the other country that can be frustrating for the Pakistani public: Do Americans really not care about or know about Pakistanis the way they know about Americans?

Sharif, a print journalist, agreed about how distant America’s reality if from

Pakistan’s, lamenting that United States journalists and policymakers are disconnected from the human impact, the toll, American power has overseas. He thought that U.S. journalists should humanize Pakistan, and lead Pakistani journalists by example.631

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Instead, U.S. journalists, when it’s a matter of conflict, take the U.S.’s side and adhere to a nationalistic news frame. This has been the case especially since September 11, 2001.

“Because people from Afghanistan attacked America,” Sharif said, the U.S. has fair stakes in the South Asia region and that its interest has helped Pakistan “ get rid of those people who snuck into the Pakistani mountains from Afghanistan.” But that by repeatedly employing a limited news frame of security to news stories about Pakistan, the U.S. was unaware of the larger effects of U.S. policy within the country.632

Since the United States is such a big part of Pakistani peoples’ daily lives, there are high expectations that the U.S. media should represent Pakistanis’ interests too.

“Often the people of Pakistan,” he said, “at least the people who are involved with the

U.S. and the War on Terror, expect Pakistan and the U.S. media to serve them…they expect the U.S. government and media to bring them success stories.”633 Mahmood agreed that not just journalists, but Pakistani officials and politicians read U.S. news directly and they “take it personally” despite knowing that it is written for an American audience.634 News stories that are American-centric and security oriented are taken personally.

Why do American Journalists See Pakistan this Way?

When it comes to U.S. media frames about Pakistan, there is widespread frustration that the U.S. is blaming Pakistan for instability in Afghanistan and global terrorism, but

Vazir was an outlier in the sense that he believed that the U.S. media is illuminating truths about Pakistan.635 The need for the U.S. news media to frame issues and events in

155 dramatic, security terms, Vazir sympathized, is necessary because there is much violence in Pakistan at the moment. But in Pakistan, that news is read and relayed, and sparks frustration: The Pakistani public sees such news as a sort of betrayal to the sacrifices they believe they have made for the U.S.636

These U.S. news narratives also, Mahmood said, “undermine the good efforts” of the American government because it shows Pakistanis that the U.S. thinks poorly of them as a people. Despite $20 billion in U.S. aid given to Pakistan since September 11, the U.S. press never focuses on development issues, Rao pointed out, but is obsessed with

“terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan related, Taliban and al Qaeda.” 637 This can make Pakistani journalists think that U.S. development aid to Pakistan is not out of its concern for the welfare of the Pakistani people, but to manipulate them.

Because the United States holds such a powerful place in Pakistani society, the stereotype of Pakistan being a fragile, violent and failed state worthy of great blame matters to Pakistanis a great deal; they resent how they are projected into a global media landscape. Mohammed, an English-language print journalist, summarized it when he said that American journalists “go for the easiest option and stereotype” Pakistanis.638 At least half of the sample of Pakistani journalists, though, seemed to understand the constraints

U.S. journalists face in reporting Pakistan due to security, Pakistan’s inherent complexity, or the deadline pressure journalists face in reporting.

Urdu-language, Pashto-language and especially English-language journalists acknowledged that Pakistan is an incredibly complex country. Not only is reporting it fully immensely difficult for small teams of American reporters, but national security issues are inherently secret. But it’s the deadline pressure and the demands of a 24-hour

156 news cycle that makes American journalists misrepresent Pakistan to Americans and the world, many of the journalists said.639 To survive as journalists, they must meet deadlines but the image they present of Pakistan is very different from the Pakistan he experiences everyday as a citizen.640

The U.S. – and western – journalists who spend a considerable amount of time in

Pakistan “have a much, much clearer perspective” than those who travel there on short reporting trips, and are better at representing the country more fully.641 Rao acknowledged that the New York Times, Washington Post and the Associated Press— which serves many newspapers—have full-time representatives in Pakistan even though their bureaus often consist of a single reporter. Recently though, some of the bureaus had expanded to two-three reporters, which is an improvement.642 But they still do not have access to regions in Pakistan where the biggest stories are unfolding, especially the tribal areas where drone strikes and clashes against militants are ongoing.643

These reporters, however, are exceptional. The norm is “parachute journalism”: U.S. journalists who come to Pakistan for two days and need a front-page story. These reporters lack any perspective beyond the American one, Malik stated. He offered an example that took place immediately after the September 11th attacks, when Pakistan became central to American reportage again and western journalists who had been absent from Pakistan for a decade flooded the country once again.644 A problem for both parachute journalists and those who stay longer in Pakistan, however, is sourcing. They often rely on U.S. government officials for information -- whether for public knowledge or the leaking of secret knowledge—in addition to their general adherence to the U.S. government’s official line on foreign policy, as a result of time constraints.645 But

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American journalists also seem to rely on American analysts who do not live in Pakistan and rarely with a feel for the real country.646 They’re just “armchair experts,” Nabeel said, who are fairly clueless to Pakistani dynamics and sometimes do not even travel to

Pakistan.647 There’s no excuse, Malik emphasized, for depending on American official sources when reporting from Pakistan; “it is really strange when journalists come here and speak to their own diplomats.”648

They do so, however, because it reflects their internal, pro-American biases, many of the journalists said. Of course U.S. journalists have to look to their government for information, Danish, a Pashto-language broadcaster, explained, because information about Pakistan and Afghanistan is often secret.649 Muhammed also offered that it is normal for journalists to sympathize with their own country when reporting on a foreign issue. 650 It is natural, he said, that U.S. journalists would subconsciously advance U.S. national interests and, with that shared goal, moves closer to the U.S. government line.

“Particularly on national security issues,” he admitted, “we in Pakistan, too, follow that pattern of thought.”651 And it’s not just American journalists who want leaks from their government, Sharif, an Urdu-language reporter, said. This sort of press-state dynamic is the case in every country, including Pakistan.652 Every reporter around the globe wants access to information. He asked: If it were given to them, why wouldn’t a journalist run it?

This is universal, not just an American reporting phenomenon. It is also normal for a national newspaper to protect their country’s interests, Imran said. But, since U.S. tax dollars are at stake, why aren’t U.S. journalists better watchdogs when it came to U.S. foreign policy as they are with domestic policy? U.S. journalists should be more critical

158 of how U.S. dollars – amounting to $20 billion between 2001 and 2010– are being spent on aid to Pakistan, he emphasized. 653

The American media’s tendency to report about Pakistan with an American-centric angle has more to do with the American public’s apathy toward the world, Salim believed.

The American public, he said, doesn’t really care about U.S. policy that does not affect them at home; so American journalists, when it comes to foreign policy, are largely writing for their government. The American people, Salim explained, are focused on domestic issues, like taxes, and not thinking how their foreign policies were affecting people overseas, especially those in the Muslim world.654 Because Americans don’t care,

U.S. correspondents can be “completely distant from the reality of what is happening in foreign countries.”655 Nabeel, a Pashto-language broadcaster, too, saw it normal that

American media would be American-centric. He explained, “everything is about home” and U.S. journalists are likely to think about the American audiences first.656

American news is not Pakistani news. U.S. journalists report on “terrorism, nuclear proliferation and religious extremism” in Pakistan and overlook the wide diversity in culture and beauty in the country, but they are not writing for a Pakistani audience, Rao said. 657 So why should an average Pakistani demand respect from the American media?

The frustration, Rao explained, is that the cumulative effect of this negative coverage shapes U.S. government policy and global opinion of Pakistan. Many in Pakistan feel as if they are being stereotyped. However, he also admitted that the Pakistanis are, subconsciously, stereotyping American in return, giving “payback in the same way.”658

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Pakistani Journalists Relay U.S. News When It Fits Their Worldview

U.S. elite news narratives about Pakistan are often relayed in Pakistani news. How

Pakistani journalists relay U.S. news reflects which news reports they think are credible, and which ones are unfair. The New York Times, Washington Post and other elite U.S. news agencies can be revered or infamous, depending on the stories they print. While liberal, English-language newspapers tend to relay most U.S. news about Pakistan, the

Urdu and Pashto-language outlets only use stories that resonate with the Pakistani journalists to buttress their own arguments. When this is the case, Pakistani journalists will refer to it as “the gold standard in global journalism.”659 However, if they do not like the story, then they will dismiss it as being the result of U.S. government manipulation and say that American journalists are agents of the their government.

Normally, Pakistani journalists use the Times and Post the most to relay information about U.S.-Pakistan relations, and whatever other news they report on

Pakistan. The English-language media almost always relay the reports, and while the

Urdu-language papers will not consistently do so, the Urdu language television stations will.660

For the English-language press, Malik explained that most everything that is in the New York Times or Washington Post has a “huge impact [in Pakistan]…a huge influence in molding public opinion, everything is picked up, interpreted, re-interpreted, and distorted.” Both the facts in American news stories and the ways in which the stories are framed, are picked up by the elite Pakistani press. “People here do pick up on interpretation,” he explained. “It’s not just facts about what Americans say about Pakistan

160 but how they talk about it, the way they frame Pakistan. That is received here.”661 This is in part, Raheem, another English-language print journalist, explained because U.S. news is a window into American media perceptions about Pakistan. “We talk a lot about how they [Americans] are looking at us [Pakistanis].”

Other English language journalists confirmed that they use U.S. news to set the agenda for their reporting, and then utilize the reports to support their story on the same topic.662 Jabbar, a young broadcaster said succinctly: “Pakistani journalists look to

American news on Pakistan as a habit.”663 The practice is so pervasive, explained Abida, a print journalist, that U.S. news on Pakistan made up most of the content of Pakistani news on the U.S. – and Afghanistan.664 Mahmood said that this emphasis on American news sources gives his paper an edge because “there’s so many things you might not be able to find if you weren’t looking” at U.S. news.665 News coming from U.S. agencies gives him external analysis on Pakistan’s international impact, which his readership—a largely liberal elite group —has an affinity for.666

The Pashto-language journalists also rely on U.S. news for their reporting. One broadcaster not only incorporates American news throughout his reporting, but also dedicates a whole program to just what is in American papers. But it’s mainly limited to what is in the New York Times and Washington Post.667 Omar, a broadcaster, followed a similar routine. “If the New York Times said it,” he said,” then we have to report it.”668

Parvez agreed, saying, “Particularly from the New York Times, we get some of the best stories.”669

The Urdu-language broadcast stations select quotes and sound bytes from U.S. news that say Pakistan is to blame for global terrorism, and then repeat it to the public to

161 rally a sense of nationalism.670 Pakistani journalists are selective in their reporting and only use the U.S. news that meets their agenda. “If it is critical of the military, for instance,” Vazir said, “Geo would not pick it up.”671 Local, Urdu-language newspapers, including those that have a jihadi point of view, will take American news and reprint it – if it fits their worldview. Vazir gave an example of a video of the Pakistani military being responsible for extra-judicial killings, or the killing of innocent civilians. The New York

Times broke the story, and other Western news agencies reported on it as well. But it was not picked up and recycled by the Pakistani press because it portrayed the Pakistani military negatively. Pakistanis inherently do not like anything about the United States – and they will especially not like anything that is critical of the Pakistani military.672

If U.S. news is negatively depicting the Pakistani military, it is either not picked up at all, or it used as the basis for editorializing in an opinion piece or talk show. The talk shows especially use U.S. news as a launch point for conversation and America- bashing, Raheem said.673 The normal refrain, Vazir said, is that “The Americans again are being critical of Pakistan and not recognizing their contribution to America’s goals.”674

When broadcasters and pundits say what they read in American news, they do not differentiate between the media and the government, so the U.S. news represents the U.S. government and U.S. interests.675

Protecting the Pakistani national interest is a fierce goal of the Pakistani media.

But the national interest has an ever-changing definition: “It is normally pro-military, but not always. It is never pro-government, even though that government was elected by the people.”676 Still, while Pakistani journalists believe they should look out for Pakistan’s national interest, they normally become frustrated that U.S. journalists seem to be looking

162 out for American interests.

***

Pakistani journalists often abide by certain rules to narrow their challenge of representing Pakistani society: Criticize the Pakistani civilian government, revere the

Pakistani military, and bash America for not respecting Pakistan’s sovereignty. But the

Pakistani journalists feel as if, when it comes to international affairs reportage, American journalists also narrow their worldview: Revere the American civilian government, revere the American military, and bash Pakistan for not revering either. Pakistani’s brand of nationalism is not America’s. If there is one, consistent resentment it is that America has not just the power to make Pakistan feel small militarily, but it can also make

Pakistan feel small in the global media landscape. American journalists willfully choose to be nationalistic in their news coverage of Pakistan rather than reflect Pakistan accurately. Pakistanis’ react to this viscerally, especially since they think American media has hegemonic control in shaping global perceptions. Just as the American military shapes the contours of global power.

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III. The Afghans

30 Afghan Journalists:

Aalem Print; Dari-language. Abdullah Television; Dari-language. Atash Print; Dari & English-language. Babur Television; Dari-language. Badi Print; Dari & English-language. Behnam Print; Dari & English-language. Delewar Radio & Television; Dari & English-language. Faisal Print, Dari & English-language. Farhang Television; Dari & Pashto-language. Farzin Radio & Print; Dari, Pashto & English-language. Fazia Television; Dari-language. Feda Print & Radio; Dari, Pashto & English-language. Ghazanfar Radio, Dari & English-language. Hakim Print; Dari & English-language. Houshmand Radio, Dari, Pashto & English-language. Jabar Radio, Dari, Pashto & English-language. Jahandar Print & Radio; Dari, Pashto & English-language. Jamshid Television; Dari-language. Jawid Radio & Print, Dari, Pashto & English-language. Kambas Radio & Print; Dari-language. Khaleeq Radio, Dari, Pashto & English-language. Mansoor Print, Dari & English-language. Matteen Print, Dari & English-language. Mitra Radio & Print; Dari, Pashto & English-language. Morad Radio, Dari-language. Nasir Television; Dari-language. Omaid Radio, Dari & English-language. Parsa Television; Pashto-language. Sarwar Radio; Dari, Pashto & English-language. Sina Television; Pashto-language.

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CHAPTER 7. A Shaky Start: Afghan News Media, Past and Present

On October 8, 2001, the day after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban- controlled radio station, Radio Shari’ah, stopped broadcasting in Kabul.677 However,

Radio Shari’ah broadcasts from Mazar-e-Sharif, the largest city in the north, continued.

That day, local residents heard recitations of the Holy Koran and an interview with the

Taliban commander of Balkh who had said about the attacks, “We are not afraid of

America.”678 For one month, despite increasingly poor broadcast quality, Radio Shari’ah continued the same routine as it had since 1996: recitations of the Koran and statements from the Taliban.679

Then, on November 10, 2001, broadcasts switched from Pashto, the preferred language of the Taliban, to Dari, the preferred language of the Northern Alliance, the main opposition group to the Taliban. The new announcer re-branded the station “Radio

Balkh” and stated that the Taliban had fallen from Mazar-e-Sharif: "Dear pious and

Muslim compatriots, peace be with you. We congratulate you from the bottom of our hearts on the victory of the Islamic State of Afghanistan."680 The next day, Afghan and

Indian music, banned under Taliban rule, filled the airwaves. Then, at one point, Abdul

Rashid Dostum – the former Soviet general, infamously brutal Uzbek warlord, and original creator of the Northern Alliance – interrupted the music to announce his triumphant return to the country he had fled in 1997. The United States had asked him to leave Turkey, where he was living in exile, and help guide U.S. Special Forces in eliminating the Taliban from the north.681 He proudly announced that he and the U.S. troops had prevailed.

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Three days later, on November 13, 2001, Kabul residents said they heard music on the radio for the first time in five years. Kabul had been liberated and “Radio

Afghanistan” was back on the air, via a mobile transmitter. Agence France Press reported: “Shrieks of joy erupted when Radio Afghanistan began broadcasting…offering verses from the Koran, music that had been banned under the Taliban, and a woman newscaster.”682 The female announcer, Jamila Mujahid, told her audience: “You can celebrate this great victory…We have to thank God for giving us this opportunity for

Afghanistan to move toward unity….I don't believe this. I never thought that a time would come when I would be reading the news again. As I read the news this morning it’s like a dream."683

Afghanistan’s media was freed from Taliban controls. But the work to create a viable news system within a new democratic government had just begun.

Afghanistan had no blueprint for how to build a strong, professional press that informed the Afghan public and held a new democratic government accountable. In a country where opportunity had been suppressed by a decade of Soviet rule, six years of civil war, and five years of Taliban brutality, the idea of freedom of speech was an exciting prospect. Few Afghans, however, knew how to implement a liberal, democratic order and Afghanistan had no history of professional journalism by Western standards – only the authoritarian style of reportage that each of Afghanistan’s 20th century rulers favored.684

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Afghanistan’s Media Origins

The country’s first newspaper, Saraj-al-Akhbar (“Lamp of the News”), only produced one edition in 1906. Five years lapsed before Mahmud Ber Tarzi, considered the father of the Afghan press, revived it after returning to Afghanistan from exile in

Europe. He made Saraj into a bi-weekly paper with the dual purpose of uniting the country under the banner of Islam against British colonial rule and creating an enlightened Afghan public that could reform the country.685 He seemed to recognize media as a tool to link modernity with nationhood and show the British that Afghanistan was strong enough to survive in the international system without a Western patron.686

In 1919, when Afghanistan gained its independence from the United Kingdom,

King Amanullah (1919-1929) used media for his own state-sponsored modernization projects. The King created a new newspaper, Aman-i-Afghan ("Afghan Peace"), to replace Saraj-al-Akhbar and serve his administration.687 Later, in 1923, the King allowed the principle of free speech to be part of the 1923 constitution, and various newspapers and magazines began to circulate in Kabul and the provinces. Amanullah’s progressive wife, Queen Soraya – who had shocked Afghans by appearing unveiled in public – even sanctioned a magazine, Instructions for Women, that encouraged a more liberal, reformist path for Afghan women.688 But despite the reforms, the media was largely under the control of the monarchy. This included radio, which arrived in Afghanistan in the late

1920s after Germany provided King Nadir Shah (1929-1933) with equipment for a broadcasting system and thereafter continued to support its maintenance.

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Under the reign of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973), Afghanistan’s last King,

Afghan media became more robust, but remained under strong government control until the last few years of his rule. By 1940, Radio Afghanistan was available nationwide and broadcast mainly government announcements and policy statements to serve the narrow purposes of particular officials.689 The Media Law of 1950 allowed for private media, but

King Shah banned it just two years later. His administration, however, established the state-run newswire, Bakhtar News Agency that the Ministry of Information and Culture managed.690 Bakhtar allowed Afghan news to transcend borders and create relationships with the global newswires AFP, Reuters, AP, Deutsche Presse Agentur, the Soviet

Union’s TASS and New China News Agency in an effort to exchange information with the world. Still, however, Afghan news media remained limited and mostly a vehicle for the government.691

In 1966, a new Media Law allowed for more private news media and between

1966 and 1973, 24 private newspapers – and various radio stations – surfaced.692 But those agencies, while independent from the government, largely depended on government officials’ tolerance for them.693 Many of the private newspapers were politically charged, and some advocated strongly for a communist rule of Afghanistan. The emerging

Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), especially, used the newspapers to espouse their views through the papers, Khalq, or “Masses,” and Parcham, or “Banner.”694 In 1967, the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan split into two factions and organized their diverging ideologies around the two newspapers, the factions becoming popularly known as Khalq and Parcham. This was an early signal of the fragmentation to come.

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1973-1989: Communism & The Soviet Takeover

King Shah’s 40-year rule dramatically ended in 1973. Former Prime Minister

Daoud Khan, his cousin, overthrew the King, who then left Afghanistan and began an almost 30-year exile in Rome. Daoud reconstituted Afghanistan as a republic instead of a monarchy, made himself president, and banned most private news media.695 Radio and

Television Afghanistan (RTA) continued as the country’s primary broadcast outlet; by the late 1970s, 16 newspapers and magazines remained, catering to an elite, literate and urban group.696 Yet Daoud’s reign lasted just five years as the Communist forces gained power. On April 27, 1978, Nur Muhammed Taraki’s Khalq faction, the pro-Soviet one of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), overthrew Daoud in a bloody coup and quickly established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.697

Afghanistan was now a Communist state, run by President Taraki. But his rule lasted just 17 months. Large-scale land reforms and the introduction of Marxist policies challenged traditional customs and values, infuriating the rural population and igniting mass protests in the countryside. Seeing his rule as a failure, Taraki’s prime minister,

Hazifullah Amin, directed that Taraki be killed by suffocation, and seized power on

September 14, 1979.698 But two months later, on December 24, 1979, the Soviets, concerned about this instability of the Afghan Communist regime, took control and invaded Afghanistan. They proceeded to occupy the country for nine years and one month.

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During Soviet rule, the trend of authoritarian-style journalism in Afghanistan solidified; freedom of speech was further constricted and media pivoted around the

Afghan Communist Party and Soviet interests in the region and the world. Afghan journalists were forced to embrace and maintain a mechanical style of reportage. The faculty of journalism at Kabul University taught students to report mainly on government events with little analysis or investigation. Any traces of independence that had survived the bouts of government crackdown through the decades disappeared.

However, an opposition media re-surfaced with the purpose of resisting Soviet rule and the “puppet” Afghan government of Babrak Karmal, who answered to Moscow.

Seeing Afghanistan as an opportunity to weaken Soviet power, the United States began to covertly aid the mujahedeen, or freedom fighters, who had been forming a resistance since Taraki’s 1978 coup. In addition to providing the mujahedeen with weapons and finances, the U.S. supported an information campaign to galvanize anti-Soviet sentiment.

This included helping to create newspapers and radio broadcasts in certain pockets of the country and in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan that favored the rebels.699

1989-2001: The Civil War & Taliban Takeover

The combination of U.S. military, economic and humanitarian aid to the mujahedeen and the Afghan people worked. On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet soldiers departed Afghanistan, leaving behind roughly 200 diplomats in the severely weakened Soviet embassy in Kabul.700 But two weeks before, the U.S., citing concerns over looming instability in the country, evacuated its embassy and suspended its small

170 diplomatic mission. The U.S. stopped all but the smallest amount of humanitarian aid to

Afghanistan. The Soviets left behind a communist government ran by Mohammed

Najibullah. He held onto power until April 16, 1992, when the Soviet Union had begun to dissolve and Russia stopped providing him with financial support. Najibullah took refuge in the United Nations compound in Kabul as the now-fractured mujahedeen plunged the country into a devastating civil war. Burhanuddin Rabbani, seen as the leader of the mujahedeen, became the country’s internationally recognized president, but the fighting continued. The official Afghan press that had been under Communist Party control for a decade, most notably Radio Television Afghanistan, transferred to Rabbani’s control.

Simultaneously, the opposition, political media proliferated as militia leaders, popularly known as warlords, used newspapers to advance their individual agendas for

Afghanistan.701

The civil war lasted for roughly four years, destroying Kabul city and turning the countryside into battlegrounds for warlords. In 1994, a movement of young scholars, known as Talibs, began to take on the warlords, in the Pashtun-dominated south. At first, the Afghan people welcomed their peaceful ways and their ability to control the warlods.

The Taliban moved into the West and North and took control of most of the country. In late September 1996, Kabul fell to the Taliban.702 One of their first acts in Kabul was to find the last communist leader, Najibullah, at the United Nations compound downtown, and to hang him. President Rabbani, however, survived. He moved to Badakhshan, the remote northeast province, and went on to fight the Taliban for five years through the

Northern Alliance: a collection of warlords and militia leaders, all former mujahedeen, who stopped fighting each other and reunited with the purpose of overthrowing the

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Taliban.

The Taliban incorporated an extremely harsh style of governance. It completely transformed the media space to cater to its goal of imposing a theocracy that strictly adhered to Shari’ah law. Since they outlawed images of the human form, television broadcasting from Radio Television Afghanistan halted completely.703 Taliban religious police smashed privately owned television sets and strung film from videocassettes in trees. Anyone found to harbor a television set could receive the punishment of flogging and a six-month incarceration.704 Radio Afghanistan was re-named Radio Shari’ah and it broadcast mainly prayers, official announcements, news of military victories against the

Northern Alliance, and criticism of any foreign or Afghan opposition to Taliban rule. The

Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture, which maintained Radio Shari’ah, also produced approximately one dozen state-owned print publications, but their circulation rate was limited to 1 percent – and because there were no newsstands and literacy was at less than 25 percent, the papers were mainly distributed to political and religious institutions.705

Afghans did have alternatives, however, to Taliban-controlled media. Foreign stations like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the U.S.-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) continued their broadcasts in the Dari and Pashto languages, which accessed a majority of Afghans.706 The main opposition group to the Taliban, the

Northern Alliance, also financed a television station in President Rabbani’s province of

Badakhshan that broadcast news and old movies for three hours each evening. However, there were only about 5,000 viewers who were safe from the Taliban’s reach, and owned a television set and a generator. The station mainly existed to symbolize hope for a post-

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Taliban society where communication would be less restricted and Afghanistan was connected to the outside world.707

2001-2008: Democracy and Western Intervention

The world re-connected with Afghans on November 13, 2001, when the Taliban fell from Kabul. Dramatic change began to take place in Afghanistan yet again. During life under the Taliban, women were not permitted to work, let alone leave their homes.

This is why Jamila Mujahid’s broadcast on Radio Afghanistan (re-branded overnight from Radio Shar’iah) was a powerful symbol of liberty: The Taliban no longer controlled the airwaves, or the country. But Mujahid was able to broadcast music and deliver news unfettered by authorities only because there was no Afghan government to stop it. Since

1906, the monarchy, the Soviets, the warlords and the Talliban had managed Afghan media. Nearly a century later, news media had acquired a new platform. But it was shaky.

The Afghan government had to be entirely reconstructed as well. In late

November, the United Nations convened a discussion between four Afghan opposition groups in Bonn, Germany to decide what Afghanistan’s post-Taliban government should be. They included representatives of the Northern Alliance; the “Cypress Group,”

Afghans who lived in exile in Iran; the “Rome Group,” Afghans loyal to former King

Zahir Shah, who was still living in Rome; and the “Peshawar Group,” Afghans who had been living in Pakistan.708 They made two consequential decisions that would shape

Afghanistan’s current society and government apparatus. First, they agreed that the UN should create a multinational peacekeeping force to stabilize the country. The

International Assistance Force (ISAF), as it would become known, would operate under

173 the auspices of the United Nations but would soon be led by the United States and member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).709 They also agreed to make Afghanistan into a constitutional democracy. It would begin with an interim administration for three-six months until a loya jirga, or a grand council of tribal leaders, could agree to – and legitimize – a transitional administration.

Who would lead this interim administration, though, was a point of contention. At first, it looked as if the former King would resume his role.710 But Burhanuddin Rabbani, the last internationally-recognized Afghan president and representative of the Northern

Alliance faction, opposed him. The U.S. wanted Hamid Karzai, a cousin of the King and, more importantly, a Pashtun – the dominant ethnicity in Afghanistan, of which most

Taliban also were. Originally from Kandahar, the center of Taliban rule, Karzai had been living in exile in Quetta, Pakistan since the mid-1990s. He had served as Rabbani’s deputy foreign minister from 1992 to 1994, but began to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate force that could quell the violence from the civil war. In 1999, however, the

Taliban assassinated Karzai’s father and he began to support the Northern Alliance. The

Bonn conference representatives—most reluctantly, Rabbani – ultimately agreed that all ethnic groups in Afghanistan would accept Karzai and he was selected to lead a 29- member interim administration.711

The Bonn Agreement – also known as the Agreement on Provisional

Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-Establishment of Permanent Government

Institutions – was established on December 5, 2001. That day, Karzai, who was still living in Quetta, Pakistan and hadn’t attended the conference in Germany, received a phone call about his selection. Two days later, he crossed into Afghanistan with a team of

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U.S. Special Forces for the first time in nearly seven years. And two weeks after that, he was sworn in as the leader of the interim government of Afghanistan. David Rohde of the

New York Times wrote of the ceremony:

Appealing for help from God, his fellow citizens and the outside world to unify and rebuild his war-ravaged nation, Hamid Karzai, an Afghan tribal leader with a regal bearing and an aristocratic lineage, was sworn in today as chairman of an interim government that replaces the defeated Taliban.712

The challenge ahead was staggering. Civilization in Afghanistan was depleted. There were few institutions, schools, health clinics; little physical infrastructure and electricity; and an economy that relied exclusively on weak agriculture and an illicit narcotics industry. After such a devastating 30 years, however, Afghanistan was full of hope. And its new media system seemed to be its most visible example of how a population could embrace democracy and modernity, just as it had a century before with its first newspaper,

Lamp of the News.

However, tradition runs deep in Afghanistan. An authoritarian style of news continued. The state-run media arms, Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) and Bakhtar

News Agency (BNA), were revived with U.S. assistance and returned to the control of the Ministry of Information and Culture. In 2002, RTA resumed television broadcasting in the major cities of Kabul, Jalalabad, Mazaar-I-Sharif and Faizabad – but it did not provide entertainment, despite the population’s demand for it.713 Radio Kabul was the lead station in RTA’s network, which reached at least 17 out of 32 provinces in the country. But it was mostly Afghanistan’s urban residents who had access to

Afghanistan’s young news media; only 24 percent of the rural population could access it early on.714 In addition to BNA resuming its role as a government information newswire,

35 publications tied to the Afghan government began publication in 2002.715 Consistent

175 with its past of authoritarian style of journalism, reporters and broadcasters working for these agencies rarely criticized officials and remained loyal to the transitional government under Karzai.716

At first, there was confusion over whether the interim government even permitted independent media. In February 2002, Karzai signed a new Media Law that closely resembled the last Media Law of 1966 in the sense that it allowed for a private news media, though it no longer made a reference to a monarchy.717 The law required that news agencies obtain a license from the Ministry of Information and Culture that cost $500,000, but established no firm criteria by which officials would decide who gets a license. The law did not guarantee public access to information, and it did not ensure the independence of the public media. It also included a ban on “subjects that could offend

Islam and subjects that could dishonor the people or weaken the Army” and warned newsmen that if they did offend Islam or the Army, their news agencies would be suspended.718

The Ministry of Information and Culture granted one of its first media licenses to

Saad Mohseni, an Afghan-Australian businessman who, along with his four siblings, would go on to transform the Afghan media space over the next decade. 719 Initially, the

Mohseni family only had $300,000 to pay for the license. 720 But Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), heard about Mohseni and wanted to help him start a radio station. The U.S. embassy in Kabul, along with the diplomatic and aid missions of other Western governments that pledged to help

Afghanistan rebuild, saw the news media as a vital component to a transitional democracy so it could promote both free speech and provide a space for public discourse

176 that had been muffled for too long.721 Natsios gave Mohseni $280,000 to contribute toward the license and as seed money to launch Radio Arman, a radio station that mixed music and news and targeted Afghanistan’s youth. Radio Arman went on the air in April

2003 with a team of just 20 people. In a symbolic move, Mohseni hired Massood Sanjer, the English news broadcaster for the Taliban’s Radio Shari’ah, to be the voice for a new, more open generation of Afghans.722 With Radio Arman’s early success, Mohseni went on to establish the Moby Media Group and launched Tolo TV (in Dari) in 2004 and

Lemar TV (in Pashto) TV in 2006. Tolo quickly became Afghanistan’s most popular television station.

U.S. support for Afghan media was mainly focused on broadcast news, but it also funded the launch of Pajhwok, Afghanistan’s first, independent newswire, in 2004.

Pajhwok means “echo” in both Dari and Pashto and the media development NGO, the

Institute for War and Peace Reporting, guided its development.723 But the U.S. was not the only patron for Afghanistan’s transformed media space. With a new enthusiasm for it and a new democracy that encouraged wide citizen participation, partisan media began to make a comeback. Authoritarian habits also re-surfaced as most provincial governors took control of local radio stations. Iran and Pakistan, too, seized the opportunity to influence the young democracy and began to finance Afghan news agencies.724 All of this has contributed to an Afghan media market that is maintained by benefactors: the Afghan government, warlords, Iran and the West.

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Afghan Media Today

The Afghan news media’s development since 2002 has been breathtakingly rapid.

Between 2005 and 2010, it grew an average of 20 percent each year. Today, Afghanistan has more than 75 television stations, 175 radio stations and more than 200 urban-based print publications.725 Due to more than 60 percent illiteracy, especially in rural areas, broadcast media is preferred to newspapers and magazines.726 How Afghans consume media, though, depends on where they live. Seventy percent of the population lives in the countryside and 85 percent of those Afghans listen to radio, while less than one-third watch television.727

Radio remains the dominant news medium for all Afghans, although no single radio station is heard nationwide. In 2003, only 37 percent of the Afghan population had access to local radio broadcasts but, by 2010, 88 percent of Afghans did.728 More than 90 radio stations are privately owned stations and roughly 35 are state-owned, and run by

RTA. Afghan stations are supplemented by international broadcasts sponsored by the

West, particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation and U.S. government’s Radio

Free Europe/Radio Liberty, known as Radio Azadi (“Azadi” means “Liberty”) in Dari.729

Afghan audiences also, according to a BBC survey, listen to broadcasts of neighboring countries, such as Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.730

In the urban areas though, where 30 percent of the population lives, radio is steadily losing ground to television.731 Somehow, in a country where there is less electricity than anywhere else in the world, television is proliferating. Television reaches

80 percent of the urbanized public, where electricity sources are concentrated, but it is also spreading to rural areas. In 2010, while only 48 percent of Afghans watched

178 television regularly, families tended to abandon radio once they acquired a television.732

The most dramatic growth took place between 2006 and 2010, when 50 new television stations were created.733 The bulk of the Afghan public, however, gravitates toward a few channels.

The Agenda-Setters

Afghans turn to broadcast media for news on local and national issues, music, and religious and educational programming on topics such as literacy, cookery and family life.734 Of their myriad choices, one media agency dominates the others as the source for both news and entertainment: Saad Mohseni’s Moby Media Group – the parent company to Radio Arman, Tolo TV, Lemar TV, and Afghanistan’s first 24-hour news station, Tolo

News.735 Radio Arman, is known to be the most popular commercial radio station in the country and is particularly popular with youth in and around Kabul.736 Moby Media

Group captured roughly 51 percent of the Afghan audience and 45 percent of the market share in 2010. And Tolo attracts more advertising funds than any other news station in the country; its advertising spots time run up to US$500 per minute throughout the day.737 In addition to news, Tolo has created original entertainment programming and re- broadcasts Indian soap operas that appeal to the public. Its content, however, is focused toward those living in the five major urban areas of Afghanistan: Kabul, Herat (west),

Mazar-e-Sharif (north), Kandahar (south) and Jalalabad (east).738

When it comes to television, Tolo TV is the most popular, followed by the privately-owned Ariana TV. RTA, the state broadcaster, is in a distant third.739 As for

179 radio, however, RTA and its associated regional stations command the largest nationwide audience; coming in second is the U.S.-sponsored Radio Azadi.740 There is no known ranking for print media, as its audience is deemed to be too marginal to matter for a national poll. But new media began to become more accessible in 2010 as mobile phone penetration reached 61 percent of the country, whereas the Internet only reached 6 percent of the population, mostly in urban areas.741

Media Controlled by Warlords, Iranians, Pakistanis, the West and the Government

The desire for information in 21st century Afghanistan has grown much more quickly than its economy. Afghanistan is the third-poorest country in the world and more than 90 percent of its economy is dependent on international community donations.742

The private market for media therefore is small. Commercial advertising generates approximately $50 million a year in revenue; but most of the dramatic growth in radio and television is due to direct and indirect support from donors. There is no comprehensive information about which news agencies belong to which owners. But this generalization is possible: As with so many other facets of Afghanistan’s government, civil society and economy, journalism is largely dependent on patrons.

There are four main categories of Afghan media sponsors: Western countries, mainly the U.S. and U.K.; Afghanistan’s neighbors, specifically Iran and Pakistan;

Afghan warlords; and the Afghan government.743 Western government donors, particularly from the United States, have wanted to counteract insurgents and to promote a liberal society.744 The U.S. Agency for International Development says its aid is

180 targeted toward building, independent media through “technical support, equipment upgrades, hands-on training, business development, and strengthening of media industry institutions, networks and associations to increase media professionalism and standards of practice.”745 As previously mentioned, the U.S. was the first and primary sponsor of

Afghan media development with funds to Moby Media Group’s broadcast stations and

Pajhwok News, the country’s principal newswire. More recently, according to USAID, it has focused on supporting the media non-governmental organization Nai to provide training for journalists and promote media literacy. It has also established media centers throughout the country to help strengthen local stations through the Internews network.746

While the U.S. government asserts that its goal is to create an independent media to help build a strong civil society to counter extremism, many Afghans suspect that the U.S. agenda is to use media to create a country that is friendly to the U.S.. They are correct in this perception. The U.S. government wants the Afghan public to bend more towards

America’s objectives for the region than toward Iran’s or Pakistan’s.

The Afghan elite who have benefitted from U.S. aid see their neighbors, Iran and

Pakistan, as inciting divisiveness in their society. There is more evidence that Iran has funded Afghan stations since 2006 than Pakistan has. Iran – a country that shares a similar culture, language (Dari is a dialect of Persian), history, and Islam (although Iran is predominantly Shi’ite) – backs nearly one-third of Afghan news outlets. Iran has become increasingly aggressive in injecting its views.747 In March 2012, the National Directorate of Security (the Afghan equivalent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) submitted a rare public report alleging that the weekly newspaper Ensaf and the television channel Tamadon received financial support from Iran.748 Tamadon is owned

181 by Afghanistan's most prominent Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Asef Mohseni. The chief editor of Tamadon, Mohammad Rahmati, rejected the idea that he received money from Iran, telling Reuters it was an “insult.”749 The chief editor of Ensaf, on the other hand, has acknowledged that he regularly receives money from Iran.750 Iran spends a total of roughly $100 million a year on not just Afghan media, but also on civil society projects and Shi’ite religious schools, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said.751 Many

Afghans think the Iranians definitely fund Afghan media to try to counter American influence in the country. For instance, after the U.S. and Afghanistan signed the U.S.

Strategic Partnership Agreement in May 2012 that indicates a long-term partnership between the two countries,752 Iran-backed media began to criticize the pact. The messages from Iran-sponsored media include reporting on Israel, a country of little interest to Afghans, and refers to it as "the Zionist regime," a term Afghan officials avoid.753

There are also stations that Afghan warlords have launched to advance their individual political or religious interests. The original was Aina TV (“Mirror”), which

Abdul Rashid Dostum – the Uzbek and former Soviet general – launched in 2003. He began a trend among his former Northern Alliance/mujahedeen comrades. Roughly six warlord stations exist today: In addition to Dostum’s Aina TV, there is the Hazara warlord Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq's Rah-e-Farda TV (“Future Path”); Vice President

Karim Khalili’s Negah TV (“Watch”); Northern Alliance commander Amanullah

Guzar’s Sepehr TV; Tajik warlord Atta Muhammad Noor’s Arzo TV; and Tajik political leaders Haji Arif and Yunus Qannoni’s Noorin TV (“Lights).754 The stations are mostly funded with the power brokers’ fortunes or those of their supporters. While they

182 broadcast mainly in pockets of Afghanistan where their influence looms large, their overt political agendas encourage political, ethnic and religious fragmentation and are perceived as threats to independent media.755

The fourth category of Afghan news media is the Afghan government stations that support the policies and strategies of the Karzai administration as they have earlier administrations: RTA, Bakhtar News Agency, and the dozen of papers in Dari, Pashto and English. State-owned media tend to focus on reports of leading Afghan figures, including President Karzai, and often ignore coverage from private television stations.756

Their main purpose is to keep Afghanistan united under the national state. The Afghan government also monitors the other media channels through the Ministry of Information and Culture and regularly enforces the Media Law.

Reporting in a Climate of Fear, Constraint

Afghanistan’s 2009 Media Law, its most recent, is vague. It permits anyone who can afford a license to establish media agencies and puts freedom of speech up for wild interpretation.757 The law prohibits journalists from publishing “matters contrary to the principles of Islam and offensive to other religions and sects.”758 The ambiguity of this rule has allowed the Ministry of Information and Culture to order the detention of Afghan journalists, the shuttering of several privately owned media outlets, and the banning of radio and television programs.759 This includes the government shut down of Emroz TV, a privately owned Dari-language station based in the western city of Herat that was well known for its fierce criticism of the Iranian government in 2010.760 The government also

183 banned the Pashto-language news website Benawa.com after it erroneously reported that

Vice-President Mohammad Qasim Fahim had died.761

In early fall 2012, a new version of the Media Law was sent to parliament after a struggle between conservative elements in the government and more progressive journalists and civil society leaders. One version, drafted internally within the government, wanted to further increase government control over the media through a complicated set of regulatory bodies that would diminish free speech and ban foreign programming. 762 In response, a group of concerned journalists and civil society representatives drafted an alternate version that allows for greater transparency, more legal protection, and better libel laws. Remarkably, government officials accepted that version with some changes; it is expected to pass through parliament sometime in

2013.763 But much of the media’s ability to operate will continue to depend on the personalities within the Ministry of Information and Culture and the High Council, on the cooperation of the Afghan government, and on the overall security situation.

The Afghan government has not imposed explicit bans on Afghan reporters because Western governments, who donate millions of dollars, have warned them against it.764 But both the Media Law and the West have failed to prevent heavy-handed government controls on radio, television and newspapers. Afghan politicians and officials, warlords and the Taliban regularly harass and intimidate journalists. There are kidnappings and murders.765 In the course of 2009, violence against journalists rose by 70 percent, according to the non-governmental organization, Nai, and government security personnel committed most of the attacks.766 In 2010, Afghanistan ranked 147th out of 178 countries listed in the Reporters Sans Frontieres World Press Freedom Index, stating that

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Afghan media was in its worst state since 2004.767 Freedom House ranked Afghanistan as

165 out of 196 counties, decisively calling it “not free.”768 Afghanistan also ranks seventh on the Committee to Protect Journalists' Impunity Index, a listing of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes.769

The Afghan journalists work within a climate of fear and restraint: They frequently resort to self-censorship to stay in the good graces of powerful Afghan figures.

As security has deteriorated in Afghanistan, reporting news has become generally more difficult, with the constraints varying by geographical region. The Institute for War and

Peace Reporting (IWPR) found that in the north, warlords control Afghan reporters, who are divided by ethnic, linguistic and political lines. In the south and east, where security is deteriorating, journalists complain that local government officials openly intimidate them into reporting what the officials want to see. Therefore, news reports on sensitive issues – such as religious and ethnic rivalries, human rights abuses, corruption, or narcotics – are often described in general terms and journalists often opt not to pursue investigative reports that could get them jailed or killed.770

Finding facts in Afghanistan, where dishonesty on issues of security and governance is pervasive, is also a challenge. During decades of conflict, general lying became necessary for one’s survival. It is now routine.771 Afghan journalists must find credible sources who tell the truth and don’t seek to manipulate them to advance their agendas. But since such sources are rare, many Afghan journalists rely on practices that would not be condoned in the West. For instance, it is near impossible to verify Taliban spokespeople or leaders, or those of other extremist factions such as the Haqqani network.

Afghan journalists often film interviews with men whose faces are covered with scarves,

185 but hold guns and claim to be Taliban.772 The journalists usually know Taliban representatives only by their phone numbers, which means that they reach groups of spokespeople instead of consistent individuals.

The complicated worlds of the Taliban, warlords, and other militant factions, which are all involved in some kind of organized crime, can be opaque and dizzyingly complicated to determine.773 So can the goals and actions of the Western (particularly the

U.S.) and Afghan governments. Afghan journalists are often poorly informed about the development activities they lead. This can create “misguided, unmanageable, and ultimately frustrated public expectations,” according to the U.S. Institute for Peace, because Afghans want to see development goals created instantaneously and do not understand them as long-term processes.774 The Afghan news media, therefore, can foster expectations that the Afghan government and international community in Afghanistan cannot possibly meet. This creates conflict and erodes confidence.775

The Afghan journalists also have high expectations of themselves, which they often have difficulty in meeting. Many of them have received enough journalism training and education from Western organizations to know what a professional press is, and that theirs is not one. However, they find it difficult to stick to professional principles in a complicated environment and to reverse the habits of their colleagues who do not know better. The Afghan journalists believe that their colleagues are not “yet fully adept at using pictures or applying sufficiently high journalistic standards in reporting a story,” according to a BBC media survey—yet the fact that they share this criticism implies that they share a certain professional standard.776 Because of the lack of analysis and investigative reporting among Afghan journalists much of their reportage on the war is of

186 the “he said, she said” type. This is also because they think giving equal credence to both sides in the conflict with the Taliban is professional, objective reporting. For instance, after a clash between NATO and Taliban forces, the respective spokespeople often give conflicting reports over who and how many people were killed and injured. Rarely can

Afghan journalists properly investigate the incident; they have to rely on the spokespeople for news copy.777 They do not have the skills or resources to follow up on stories – or, they fear to try. Yet they know what they’re missing.

Despite the threats, Afghans are attracted to journalism because they see it as a pathway to both justice within, and the world beyond, Afghanistan.778 To them, storytelling comes naturally, and journalism, along with the media in general, continues to be seen as a pathway to modernity.779

Afghan Public Hopeful for the Press

Afghan journalists have made an impressive impact on the public, with more than

65 percent placing faith in the news media for credible information.780 According to three recent polls, the Afghan people enjoy their access to media and turn to Afghan news sources repeatedly, seeing them as a reliable source of information.781 But, in 2010,

Afghans told the BBC that they do not entirely depend on one news source for information; they still seek confirmation of news they watch or hear through other press sources and from members of their community.782 The U.S. Institute for Peace confirmed this in their 2010 survey, finding that Afghans put a high premium on the source of the information. News delivered by a member of their community or another trusted group is

187 taken as truth, without question.783 This is partly why most of Afghanistan’s media landscape is fragmented along ethno-linguistic lines. Afghans can feel manipulated by the

Taliban, the international community, the government, nonprofit organizations, or by various others, which is why they trust media sources that they identify with.784 Those with a Pashtun identity are more likely to trust Pashto-language media; those with other ethnic identities—Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, etc. – are more likely to trust the Dari-language press. At the same time, however, Afghans want to be part of an Afghan nation and know about people outside of their immediate communities. In this way, they see the state- owned Radio Television Afghanistan, while being known as biased toward the government, as contributing to national unity because it has national reach.785

The Afghan public knows that the government controls Radio Television

Afghanistan, but they deem the Iranian, Pakistani and warlord-controlled media also as independent because they are not RTA outlets.786 While the Kabul elite largely sees

Iranian, Pakistani and warlord-controlled media as divisive, many also see the U.S. government as imposing its own bias in the news agencies it supports, however popular they may be with the public.787 Overall though, Afghans want all of the news media to monitor the government, promote a national identity, provide education, and give them hope that the country is progressing.788

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Afghan News Media is Weak, Future Uncertain

The future of the independent, Western-backed media in Afghanistan is uncertain because much of it relies on funds that are expected to leave the country with the majority

U.S. and NATO troops in 2014. Until 2012, few Western-sponsored news organizations have tried to become financially sustainable.789 Already, many of them have cut personnel, cancelled programs and reduced news coverage. The organizations that will remain strong, some experts believe, are the stations the Afghan government, warlords and Iran backs.790 Those channels have more reliable funding since Afghans and Iran are more likely to stay invested in Afghanistan than the West will.

The profound weakness of Afghanistan’s economy severely affects the media’s long-term prospects. For instance, Pajhwok, which was originally supported by USAID, had planned to become financially independent by charging subscriber fees. But people found ways to acquire Pajhwok news content without subscribing and, by the summer of

2012, Pajhwok was forced to reduce its staff by 38 percent. Pajhwok’s owners expect even less revenue as Western subscribers lose interest in Afghanistan after NATO troops leave and the economy falters with less international support. The highly respected newspaper, Hashti Sobh (8am), which focuses on investigative reporting for elite, urban audiences, is losing Western grant money. Shah Hussain Murtazawi, the paper’s deputy chief editor, told the Christian Science Monitor, “Now we have climbed all the way to the peak and if we fall from here it won’t help. I think the international community should realize this and not let go of the Afghan independent media.” Many expect the

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Moby Media Group to continue receiving revenue, since it partnered with Rupert

Murdoch’s NewsCorp in 2012, but they are also beginning to downsize.791

The staggering growth of Afghanistan’s media has been one of the more tangible signs of progress in an otherwise frustrating decade. It has modernized the Afghan people in the same way that is first newspaper, Saraj-al-Akhbar, tried to do in 1906. But the news media is not detached from politics. This is a patron-based media system that heavily depends on powerful people who want to bend the country in their direction. In this way, it vividly reflects the underlying power structures of the country and how fragile Afghanistan’s democracy is.

Positively, the media has begun to transform how the Afghan public relates to information. The media makes information accessible to anyone, and no longer just a privileged few. But there are thick cultural norms about who deserves knowledge and information and who do not. Afghan’s most powerful officials, businessmen, drug lords and warlords largely do not respect Afghan journalists and expect them to be deferential to their varying objectives. Afghan journalists therefore have difficulty accessing them for interviews and are hesitant to investigate them for fear of shaming their honor, or, more likely, for fear of being killed.

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CHAPTER 8. Optimistic, But Uncertain: The Afghan Journalist Experience

During the summers of 2010 and 2012, I interviewed 30 journalists in Kabul, the majority of whom work for elite Afghan news organizations that are perceived as

“independent” or “free” and either had, or aspired to have, U.S. funding. Their consensus on many issues – even over the course of two years – was strong, almost uniform. They believe in the principles of a free press in a democratic society and are proud of what they have accomplished. Yet they are not operating in an open society. They face many barriers in reporting and investigating the news, and often feel powerless in doing so without support from Western governments and news organizations.

The lack of variance between these print and broadcast reporters is not that surprising, however, as the elite news media community in Afghanistan is small and generally progressive. I chose to speak with them, however, because the Afghan public places a large amount of trust in their news organizations and they are more popular the warlord, Iran-sponsored or Afghan government channels. Their attitudes towards reportage and editorializing therefore have a considerable impact on Afghan public perceptions.

When I asked them about the growth of Afghan media since 2002, they consistently replied that they were proud of their collective contribution to Afghanistan’s democracy and civil society. However, they were critical of their faults. These included a lack of skill among young and uneducated journalists; a weak media market that discouraged independent journalism; and frequent self-censorship due to threats of violence from Afghan officials, warlords, the Taliban or other extremists. While they felt empowered to provide information to a society that has long been starved of information,

191 they admitted that they depend on the West, especially America, for material support.792

They also depend greatly on U.S. news organizations for content, and moral support.

They take their cues on news from American elite newspapers on what to report about the

U.S.-led war and the Afghan government. Parsa, a television broadcaster explained:

“Generally, if the international community wants Afghanistan to have free media and free speech after 2014 then their aid to Afghan media must continue. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to survive…And American journalists should stay to report this news

Afghan journalists cannot.”793

Afghanistan Has ‘Too Much Media’

The growth of news media in Afghanistan the past decade has been stunning, the journalists agreed, especially for a society long denied access to information.794 Many journalists marveled at how Afghan news organizations were now competitive with international broadcast stations like the BBC’s Persian and Pashto services and Voice of

America, both of which were the only alternative to Afghan government or warlord/mujahadeen news for decades.795 There are now roughly 10,000 journalists in

Afghanistan who report for Afghan audiences, broadcasters Sina and said.796 Technically, the public no longer needs Western channels for information, but the Afghan journalists made clear that they still need the West to fortify their work.

While they agreed that a viable, professional, free news media is unprecedented, some journalists said that there was too much media right now in Afghanistan. The

Afghan press has been created with little sustainable planning, and most of the television

192 and radio stations were born from various non-governmental organizations and aid agencies’ short-term projects. The dozens of television and hundreds of radio stations creates an unruly media system that fragments Afghan audiences into different political allegiances, they concurred. Yet Farzin, a print journalist, pointed out that Afghanistan’s media is likely the single most important indicator that there is democracy in the country:

I don’t see democracy anywhere else. I don’t see it on the streets, but I see it the TV. When some jerk Taliban talking on the TV and calling Mullah Omar His Excellency, to me that is democracy. On one hand I hate that guy and that he is calling Mullah Omar that, but on the other I appreciate that democracy is being celebrated. 797

In this way, the broad news media reflects Afghanistan’s complex society and the various factions, including the Taliban, that are vying for its control. Afghanistan’s extreme politics surface in the media as many journalists, producers and owners try to present what they see reality as to the public.

The Agenda Setters: U.S.-Sponsored Channels The Most Popular

Within this crowded media environment, there are two news organizations that the journalists widely perceived to be agenda-setters. Both are broadcast stations either subsidized or directly funded by the U.S. government. The first is Moby Media Group’s

Tolo TV, which the journalists perceived to be the most-watched and most-influential television station. The second is Radio Azadi (“Radio Liberty”), the Dari-language branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, funded completely by the U.S. Broadcasting

Board of Governors in Washington. The journalists largely deem Radio Azadi to have a

193 comparably large impact on the local Afghan news agenda, more so than the BBC, which was previously the most listened-to radio station during the Taliban years.798

Tolo TV’s launch in 2004 began the “golden time” for Afghan media, Jawid, a print journalist, said. “That’s when all the media changed – everything changed.” Until then, the only other private station was Dostum’s Aina TV in the north, which had been the first warlord station. But with Tolo, Jawid continued, “people could trust journalism” because it was reported by Afghans, not foreigners. The broadcasters weren’t afraid to talk, he said, and they inspired Afghans to speak up and express their minds.799 Farzin, a print journalist, agreed, saying that Tolo has “institutionalized free media here in a professional way.”800 Tolo is known as “the BBC of Afghanistan, as the CNN of

Afghanistan, as the New York Times of Afghanistan,” agreed Aalem. “It is the leading agenda setter in the country.”801

The journalists also deem Radio Azadi to be an agenda-setter for Afghan national news because so much of its content is picked up and relayed through other news organizations.802 The fact that it is a U.S. government sponsored news station is lost on many Afghans, since its name is Dari-sounding. Many of the journalists also emphasized that the U.S. funded the other most popular news agencies, such as Channel One,

Shamshad TV and the Pajhwok newswire, which had a subscription base that catered to a third of the Afghan media (93 radio stations, 13 television stations, and 15 daily newspapers).803 Because of this competition, the journalists did not believe that Tolo TV would endure as Afghanistan’s most-popular station. The above stations, they said, were bound to grow in popularity, as would the independently funded Ariana TV and other independent radio stations.804 However, the journalists made these predictions based on

194 the assumption that Western support for these news organizations, and for Afghanistan’s civil society, would continue after 2014. This is far from certain.

Media Ownership: Government, Political and Free Media All Have Agendas

While there is no decisive account of who owns which news organization, the journalists had strong opinions on what news outlets were in business to advance truth and which ones were advancing the interests of political and foreign actors. Like most surveys on Afghan public opinion, the journalists believed that the Western donors contributed to free media, while Iran, Pakistan and warlords had more subversive intentions for an Afghan, democratic society.

The Afghan journalists largely agreed that there were three types of media in

Afghanistan: governmental, political and free (or independent).805 Governmental includes Radio Television Afghanistan, Bakhtar News Agency and government- sponsored newspapers; political media is funded by warlords, Iran and Pakistan; and free is media backed by the West, or other countries that have “common democratic values” like Korea and Japan, and “is transparent about their intentions” (Note: When Afghan journalists discussed “the west” they often clarified that they meant the United States, because the United States leads the NATO coalition of western countries).806 The general sense with these journalists was that the U.S. is supporting Afghanistan’s democracy, while Pakistan and India were trying to manipulate it.807 The U.S. and U.K., while they were sponsoring less news outlets than Iran and Pakistan, were also sponsoring the most popular ones, like Tolo TV, Channel One and Radio Azadi.808

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The journalists were most worried about Iran-sponsored media, which they said increased sharply in 2009.809 “Iranians are culturally invading Afghanistan,” Sina, a broadcaster, said, and others estimated that Iran affects at least 50 percent of the Afghan media.810 The cultural section of the Iranian embassy in Kabul frequently reaches out to

Afghan journalists either to pay them for positive coverage or to buy Afghan media organizations.811 It is easy to detect if a newspaper or broadcast station is backed by Iran, some pointed out, because it discusses Israel and Palestine; celebrates Iranian figures like

Ayatollah Khomeini; and often repeats verbatim coverage in the Iranian state-sponsored newswire, Fars.812 They also espouse anti-American conspiracy theories about U.S. intentions to steal Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and criticize the 2012 U.S.-Afghan

Strategic Partnership Framework that commits the U.S. to a long-term presence in

Afghanistan.813 Iran is encroaching the Afghan public space with the Persian language (of which Dari is a dialect), culture, and the Shi’ite doctrine so that it can have more control in South Asia than the United States.

Houshmand, a radio broadcaster, called Iranian-backed stations “rented buses”:

They move along news stories that promote the kind of weak, pro-Iranian Afghanistan that Iran wants.814 Yet Khaleeq, a broadcaster, countered that Iran-supported stations were not such a big problem. Tolo, which is U.S.-supported, dominates half the media’s market share, he explained. “There are pockets of people who watch those stations, but their influence is not pervasive. And, as long as they remain this way, they will not be able to grow or expand their influence.”815 Iran’s efforts to bend the Afghan public its way may be threatening, but that effort is contained.

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The majority of the journalists were also concerned about the impact warlord media on the Afghan public.816 In 2008, they said that warlord-funded stations began to proliferate, as they saw having their own television station as a certain status symbol.817

The warlords had profited from the U.S.-led war and could afford to wield their influence through a free media system. Sarwar explained, “You can’t be a self respecting warlord these days in Afghanistan without owning a TV station.”818 The sense among the warlords, many agreed, was that if you didn’t have your own TV channel, you didn’t have a future in Afghan politics and television was a new tool to maintain power.819

Warlord media is merely an extension of the influence warlords waged for decades through brutal force. They are either transparently running the stations, or are supporting them from behind the scenes.820 Like he did with Iran-sponsored media, Khaleeq said that warlord media was not that alarming. In fact, it’s almost encouraging: “The fact that they shifted from an attitude of launching rockets and bombs to criticizing each other within a democratic framework – that’s a big change.”821

The majority of the journalists agreed, however, that the Iranians and warlords were taking advantage of the free media landscape and promoting toxic ideas that would keep the Afghan public suppressed and manipulated instead of empowered. They were concerned that the Afghan public would ultimately lose trust in the media all together because of this, including the independent, albeit Western-backed, journalism they were promoting. The journalists have real reason to be concerned since U.S. money in

Afghanistan is subject to fickle politics and an exhausted American public that does not see much value in sending aid money to Afghanistan anymore.

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Majority of Journalists Ambivalent About Professional Norms

While the Afghan journalists want Western support for their work, they largely see their peers as being ambivalent about professional journalistic norms. 822 Yet their awareness of this lack of professionalism reflects the fact that they aspire to be more professional and know the kind of serious journalism they should be delivering. They want to emulate a Western-style press that is open, objective and socially responsible.

They realize, however, that independent journalism wasn’t a profession until 2002. They and their peers still have a great deal to learn and new habits to form to nullify the ones they accumulated from decades of authoritarianism. These habits were mainly to not question authority, and don’t disrespect elders or the powerful.

At least half of the journalists I interviewed claimed to have received professional training either during time they spent as refugees in Iran or Pakistan or working as journalists in Afghanistan before 1996, and they believed they were qualified to be critics of their colleagues. They emphasized that while they have dramatically improved since

2002, most journalists are immature, under-educated and ill equipped to investigate and report information in a complex and dangerous environment. Behnam said bluntly that

Afghan journalism does not include analysis and is devoid of “professionalism, curiosity, critical thinking, love and passion for reporting truth.”823 The journalists also, however, admitted that they hold their own biases and are influenced by the donors who sponsor them (in this case, Western), their ethnic groups, their political culture and the security situation. They often compare themselves to their Western peers and feel somewhat defeated by their inability to match their skills and resources.

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Afghan journalism is largely imbalanced, partial and inaccurate, the journalists told me. They are mainly competing with each other to break news and often offer wrong information. If Afghan journalists do first report something erroneous they will not acknowledge or apologize for it, they said.824 Much of their incorrect news coverage is because they accept much information at face value. Plus, in Afghan society, Mansoor emphasized, the sources journalists turn to for information can be dubious; they use journalists to settle scores. Afghan journalists do not have enough training, or time, to investigate the reality of the situation. Often journalists think that to be fair, they need to give equal time to insurgents and government officials and provide a “he said, she said” frame.825 Delewar complained that this was not socially responsible, as it showed the public that the Taliban was just as important as the Afghan government.

Many agreed that Afghan news was becoming more objective, and therefore professional, than it had in the past decade. But neither print nor broadcast mediums were doing a good job at distinguishing between news and opinion, they said. 826 For instance, with print publications, an editorial will often be on the front page of the paper, mixed in with news and not sequestered in its own separate section.827 Television stations, too, were not clearly discriminating between news and opinion, the journalists agreed.828

What makes an issue or an event newsworthy, too, is often elusive for Afghan journalists. This is clearly an effect of their authoritarian past, in which only the government’s actions and words made news. Today, the Afghan journalists agreed, will often cover whatever officials or politicians tell them to during press conferences and official events.829 This is a habit from decades of a closed society, explained Mansoor, a print journalist, when journalists were ordered to automatically report the official

199 government line as news. 830 There is no curiosity, either, Khaleeq emphasized.

Journalists often stay long enough at press conferences to get one quote from an official, and then leave.831 Sometimes, Badi, Hakim and Ghazanfar, explained, Afghan journalists will show up to official events to show their peers that they were there, but then steal their peers’ content.832 Hakim, a print journalist, said his colleagues often attend a press conference, only to return and say that they did not know what happened at it. Unless they are told exactly what to report, they cannot identify what is interesting or newsworthy.

The lack of original or investigative reporting means that Afghan journalism is “very soft,” Sarwar, a broadcaster, explained. But some journalists are optimistic that this is changing.833 For instance, Channel One is shifting from event-based reporting to investigative reporting, Farhand explained. One recent story revealed that the Karzai administration keeps 110 advisors on its payroll who get full salaries and benefits like cars and bodyguards. But only 10 of them met with Karzai anytime in 2011.834 Another news agency that’s been focused on investigating reporting is the newspaper Hashti Sobh

(8am) that targets Afghanistan’s elites – Ministers of Parliament, government officials, students and teachers, civil society leaders, NGO workers – hoping to bring change.835

They have reported on corruption within Kabul city.

Afghan Journalists are Young, Uneducated, and Desensitized

There are several reasons why the Afghan news system is lacking in professionalism: They are young, they are uneducated, they received insufficient and

200 superficial media training, and they care more about the paycheck than the act of public service. They are also just beginning to learn about the modern standards for a democratic society and journalism ethics, and to identify what news is beyond what the

Afghan government says it is. They are caught between the habits of an authoritarian society that does not hold their government officials and other powerful figures accountable, and a modern democratic society where they should. Therefore, the majority of Afghan journalists are ambivalent toward the responsibilities of their profession.

Many of those interviewed said that most Afghan journalists were in their early

20s and have very little professional experience.836 At Tolo, for instance, the majority of the presenters and staff are 25 years old or younger. “Kids are running it,” Babur, a television broadcaster, said bluntly. But it’s not just Tolo and its sister stations, other broadcast networks just as Channel One, Ariana, Radio Azadi and Shamshad attract young talent.837 While this generation can pour energy into their work, they often have short attention spans when it comes to following and developing news stories.838 Like in

Pakistan, some also question if the young journalists are attracted to media for paychecks and celebrity more than for producing quality information.839 Behnam, a print journalist, offered: “For Afghan youth, it’s more about having a job than a passion and love for journalism. The ones who work for television just want to be on TV and be famous.”840

As a result, the journalists agreed, the majority of the news media is very shallow as the younger journalists do not try to deepen their knowledge on a topic through reading books or outside sources.841

A majority of Afghan journalists also do not have much education to guide them.

The knowledge and training they receive is patchy. Journalists largely have the

201 equivalent of a twelfth-grade education, Sina, a broadcast journalist emphasized.842 This is understandable, said Abdullah, since 90 percent of the Afghan population has access only to very primary level education.843 But even for those who receive a higher education, the university system has not been able to sufficiently train a new generation of journalists to think critically. Kabul University, the premier higher education facility in the country, has a faculty of journalism that has certainly expanded in size, but it focuses on technical training. Its curriculum is more than 60 years old, many of the journalists stressed.844 Students learn from Soviet and Iranian journalism textbooks, which do not prepare students for a modern, open media system in a democratic society. As a result, many young journalists learn to adhere to authoritarian-style reporting, automatically giving credence to whatever official voices tell them.845

The best training happens on the job, the journalists said. But that’s not always enough.846 Some of Afghanistan’s reporters learned the craft by working with Western journalists. For instance, Houshmand originally thought that being a journalist meant serving as a government mouthpiece. But in 2003, he began working for a Western news organization in Kabul and said he learned to be a skeptic, to not write any story without three sources, and to not fear challenging power.847 Even if Afghan journalists do not work directly with Western news agencies as he did, many get the opportunity to receive long and short-term training on global journalism standards by Western news institutions in France, Germany, Hong Kong and the United States.848

There is no shortage of journalism training programs open to Afghan journalists.

Even inside the country, international media development organizations, such as

Internews and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, offer trainings. That is not the

202 problem. The problem is that they are often short-term and ad hoc. As a result, Afghan journalists can collect dozens of certificates from one-day, two-day or weeklong training sessions and still fail to learn the fundamentals of journalism. Yet these trainings inflate journalists’ sense that they are already professional while simultaneously rewarding them for failing to focus on long-term stories or to develop specialized knowledge. 849

Journalists normally leave these programs knowing that, to be professional, they must be objective and balanced, but they have no real understanding of what that means and can be ambivalent about them in practice.

Another reason why journalists cannot identify news stories beyond the government is because they have become desensitized to their surroundings. Matteen, another print journalist, explained: “War has made Afghan journalists numb about tragedy and incompetence,” he said, and they often cannot recognize a news story until a

Western agency introduces it. For instance, 2012 was a Summer Olympics year and the stadium in Kabul where Afghan athletes, including women, trained was once the location for Taliban public executions. But they did not see this remarkable fact as news. It was only when Reuters reported the December 15, 2011 article “Taliban Death Stadium

Reborn as Afghan Sporting Hope” that Afghan journalists saw the space as a story.850 As will be explored in the next chapter, the majority of Afghan journalists follow the news agenda of Western news media, although they do not want to adopt their news frames.

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Afghan News is About Security and Their Government, But With Some Hope

Afghan news is dominated by the volatile security situation in parts of the country, the journalists agreed, and revolves around the Afghan government’s words and actions.851 But even though fighting and attacks are regularly part of the news, the Afghan journalists insisted that they frame it differently, more positively, than Western media.

Afghan journalists are more likely to highlight Afghan bravery and resilience in the face of bloodshed than the violent act itself. For instance, in June 2010, a significant news story was the Peace Jirga, an attempt by the Karzai administration to begin negotiations with the Taliban.852 The jirga, or grand assembly, attracted hundreds of tribal representatives to Kabul to discuss reconciliation, but the Taliban leadership did not attend. On the jirga’s first day, two Taliban fighters dressed as women in burkas and detonated suicide bombs at the entrance, located half a mile away from the main tent where 2000 Afghan delegates were already gathered. Rockets were also fired haphazardly near the tent. No one except the suicide bombers, however, were killed.

Mansoor, a print journalist, said that his news agency ran over 30 news stories in the course of three days about the jirga. One of them was about the 400 young Afghans who were involved in making the event possible and how not one jirga representative fled from the event after the Taliban attack.853 “When each rocket attack came, there was nobody scared from the jirga. What it showed was the strength of our people; they did not care that their lives were in danger,” Mansoor said.854 This enabled them to focus on the positive: young Afghans at work, trying to have a constructive impact on Afghan politics, and the fortitude of the Afghan people.

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Stories of hope matter deeply to the Afghan journalists interviewed, as they felt that too much reportage on politics and security could discourage the Afghan public. Many of those interviewed felt it was their responsibility to instill in Afghans some optimism and confidence that their country was improving and to educate them on their rights as citizens.855 “Afghanistan’s not a good place to live,” Sina explained. “But if you live here, you have to do something positive.” Journalists, he said, especially have a responsibility to bring about constructive change in Afghanistan.856 Sina’s broadcast news agency was created in part to advocate for Afghan human rights in the Pashtun areas that are the most afflicted with violence.857 He has brought influential figures from the Pashtun countryside to advocate for children and women’s rights in their communities, which he said had long been ignored on both the Afghan and Pakistani sides of the border.858

Delawar, too, felt that his news agency’s mission was “to serve the interests of the people” and focus on human rights, a key component of democracy. 859

Sports news reportage has also energized the public. In 2012, Tolo TV began the

Afghan Premier League, with eight teams representing historically important places in

Afghanistan, such as Kabul city, the Hindu Kush mountain range, and Maiwand – a town north of Kandahar where Afghans beat the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan War in

1880.860 The teams are supposed to ignite a sense of Afghan modernity while also stirring pride in the nation. Also, in 2010, the Afghan cricket team began to have exceptional success, moving from number 130 in the world to number 10 in a matter of two years.

Reporting on their journey from Afghanistan to worldly cities as it fought for the World

Cup has helped broadcast stations tap into the Afghan public’s passion for sports; to create new heroes for Afghans other than political figures and warlords; and to unify an

205 ethnically and politically fragmented society.861 Sarwar said that when his broadcast station covered a cricket game, they received a voracious response from Afghan listeners.

“Literally thousands of people called us to say how they were amazed by what they heard and to thank us for doing that.”862 It was, he said, when he realized that independent media, and not just Afghan government media, could unify the country.

Afghan Independent Media’s Future is Good, If U.S. Stays Involved

Despite overwhelming uncertainty, a majority of the Afghan journalists are cautiously optimistic that the media is moving in the right direction, as they predict more professional journalists and fewer – but higher-quality – news organizations will surface.863 However, this will take time. Afghanistan is a country in the midst of a transition from fundamentalist to democratic rule and is still at war. It is still deeply dependent on the West, especially the U.S., for money and security. In this way, what the

U.S. government decides in terms of security assistance and funding for the media will strongly affect the course of the young Afghan press corps.

If the U.S. government gave the Afghan news media the opportunity and space to grow, many of the journalists agreed that it would gradually become more streamlined and professional. Increased competition will eventually eliminate the most impartial, unprofessional news sources, many journalists argued,864 as Afghanistan doesn’t need 75 television stations. It just needs five or six that resemble the Western-backed, yet more independent, Tolo or Channel One, or Ariana. Many trusted that the public would gravitate toward the more independent stations, not the partisan ones.865 Sarwar and Sina,

206 both broadcast journalists, thought it would likely take 10 to 15 more years before a professional, objective press corps emerged, and that this development would depend significantly on the trajectory of the democratic governance in the country – and on economic growth to enlarge the advertising market beyond its present $20 million a year.866

A majority of the Afghan journalists interviewed, however, believe that the warlord, Afghan government, Iranian and Pakistani-sponsored media are much more likely to continue than the Western-sponsored press that they prefer and largely work for.867 Some thought that these news stations would increase in the immediate future – especially as the 2014 Afghan presidential election approaches.868 The election will be a harbinger for Afghanistan’s future. In anticipation of it, the political situation and Afghan government will likely fragment and multiple actors will work feverishly to promote their individual agendas on television, more so than they are today, some concurred.869 Unity is

Afghanistan is fragile, Houshmand stated, and Iran, Pakistan and warlords may use the elections, a time of political contestation and divisiveness, to ignite hate.870 A minority of the journalists, however, thought that the partisan stations would not survive.871 Among them were Khaleeq and Mansoor, who saw the audience for warlord stations limited to their main supporters, unable to attract advertising dollars, and inconsequential to national public opinion.872

The principle question is how much donor support – especially from the U.S. – will subside after 2014. The Afghan news media’s future hinges on the amount of financial support the U.S. provides for journalism training and subsidizing operational costs. For the journalists I spoke with, this support is their lifeline. Afghanistan will not

207 develop the market to support independent media for decades, and only if it does not collapse into civil war or fundamentalist rule. Currently, its economy is dependent on foreign assistance that injects direct aid and supports commerce, in addition to illegal drugs and agriculture. The latter two industries will endure without Western support, but they are unlikely to advertise their goods on radio or television.

Among all the foreign benefactors, the U.S. and its Western allies’ support is because they do not tell news professionals what to report. It allows them to be free and independent. The West also provides this money transparently, unlike the Iranians and

Pakistanis, Farhand emphasized.873 After 2014, when the U.S. mission considerably downsizes, the media will have less investment, less advertising, and there will be fewer training and education programs for journalists.874 Many journalists lamented that the U.S. was already decreasing media assistance after helping to convince Afghan society how important media was for the country’s overall, democratic development.875 It’s the West that “created this environment for us,” Babur said, “but they are not working actively to help sustain that environment.”876 U.S. support for the press was its strongest between

2002 and 2006, but then it created a void for warlords and Iran to begin funding media,

Delewar and Omaid believed.877 Even in 2012, the journalists were seeing the effects of the future drawdown.878 Tolo TV and Pajhwok, for instance, have already had to lay off many employees.879

Afghan media freedoms depend mostly on whether or not there is adequate security and a stable environment within which they can report. Mitra, Jamshid and

Houshmand agreed that if security improved, then the quality of Afghan news would improve. But they doubt it will be good enough to do much reporting without the support

208 of the West.880 If the Taliban return or a civil war erupts again, then the media will collapse. Yet not all Afghan journalists thought the independent media would cease once the U.S. disengaged from Afghanistan.881 Some of the journalists countered that Afghan journalists’ skills were already there, since many of the best ones were already working for Western news agencies as fixers and would remain in country. These journalists will work to strengthen Afghan journalism. Social media could also provide a channel for news and to connect Afghanistan to the international news arena. American news agencies may not have bureaus in Afghanistan anymore, but American journalists can be fed information through Twitter and Facebook, an optimistic Kambas said.882 While being a journalist in Afghanistan is difficult, he said, “It is up to us to take opportunities and rise to challenges. It is not easy, but we can do it.”883

Afghan Public Sees News Media as Form of Justice

Despite concerns about professionalism, news content, control by foreign and

Afghan power brokers, and a declining U.S. presence, the Afghan journalists interviewed were adamant that news has great value for Afghan society—and that if the free news media continues to exist, then the demand for it will likely increase. Media have empowered the Afghan people. The principle of free speech in Afghanistan means that now people can know information about their government, their economy and their nation; it’s the media’s job to help them make sense of it. Many of the journalists said that despite the flaws, they believe the Afghan public put a high amount of trust in their

209 news system. Still, a multi-vocal media landscape, strongly influenced by power brokers, confuses matters.

Most of the journalists pointed to The Asia Foundation’s 2011 survey of Afghan public opinion that said roughly 70 percent of the Afghan public trusts the Afghan media.884 In particular, they believe, television has democratized news in Afghanistan, making information accessible to most Afghan citizens. You no longer need to have a formal education to access news and information, Jabar pointed out, as one did before

2002. With the press, he explained, the Afghan public, for the first time, can create their own philosophies of what it meant to be citizens, to form their own opinions and to share them. And now that the press extends beyond Kabul, that opportunity reaches millions of

Afghans.885 Media, Sarwar said, “is crucial to democracy and teaching the public about its basic democratic values and human rights.” These issues are part of the national, public dialogue because of the media. 886 The Afghan people now know they deserve better and this has been a remarkable improvement.

Afghanistan’s news media has also become a forum for justice for everyday

Afghans, some of the journalists explained.887 Abdullah said his news organization regularly receives phone calls from citizens asking for help with their problems, or trying to show evidence of government corruption. The Afghan people, he said, believe that the press can “raise their voices and then media can put pressure on government” which is why they offer evidence of corruption at the district and provincial level to local and national journalists. This means government officials then have to take measures, and the press works hard to push the government to take action. Because there is no nationwide,

210 reliable justice system, Abdullah explained, the media “has become a voice of the people.”888

The journalists question, however, how much the free press can help their representative government progress, especially when it comes to the increasingly habitual practice of corruption. Journalists can steer the country in the right direction, Sarwar said, by reminding the Afghan public that they deserve competent, elected representatives, an independent judiciary and their human rights.889 But on corruption, Delewar said, “there are few places where the press can make a big impact.” 890 For now, Abdullah emphasized, the best way to work around a difficult relationship with the government was to maintain the trust of the people and to “prove to the people that our responsibility is to provide people with information without fearing anyone, or without biases.”891 If the press did not serve as watchdogs, Delewar said, Afghanistan would descend into chaos and anarchy.892

This is true: The Afghan news media is providing a remarkable public service given the closed society Afghanistan a short decade ago. The news media has democratized information and shown everyday Afghans that they have a voice in their government. The problem, however, is that the democratically elected government does not care much for its press corps and pays them only minimal attention.

Afghan Government Promotes Free Media, But Doesn’t Respect It

President Hamid Karzai is the government’s most vocal supporter of free speech and a free media and he often calls the development of media his administration’s biggest

211 accomplishment.893 Many of the journalists agreed that they have much more freedom than journalists in neighboring Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and China and that

Karzai deserved credit for the absence of official censorship.894 The constitution and media law grants the journalists some protection when they criticize the Afghan government, and indeed some of those interviewed said they were free to criticize the government as they’d like.895 Yet Afghan media freedom is “not a very idealistic freedom,” Atash emphasized. “It’s not based on the same standards in Western societies.

We have freedom based on our standards.”896

Although freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution and the Afghan president claims bragging rights for that, many of the journalists felt that Afghan government support was simply nominal: When it came to protecting journalists’ physical security and their rights, the government did not care.897 Journalists like

Abdullah, Houshmand, Jamshid and Faisal all described occasions when they and their reporters were intimidated or arrested by government officials.898 By contrast, as

Abdullah pointed out, American journalists feel safe with their government sources, and government officials feel safe with the journalists because they know they have a judicial system they can trust.899 In Afghanistan, government officials cannot protect journalists from warlords and the Taliban, which makes the journalists hesitate to investigate anything.900 “If you are an Afghan journalist and you do investigative work, you come back in a coffin,” Houshmand, a radio broadcaster, said.901 Despite the death of 22 journalists in Afghanistan the past decade, no one has properly investigated how they were killed, Atash pointed out.902

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As a result, investigative reports by the two leading – and free – television stations, Tolo and Channel One, will tread likely. Behnam, a print journalist, said, “No one investigates the education system in Afghanistan or how the mafia works here. No one looks at the financial system or our customs.” Channel One has increased its investigative news reporting, but it is “very safe,” Behnam said, and does not go after warlords, drug lords, corrupt businessmen or powerful Afghan officials.903 This is because investigative reporting can cause not just security problems for the reporters, but business problems for the owners. There is much reportage on security incidents, Babur emphasized, and Afghan journalists show much bravery in trying to cover them. But when it comes to reporting on corruption cases, the journalists feel more threatened because the Afghans who are targeted take it personally.904

Afghan officials do not believe it is their job to communicate consistently with

Afghan reporters. The Afghan government, with the U.S. government’s support, has invested in building architecture for press-state relations with dozens of press offices and spokespeople for various Afghan government ministries.905 The problem, many of the journalists concurred, is that the offices serve more as symbols than as forums for substantive discourse. 906 The Afghan Government Media and Information Center

(GMIC), for instance, which was created with substantial U.S. support in 2007, was designed to make the officials more accessible to the media.907 But, over time, the officials working there have become less responsive.908 Even though they hold press conferences, these often consist of nothing more than the delivery of statements; officials rarely answer questions.909 Farhang gave the example of the 2012 Chicago NATO conference about the military alliance’s future involvement in Afghanistan. In

213 preparation for it, the Afghan government did not share their agenda with Afghan reporters, or brief them on it.910 And the fact that there are so many spokespeople actually limits journalists’ access to government information, Feda, a broadcast journalist, lamented. It makes reporting more difficult.911 Government officials, especially the

President’s spokesman, largely have very little to say and do not explain much to Afghan journalists.912 This is frustrating, many journalists agreed, because Afghan journalists have improved their capacity during the past decade and deserve to be treated with respect.913

There was broad consensus among the journalists interviewed that Afghan government officials, especially President Karzai and members of his cabinet, simply don’t respect the press. Afghan officials and reporters have yet to settle into a constructive dynamic where information from the government is routinely purveyed, and the journalists routinely question it. For instance, when there is breaking news, the presidential palace press office is the last place you turn to, Houshmand said, because they offer no enlightening information.914 Abdullah and Ghazanfar explained that they often feel lied to and because government officials need a job, they are not likely to disclose the truth or make themselves readily available to the Afghan media.915 Fazia agreed that the Afghan government is not listening at all to the Afghan press and often sees journalists as their enemy.916 Kambas, a broadcaster, concurred: “The Afghan government allows you to criticize as much as you want, but they ignore it. There is even a saying popular with journalists that the government says, ‘Say what you want, we do what we want.”917

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Afghan officials also rarely participate in Afghan television or radio talk shows.

When they are asked to participate in roundtables, they often insist on granting exclusive, one on one interviews.918 Access to Karzai is especially tight: In the past decade, the president has only given three or four interviews to Afghan news stations.919 In 2004, when Tolo originally launched and did not yet have a reputation, Karzai granted them an interview, but he has not done so since as he believes them to be against this administration.920 The few interviews Karzai has granted to Afghan news stations include one with Barhanuddin Rabbani’s Noor TV, after Rabbani was assassinated in September

2011, and a 2012 roundtable interview with reporters from RTA, Ariana, Kabul News and Shamshad TV.921

The Afghan government officials who do engage the press speak with news outlets that are either the most popular or the most deferential to government. Most journalists receive simple statements from government officials, and are not offered the opportunity to ask questions outside of press conferences.922 Much of the interaction, though, depends on the personality of the journalists and the officials and whether or not they trust each other.923 “If you are a journalist with good ties to an Afghan official, then you get better stories. And if you don’t, you’re treated like shit,” Farzin, a print journalist, said.924

Morad, a radio broadcaster, agreed, “There is a bad habit in the Afghan government

[outside of the presidential palace] with media, in that they only think of the famous media like Tolo or Channel One.” And sometimes, Mitra explained, the officials feel as if they are owed favorable coverage when they take the time to speak with journalists.

When they are displeased it, they cut off journalists’ access.925

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Some of the Afghan journalists acknowledged that this limited interaction also has to do with the lack of professionalism in the news media. Afghan officials often do not trust Afghan journalists with information, believing that the latter do not have the skills to report accurately.926 Journalists often do not know how to conduct an interview professionally; instead, they use their time with official to vent their own views: When

Afghan journalists ask officials a list of questions, half are complaints, or statements, according to Morad, a radio broadcaster.927 Even during press conferences, Ghazanfar agreed, journalists will stand up to complain, not question.928

Yet this frustration with the government is in part an emotional reaction, an anger that they do not feel as if the government recognizes their value to society. The journalists operate in a dangerous reporting environment, and the government is reluctant to protect them.

Journalists in Afghanistan have many powerful people to contend with: officials in the Afghan government; parliamentarians; warlords; the Taliban and other extremist factions; and the United States and other international state and non-state actors. At worst, they will threaten them physically; at best, they will cut off their access. As a result of security, economic or political reasons, there is a high degree of self-censorship. As the

Afghan journalists see it, the practice protects lives and sustains the news agency as a business.929 But self-censorship is also rooted in Afghan culture, Atash explained. Afghan journalists are used to working within the boundaries of authoritarian societies. “There is a general belief [in the family and the tribe] that just a very select group of people should be informed, as too much freedom of information will interfere with security and progress,” he said.930 This is changing with increasing access to information through

216 technology, “but we still need time for getting to a point where we can stop self- censorship.”931

Despite this, journalists are keeping Afghan officials, politicians and warlords accountable, some insisted. Atash and Khaleeq have seen positive results when Afghan journalists reporting on corruption issues that arise within the Afghan parliament.932

Ministers of Parliament are now more wary of the Afghan press, Khaleeq agreed, because corruption is rampant among them and the journalists can easily uncover it.933 The level of corruption in the government would be much higher if the press did not exist, he thinks.

If it weren’t for the media and freedom of expression, there would not just be 10 times more corruption, he maintains, but also more warlordism; the Taliban would be more likely to return.934 Khaleeq, a radio broadcaster, agreed that the media has acted as an

“agent of change to the extent that the government is afraid of media, warlords are afraid of media, Taliban are afraid of media, drug lords are afraid of media. The fact that this fear has come to their minds has made them more careful. The fact that they feel that fear

– that in itself is a positive change.” 935 In this way, the Afghan news media is trying to consolidate the democratic achievements of freedom of expression and civil society.936

Yet the group that is most savvy with the Afghan press is the group that is eager to take these freedoms away. The Taliban spokespeople are so sophisticated when it comes to breaking news, the journalists largely agreed, that the Afghan government should be embarrassed.937 The Taliban is in closer contact with the media than Afghan government officials are. 938 When an attack takes place, journalists often get phone calls from the Taliban to take credit for it, but “From the government’s side you have to wait and wait and wait until the end of the day until they have a press release or send a

217 spokesman to talk,” Mitra, a print journalist, said. 939 While it’s difficult to get the

Defense Minister or Interior Minister to talk about casualties, the Taliban spokesman are eager to give their versions of the story because they want to get as much news credit as possible for their violent acts.940 It is unfortunate, he said, that the Taliban values the

Afghan media more than ISAF/NATO, the Western embassies and the Afghan government do.941

But Mitra and other journalist recognize that the Taliban communicate with the media on their own terms. Afghan journalists feel threatened to manipulate news in the

Taliban’s favor.942 The Taliban regularly harass Afghan journalists and pressure them to run their side of the story. “They will release a statement, and then call to ask why we are not releasing it right away. They do not understand that we are not their mouthpieces, that we need to have some balance,” Morad, a radio broadcast journalist said.943 But the capacity of Taliban spokespeople to appear as polished media professionals, Ghazanfar said, is still chilling. “The Taliban have very professional media people who are much, much better than the government in terms of their efficiency, in terms of their hard work.”944 They are polite; they use perfect English in press releases; their website has a complete summary of news for the week, a summary that they also e-mail to journalists; and they refer to the journalists as “sir” and ask them about their families. The Afghan government, on the other hand, cannot convey their messages with such efficiency.945

***

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The journalists who work for “free” news organizations know they must hold power accountable, yet feel consistently vulnerable to power not just from the Afghan government but the militia leaders and powerbrokers that remain. The media landscape also reflects the balance of power in the country. Power comes in many forms:

Americans and Westerners; Pakistanis; Iranians; Afghan government officials; unofficial warlords and their militias; Taliban members; other extremists. All of them want the media to reflect their agendas for Afghanistan and shape it through funding; withholding or granting access; and/or making threats. If they work for an Afghan government, warlord or Iran-sponsored news organization, then they may know that that the funding will continue. Yet if they work for a broadcast station that is considered “free,” then they are concerned about the flow of funding for their news organization and whether or not they will keep their job.

Afghans feel powerless in making choices that will meaningfully change their lives.946 They operate within a new, post-9/11 normal of warlord television, Taliban public relations professionals, pay offs from the Iranian government, the disdain of

Afghan officials and the flickering hope from Western governments who wanted to build a liberal democracy that included a strong civil society and a fourth estate.

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CHAPTER 9. ‘We Can’t Do This Alone’: Afghan Journalists and America

To sum up: Since Afghan news media have a long history of authoritarian control, since their independence is in its infancy, since U.S. troops are fighting a Taliban insurgency, and since the Afghan government is deeply dependent on the United States for funding. Yet Afghan journalists also steadily rely on U.S. news about Afghanistan for both content and moral support. They look to it because the Afghan government deems it to be important, and they study it closely. For these journalists, U.S. news also provides a window on a U.S. government that – because more than 100,000 U.S. troops are stationed in the country and billions of U.S. dollars flood the Afghan economy – affects

Afghans’ daily lives. As we have seen, they have a generally weak relationship with

Afghan government officials. But Afghan journalists also have little, if any, relationship with U.S. government officials. They see American news as primary source material for relaying facts. But they also, however, look to it for insight on their government through investigative reports and analysis.

A majority of the journalists told me that they turn to American news agencies to understand the war and the larger diplomatic game surrounding it: What's going on in

Washington, and what is the relationship between President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. administration. Given that there are no Afghan journalists reporting from Washington, understanding what the U.S. government is deciding on the Afghan people’s behalf is an immense challenge. The most ready source of information, and inference, is news articles and analysis from U.S.-based news organizations.

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But Afghan journalists also rely on U.S. news for investigative reporting and analysis on the Afghan government and various power brokers in the country. American journalists have much greater access to Afghan government officials than Afghan journalists do. And U.S. elite news about Afghanistan is often relayed in Afghan news:

The U.S. press sets the agenda for Afghan news on issues about the war, the United

States, the region – and often the Afghan government. Therefore, American reporters are not just informing Americans, but speaking to a second, unintended audience: the Afghan people.

American News is a Lifeline for Afghan Journalists

Elite Afghan journalists develop their perceptions of the United States from

American newspapers and television agencies, mostly through the Internet. The Afghan journalists’ newsgathering routines differed, but they generally included looking daily to

U.S. news online for information directly related to Afghanistan. But while U.S. news is valuable source material, the Afghan journalists repeatedly emphasized that they only used U.S. news about Afghanistan, Pakistan or the larger South Asia region. Afghan journalists are not normally looking to cover America as a country, and therefore do not pay much attention to U.S. domestic news. Because the New York Times and Washington

Post reported on South Asia more than other U.S.-based news organizations, the journalists emphasized, both papers hold a prominent place in Afghan journalists’ newsgathering routines.

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The Afghan media professionals have looked to elite U.S. news since 2002, but they especially found the influx of U.S. news in 2009, indexed to President Obama’s decision to increase the troop level and funding for the war, helpful in making sense of the U.S. government’s intentions.947 However, for news on local issues and Afghan culture—which the U.S. press, they said, do not care about—then Afghan journalists provide more through and accurate reportage. It’s not just U.S. news, however, that

Afghan journalists look to for source material. They also closely monitor reports from

U.S. think tanks such as Brookings, the Council on Foreign Relations and the

International Crisis Group.948

Afghan journalists are accustomed to reading the New York Times, mostly, because of its consistent presence in Afghanistan since the September 11th attacks, followed by the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times come in a distant third and fourth.949 Other journalists also said that they rely on the Associated

Press, and magazines like Time and Newsweek.950 But if you want to know what U.S. government attitudes are toward Afghanistan, they said, you go to the Post or Times. This is because U.S. government officials leak information to them and protect them. They can say what Afghan reporters are afraid to say.951

Some of the Afghan journalists also look to U.S. broadcast news for information.

They include the online websites for CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC.952 Several of the journalists mentioned that they occasionally follow Fox News to get a sense of conservative voices in the United States, and the opposition view to President Obama’s administration. They uniformly feel, however, that Fox News gives poor and narrow coverage of Afghanistan.953

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While ordinary Afghans do not directly seek out U.S. news sources on their own,

Delewar said, the U.S. elite news is cited so regularly by Afghan news that they “get to know the New York Times and Washington Post,” that way.954 Directly and indirectly, it is from American media that the Afghan public learns about the war, regional diplomacy, and their own Afghan government and warlords. When it comes to minor issues, the

Afghan media sets the news agenda; but for larger issues at the national or regional level, the western – mainly, the American – press sets the agenda.955 Even news reports on debates about Afghanistan and Pakistan within Washington, think tank reports and opinion articles that matter only to the wonky policy community in the U.S. make their way back to Afghanistan.956 Both the independent, elite Afghan press and the Afghan government are fixated on American news about them.

U.S. News Matters to Afghans Because It Matters to the Afghan Government

President Hamid Karzai is much more concerned with what elite Wesrern news media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, thinks about him, than what the Afghan media does.957 Officials in his palace, and his administration at large, also focus their attention on American and Western news about Afghanistan.958 They are likely to respond quickly to requests from American (or British) reporters, but will let

Afghan reporters’ requests lapse. The U.S. elite news media offers them international prestige, which they cannot acquire with the Afghan news media, many journalists agreed.959 “Nobody here takes the Afghan media seriously,” Faisel said, and he and his colleagues have little impact on the government.960 If officials speak with the Washington

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Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal, Babur explained, “then all the world is reading about them.” If they just want to speak to Afghans, they go to Afghan news – if they want to speak with both Afghans and the world, then they go to American news.961

Afghan officials trust that American reporters are more professional than Afghan reporters and therefore trust them to represent them responsibly, the journalists conceded.962 According to Aalem, Afghan officials go to journalists from the Times and

Post because they keep off-the-record interviews as off-the-record and they do not fabricate or modify quotes.963 The complexity of the political situation and the patron- based media means the most neutral medium for Afghan ministers is the international media, because they know their biases are blatantly toward their respective countries and not to a particular Afghan faction.

This is also tied to the belief that the U.S. news media is closely aligned with the

U.S. government. The Afghan journalists strongly agreed that Karzai sees the U.S. press as a proxy for American government officials. Afghan officials therefore want to speak directly to President Obama and American politicians through the media. This is a reasonable strategy. If the Afghan government wants action, then they need the support of the U.S. government, and the U.S. press is an effective conduit. In sum, Jamshid argued, the “Afghan government criticizes western media and western media criticizes the Afghan government…The Afghan government criticizes the western media because it thinks the western media has great influence on the US government.”964 It is true that

American officials and the public read the news, but its influence on government policy is debatable.

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Nevertheless, since Afghan officials receive money and a sense of legitimacy from the United States, they are keenly sensitive to negative U.S. news.965 Afghan officials and President Karzai are becoming more annoyed with elite U.S. news coverage of Afghanistan, especially the New York Times.966 As American news organizations publish more investigative stories on the Afghan government and President Karzai’s family, Afghan officials restrict their access.967 The Karzai administration also blames the

American media for projecting a hopeless image of Afghanistan, and for doing so with the U.S. government’s encouragement.968 The same is true for the U.K. government and

British news. In fall 2009, at the height of accusations of election fraud, Karzai told a gathering that the New York Times, the BBC, The Times of London and CNN “know the election was right, but on a daily basis they are call me a fraudulent president in order to pressure me.”969 And, more recently, in October and November 2012, Karzai told press conferences that the American media was waging a “psychological war” against

Afghanistan, one in which it was fixing the minds of the global public that Afghanistan’s economy would collapse, and civil war and the Taliban would return once U.S. troops leave.970 They were doing so, he hinted, because the American press and government together wanted to pressure him publicly.

As long as the U.S. government is heavily involved in Afghanistan, the Afghan government will be fixated with U.S. news media attitudes towards them. One value of the U.S. news media for Afghan journalists is that it provides the most plausible evidence of the American government’s intentions toward Afghanistan. They share in the idea that the U.S. press and government are closely aligned.

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American Journalists Give an Insider Look at U.S. Government

The American news media has significant sway over the U.S. government and public, the journalists agreed, and U.S. reporters and officials regularly work together to press-gang the Afghan government to change their behavior.971 According to them,

American journalists are credible purveyors of information on what U.S. government officials think and say, though not necessarily credible watchdogs. Like in Pakistan, most of the journalists admire the adversarial role American journalists play in the U.S. when it comes to domestic issues, but think they do not challenge the U.S. government on international issues, and certainly not Afghanistan.972 When it comes to covering U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan, as Houshmand put it, “American journalists are more

American than they are journalists” and they want the U.S. government to succeed.973

While American journalists might challenge their government slightly on its policy toward Afghanistan, they don’t go far enough. Farzin, for example, thought that the U.S. press was an outright extension of the U.S. government: “CNN is run by the CIA and the New York Times is run by the White House,” he said.974 The other journalists had less extreme ideas of U.S. media and government collusion, but agreed that U.S. journalists normally support U.S. foreign policy goals.975 For instance, the U.S. press,

Sarwar said, “reflects conventional wisdom in Washington” and largely serves as the voice of the U.S. government on the Afghanistan war.976 Jamshid agreed that most

Afghans assume that the U.S. media and government make up one unit. You can tell their closeness, especially, when U.S. government officials come to Afghanistan and only speak with American reporters.977 “Don’t they speak with American reporters at home,”

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Jamshid asked? “Why would they come all the way to Afghanistan to speak with other

Americans?” American journalists also reserve their harshest criticism for President

Karzai, Delawar echoed.978 As an example, Houshmand talked about one of the U.S.’s most colorful diplomats, the late Richard Holbrooke, who was the U.S. Special Envoy to

Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2009 until his death in December 2010: “U.S. journalists often call Karzai emotional but, they would call Richard Holbrooke a hero,” he said.979

When it comes to foreign policy, the American news media had only one stance— and that was the U.S. government’s stance, Aalem insisted.980 Some journalists might align themselves with the State Department and others with the Defense Department, but both government agencies give them instruction – not only guidance – on what to report and how to report it in order to advance the U.S. agenda.981 What makes U.S. news

“credible,” and the reason why Afghan journalists use it, is that it affords an authentic, intimate look at the United States government.982

U.S. government officials have especially controlled the American news agenda on international affairs since the September 11th attacks and the launch of the 2003 Iraq

War, Atash and Jabar insisted.983 The U.S. news media, like the U.S. government, ignored

Afghanistan once the Iraq War started in 2003. The U.S. government had determined

Afghanistan to be a success story, but fighting continued and the Taliban re-emerged in several parts of the country. The lack of media attention to Afghanistan, Jabar argued, contributed to Afghanistan’s deteriorating state. This did not mean that the security situation in Afghanistan worsened in 2009, once Obama was elected president, but that the American media finally started paying attention to the country: “Things hadn’t been going well,” Jabar said. “But with more people here [in Afghanistan] now there is more

227 coverage. You’ve seen fighting increase, but that’s because there was less coverage of it before.”984 Americans, in Jabar and Atash’s view, suddenly know more about

Afghanistan because the U.S. president cared about the country, and the American media followed the U.S. government’s lead.985 This U.S. government is the agenda-setter for

U.S. foreign news.

As in Pakistan, U.S. news articles about Afghanistan can often provoke suspicion among the Afghan journalists. Many agree with Karzai that American reporters want to work with U.S. officials to damage his reputation, especially when stories about Ahmed

Wali Karzai, the president’s now-decreased brother, and his alleged corruption began to appear in the New York Times in 2008. “When they talk about corruption,” Atash, a print journalist argued, “there is a belief that they are trying to weaken the legitimacy of the

Afghan government.”986 While the majority of the Afghan journalists did not dispute the accuracy of U.S. news reports on Ahmed Wali Karzai, they agreed with this notion.

Roughly one third of the Afghan journalists interviewed, however, thought that while American journalists may share the goals of the American government to some extent, they are largely independent and critical of it.987 There are plenty of examples of scandals and investigation in the American media that challenge the U.S. government’s policy on Afghanistan, they said. One example cited was a 2011 article in the Wall Street

Journal by Maria Abi-Habib about the gross neglect of the Dawood Military Hospital, which was under the control of American Lieutenant General William Caldwell.988 The neglect led to wounded Afghan soldiers dying of starvation and living with maggots in their wounds. Abi-Habib’s investigation had led to a Congressional inquiry on Caldwell’s actions in Afghanistan. Examples like this, Atash said, show that American journalists

228 can be valuable watchdogs. It is only when U.S. government officials leak information that serves as the journalist’s primary source material that officials can direct U.S. journalists what to say and when to say it.989 American journalists are not completely in step with U.S. foreign policy objectives, he maintains, although they [may] agree on the general direction of that policy and want to aid its progress with news reports.990

The largest consensus is that even while the U.S. journalists may not always serve the U.S. government, they serve American society’s interests, and therefore the interests of the American nation.991 The American press is free, but it writes for Americans and naturally gravitates toward protecting U.S. economic and security interests around the world.992 Therefore, U.S. journalists are not necessarily trying to protect the U.S. government, but they are trying to protect U.S. national interests.993

Afghanistan especially is in U.S. national interests, Kambas said, because of what happened on September 11th. Those attacks and the great loss of life that day is why so many U.S. journalists supported the Afghan war. But protecting American societal interests does not necessarily mean supporting the American government’s vision on how those societal interests should be protected.994 The Afghan journalists emphasized that

American journalists report narrowly on U.S. actions in Afghanistan because their readership is primarily American, and American citizens have invested in the war through taxes and a volunteer military.995 “American journalists are on the side of

American society; and they should be,” Jawid, a print journalist, stated.996 But there is “a very strong sense of nationalism in American reporting,” Khaleeq said, which can be strange to read as an Afghan.997

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Afghan journalists are also nationalistic. They see American news as largely pro-

American mostly because they are pro-Afghanistan. They react to American nationalism strongly because it triggers their pride in their nation, and their desire to see it perceived more positively. Yet there is a difference between having a certain worldview, and promoting a certain government agenda. The Afghan journalists were correct when they said that American journalists promote American national interests, but the two thirds who thought that U.S. journalists were actively advancing the U.S. agenda were not correct. The U.S. government agenda is to show events and issues in Afghanistan positively, and to prove that U.S. foreign policy there is succeeding. American journalists rarely do that. To the contrary, in the Afghan journalists’ own words, U.S. journalists frame Afghanistan as a violent, failed and corrupt nation.

News Frames: Afghanistan is a Violent, Corrupt Country

American journalists are very selective when it comes to portraying Afghanistan and therefore do not represent the country accurately, the journalists largely agreed.998

They see their American peers as packaging Afghanistan as an inherently violent, failed state that is consistently afflicted by war, corruption and overall poor governance.999 The picture that American journalists paint of Afghanistan, Faisel agreed, is “a dark one, which is not real.”1000 And Jamshid said that when he reads U.S. news and analysis on

Afghanistan, he simply thinks, “The U.S. journalists need to learn more about

Afghanistan.’”1001 Khaleeq agreed that U.S. news about Afghanistan can be “very annoying” and “hurtful.” 1002

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This rests on what they see as two, recurring frames in U.S. news about

Afghanistan. First, the security frame, which encompasses Afghan, U.S. and other international troops, in addition to warlords, the Taliban and other extremist factions operating in the country. Second, the corruption frame that looks specifically at inefficiency in the Karzai administration, and in local government departments. The security frame is more dominant in American news, the Afghan journalists said, because so much U.S. news coverage is about the U.S.-led war and is meant to support American troops. 1003 The journalists resent the first frame, but actually appreciate the latter.

“American see Afghanistan through the prism of war, and Afghans don’t.”

Afghanistan is a complicated place, but they insisted that it is simply not as violent or dangerous as it is made out to be. They think that the U.S. press gives

Americans, and the world, a distorted view of Afghanistan. “The war is not the real picture. The war is being exaggerated in U.S. news,” Kambas, a radio broadcaster, said.1004 This is because, Khaleeq explained, U.S. journalists are in Afghanistan “to cover the war in Afghanistan and not Afghanistan as a country.”1005 They focus much more on the lives of U.S. soldiers instead of Afghan civilians, which creates mainly negative and sensationalist news stories that are overwhelmingly American-centric.1006 Some of this is because Afghans’ worldview is inherently different since they have dealt with war for decades. Houshmand offered: “American see Afghanistan through the prism of war, and

Afghans don’t.”1007 In a sense, Afghans are numb to the episodic violence that Americans focus on. While the Afghan journalists in Kabul see the violence as being sequestered in

231 certain rural areas, American journalists, they said, make it seem as if the violence consumes the entire country.

However, violence in Afghanistan has increased considerably, many of the journalists remarked, since the U.S. troop surge in 2009 and 2010.1008 With more

American news organizations setting up – or expanding – Afghanistan bureaus, the U.S. public knew more about Afghanistan than since the war began in 2001. This increase in

U.S. news has multiplied the number of news stories that stereotype Afghanistan as a violent and backwards country.1009 By disproportionally reporting on the violence instead of the character of the Afghan people, the U.S. journalists are making Afghans seem inhuman, some argued. The focus, Behnam, a print journalist said, on “suicide bombings, the Taliban, and the U.S. military” distracts from who the Afghan people are:1010

We are people, we are normal human beings. War and suicide bombings and explosions is not all that we do – we are so many other things. Yes, we are poor and we are illiterate but we are a people – normal human beings – and there are so many other things that need to be covered about Afghans, our traditions, our families and out social structures.1011

Several of the journalists emphasized that Afghanistan is “more” than the war, and more than “bombs, suicide attacks, explosions, and the stoning of women.” By focusing on a war fought by U.S. soldiers, U.S. journalists are making Afghanistan into a one- dimensional country.1012

For instance, roughly a quarter of the Afghan journalists were frustrated with the

July 9 New Yorker article, “Will civil war hit Afghanistan when the U.S. leaves?” by

Dexter Filkins, which painted a bleak picture of Afghanistan. Filkins is a former reporter for the New York Times in Afghanistan and is well known in the Afghan journalism community.1013 The article explored the possibility of Afghanistan returning to a state of

232 civil war after the bulk of U.S. and NATO troops withdraw from the country in 2014, and returning to the confusing haze of civil war after Soviet troops withdrew in the 1990s.

While a couple of Afghan journalists interviewed agreed with the prospect, others thought the article detrimental to Afghanistan’s long-term prospects for peace. This is because, by focusing on a likelihood of increased violence, the article could indicate to the American public and government that Afghanistan was not worth their time, sacrifice and investment. Mitra, a print journalist, said this kind of reporting “encourages people to incite civil war.” And because Filkins is no longer based in Afghanistan full time, he acted like a parachute journalist, and “spoke only with specific people he had time to speak with and amplified their voices.”1014 The problem was that the story did not stay in

America. The Afghan news media picked it up and repeated it, which damaged the

Afghan people’s confidence that their lives would continue to improve after the U.S. left.1015

While the Afghan journalists agreed that the security frame fuels a misunderstanding in the West that the country is all consumed by a violent conflict, they have more complicated feelings about the frame of Afghan government inefficiency and corruption.

“Afghanistan is an Extremely Corrupt Country”

American journalists frequently frame Afghanistan as a corrupt and weakly governed country. Some agreed that corruption is the most important story in

Afghanistan and that it matters more than the insurgency, or terrorism.1016 Many concurred with Farhang when he said, “When American journalists are talking about

233 corruption, that is the country I experience. When they are talking about insurgency, that’s not the country I experience.”1017 These stories are less frustrating to the Afghan journalists and more valuable for their reportage.

Corruption became a major theme in U.S. news reporting on Afghanistan during the 2009 Afghan presidential elections, a process the U.S. media found fraudulent.1018 The

Afghan government fought back, saying the U.S. news media was wrong, but did not offer any evidence to refute it.1019 As mentioned earlier, this also led to another related story in U.S. news: The contentious relationship between President Obama and President

Karzai.1020 U.S. reporters, many believed, were being encouraged to report negatively about Karzai so that his legitimacy in Afghanistan would dissipate. Between corruption and government inefficiency, the U.S. press provides more critical coverage of the

Afghan government than the Afghan press does. They have the right to criticize how

Karzai’s administration manages the country, some Afghan reporters said, because the

American public is paying taxes to help Afghanistan and wants to see progress. But corruption stories in the New York Times have made that paper particularly unpopular with the Afghan government.1021 In addition to the 2009 presidential election, the journalists pointed to examples from the Times’ analytical stories of the Karzai family, especially the late Ahmed Wali Karzai, and their alleged involvement in corruption and the opium trade.1022 Atash lamented that corruption in the Karzai family does not mean that all Afghans are corrupt:

It’s not fair. If they are focusing on corruption, they should also give positive examples. Where is the balance? With the New York Times’ stories on Karzai, I agree with the substance on corruption, but the people who have never been here to Afghanistan or do not have direct contact, they feel that everyone in Afghanistan is corrupt. That everyone is involved in this mafia war. So there should be this balanced and fair perspective of looking at things.1023

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The majority of the Afghan journalists, however, thought this was fair news and analysis and is partly what made American news so valuable to them: U.S. journalists were much more free and safe in reporting these stories than Afghan journalists were. Farzin, a print journalist, explained: “It’s a negative view. But we are, we’re corrupt. We suck. We do have drugs. Yes, it does give a negative view of Afghanistan but it’s reality.”1024 For the past two years, the U.S. news media has been fixated on how some of Kabul’s elites have taken advantage of tens of billions of U.S. aid money. One of the most well known ones is the Kabul Bank story.

The Washington Post first broke news that Kabul’s most rich and powerful were using Kabul Bank, the country’s first private one, as their personal piggy bank. Nine- hundred million U.S. dollars left the country, lining the bank accounts of Afghanistan’s elites who ensured its safety in places like Dubai. The Times, Post and Wall Street

Journal covered the story consistently, ensuring that it was repeated in Afghan news as well. Yet some of those accused of taking the money saw the bank’s demise of the result of U.S. reportage on the issue. In March 2012, a partner in the Kabul Bank, Khalillah

Frozi, shooed away a New York Times reporter who approached him as he was having lunch at an upscale restaurant in Kabul. The American press, he said, not had “destroyed the bank” and not the Afghans who had drained it.1025

If there is a problem with the New York Times and Washington Post’s coverage on corruption in Afghanistan, Jabar and Morad said, is that they were not covering the full extent of it and are mainly focusing on the national level.1026 “When they talk about corruption, they talk about corruption in the Afghan government…but there is also

235 corruption everywhere.” 1027 Parsa, too, appreciated U.S. news that challenges the Afghan government since Afghan journalists feel so powerless in doing so.1028 The only time U.S. news is truthful about Afghanistan, Mitra said, is when there is a negative story about

Karzai.1029 Babur, a television broadcaster, thought U.S. news about poor governance issues in general was fair, which is exactly why it’s so painful: “It’s so sad for me: Why is Afghanistan always a controversial country?”1030 Farzin agreed:

I’m not frustrated about American media’s view of the country; I’m frustrated that these things exist in my country. I’m embarrassed. When I hear about corruption I curse the officials. When I hear about drugs, I am sad that they exist. Afghanistan does supply 90 percent of the world’s drugs. That’s what frustrates me.1031

Afghan Journalists See American Journalists Limited by Deadline Constraints, Security

Many of the Afghan journalists understand that U.S. news content on Afghanistan is focused on American “enduring values” and ethnocentrism, and that it is focused on an

American audience. But it is bizarre for them to read about their country through those frames.

The reasons why Afghanistan matters to Americans is because there is a U.S.-led war underway that lends itself to dramatic news, Ghazanfar explained, and the war has become a domestic issue since it affects the U.S.’s security and economy.1032 Atash understood that it’s difficult to provide broad analysis of Afghanistan for people who do not live there and that U.S. journalists want to keep the American public’s attention on the country. If they do not provide a story on security, he rightly observed, “then no one is going to talk about Afghanistan.”1033 Why would the U.S. news media focus on positive

236 or normal issues when they are not news? 1034 Abdullah agreed that Americans don’t care about what’s happening in the world unless it involves the U.S., and unless it is bad.1035

Faisel concurred that negative reportage is universal; society almost demands drama. If

Americans were reading about the Afghanistan these Afghan journalists knew, “then the

American public may not take the news seriously.”1036

American journalists reduce Afghanistan to a violent, failed state because of the sheer complexity of the country, the majority of the journalists believed. “Afghanistan is a big puzzle for American news,” Babur said.1037 Khaleeq and Faisel, too, emphasized that understanding Afghanistan takes a long time.1038 And sometimes being from

Afghanistan is not enough, Delewar explained: “I mean we’re a very complex society.

It’s even difficult for us to be able to tell all issues and facts as Afghans.” 1039 While more

American journalists have been living in Afghanistan since 2009, they are still constrained by deadlines. Filing corruption and security stories is easier than looking for one about Afghan culture or societal progress.1040

It’s not just deadline constraints, however. Afghanistan’s instability makes

American journalists highly immobile and normally stuck in Kabul, many of the journalists pointed out.1041 The U.S. reporters who do venture into rural areas, where there is regular combat, are often embedded with U.S. troops.1042 The military embed,

Sarwar said, offers a “filtered version of reality” for the journalists, but he also sympathized with them: “how else do they get the coverage? It’s better than nothing.”1043

American journalists can’t speak with a wide variety of Afghans throughout the country,

Mansoor concurred, because “It is dangerous for them to go to the villages and really find the reality. Because they will become kidnapped, they will be arrested, they will be

237 killed.” The journalists also rarely speak Dari and Pashto and therefore rely on translators, who add distance between the journalist and the Afghan they are trying to build trust with.1044

The “ground realities” of Afghanistan are therefore elusive and U.S., and other

Western journalists, make quick calculations and analyses of the small slice of Afghan life they experience. Most of their flaws are due to security and time constraints that are outside of American journalists’ control. But what is disappointing, Delewar, Jabar and

Atash emphasized, is who U.S. journalists choose to speak with when they come to

Afghanistan.1045 The norm is that they seek out other American sources instead of speaking with Afghans; the Afghan intellectual community is routinely ignored. These

American experts can deliver quotes to U.S. journalists, Atash said, “but they are not valuable in explaining Afghan society…they cannot explain the ordinary Afghan.”1046

The need for U.S. journalists to index news coverage to the U.S. government and maintain their sources is largely why they focus on the U.S. government’s policy in

Afghanistan, some journalists agreed. 1047 U.S. journalists have no problem taking on the

Afghan government, Behnam said, but they are more cautious when it comes to the U.S. government because they need to maintain strong relationships. Without those, they can’t break stories.1048 Therefore, American journalists socialize with U.S. officials in

Afghanistan to gain their trust to appropriately handle information. Yet that close alignment with the government is part of what makes American journalism look suspiciously pro-American government.

The majority of the Afghan journalists empathize with their American counterparts, almost remarkably so. But the core reason why Afghan journalists are

238 frustrated with American news frames about security is because they want to see their country depicted positively in the world.1049 Farzin admitted, “I’m interested in everything in my country because I am an Afghan” but why would Americans be interested in everything about Afghanistan?1050 It is likely that Afghans reporting from foreign countries would be just as Afghanistan-centric, Jawid said. “If Afghanistan sent

Afghan troops to Syria, then the Afghan people would want to know that their media was recognizing the sacrifice of Afghan troops.”1051 A national press corps is national, and it therefore wants to advance their nation’s interests; it’s not a phenomenon that is exclusive to the U.S. media and the U.S. government, Mansoor emphasized.1052

Houshmand concurred that national identity comes before professions: “I am more

Afghan than I am a journalist.” For this reason, his honor is injured when Americans come to Afghanistan and don’t experience the country he experiences. What makes it worse is that American journalists have authority in a global news system in which they define and project Afghanistan as a hopeless, violent place.1053

Not every American journalist in Afghanistan, however, fundamentally misunderstands the country and is out to protect U.S. interests, the Afghan journalists said. It largely depends on the reporter and how much time they spend in the country.1054

What mainly frustrated the Afghan journalists were parachute journalists who drop into the country episodically, or national security beat reporters who write from New York or

Washington. Those reporters, the Afghan journalists interviewed agreed, have the comfort of writing thousands of miles away, in safe cities. They make many mistakes as a result.1055

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But no matter how long the U.S. journalists are in Afghanistan, the Afghan journalists – like the Afghan government – deem U.S. news to have a large impact on

U.S. public opinion and U.S. foreign policy, and for U.S. foreign policy to largely impact the scope of U.S. reportage.1056 The negative view that U.S. journalists espouse has a cumulative effect on the American public. Many of these Afghan journalists who were interviewed work for elite news agencies that have benefitted from U.S. funding and were concerned about the impact this news would have on the public and the U.S. government. With so many negative stories, U.S. journalists were “fixing the minds” of

Americans with a resoundingly negative view that Afghanistan is only about war.1057

This creates a perception that the U.S. government and military cannot make progress in

Afghanistan.1058 “We have lost this war in your living rooms, in your pubs and bars,”

Houshmand said. 1059 Abdullah sympathized with the American public: “If I was an

American reading this news, I wouldn’t support U.S. involvement in Afghanistan either.”

Even though the Afghan reporters understand the factors that drive American news they, like U.S. government officials, are frustrated and baffled that the Americans do not focus more on positive developments within the country.1060 This is especially since the U.S. has funded and supported an expansion of education and health initiatives, in addition to the dramatic increase of women’s participation in government and society.

It’s not true that U.S. efforts in Afghanistan have been for nothing, Houshmand, a broadcaster, said.1061 Khaleeq, another broadcaster, agreed: “We’ve had a lot of achievements in Afghanistan. They are historic. Never before have we had so much electricity, or paved roads, or telephones, or universities, or boys and girls going to school.”1062 American reporting isn’t balanced because journalists do not focus on this.

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By not looking at the “commitment, morality, capacity, initiative, and potential that exists in Afghanistan” the U.S. press affects perceptions of the Afghan government’s credibility, but also the credibility of the western governments who are supporting Afghanistan,

Farhang and Faisal agreed.1063

This perception that the American journalists do not support the U.S. government’s positive actions directly refutes the earlier claim some Afghan journalists made that American journalists want to advance the U.S. government agenda. It is in the

U.S. government’s interest for the press to highlight reconstruction success, yet the press overlooks it. This is a collision of the concepts of government hegemony over media and that news tends to be bad.1064 This indicates that the Afghan journalists expect American news media to be deferential to the American government because that has been their experience with decades of authoritarian media. However, they are also becoming professional and recognize that news is often negative and cannot always copy how the government frames events and issues. But the compromise in this thought seems to be that when the U.S. government has bad news to share about the Afghan government, the

U.S. press obeys. When it is positive, the U.S. press does not. These journalists in particular appreciate the opportunity to be watchdogs on their government through the

American press, but their own ethnocentrism causes them to resent that Afghanistan’s triumphs often are not highlighted in U.S. news.

Losing interest in Afghanistan is not in the U.S.’s interest, as what happens in

Afghanistan will have long-term security ramifications for the U.S., some of the journalists stated.1065 A more accurate picture of events in Afghanistan would help create better policy, Delewar insisted, and help the American people understand why the U.S.

241 should continue to support Afghans.1066 Khaleeq, a broadcast journalist, who has put much faith in the United States’s investment in Afghanistan put his concern in stark terms:

Yes, I know that the Americans have spent million of dollars here but also keep in mind what will happen to Afghans and to Afghanistan. If we have chaos again, I will be the first person to be slaughtered. The American journalists are not incorporating this side of the story; their news coverage has a selfish tone. Why did America come to Afghanistan in the first place?1067

The Afghan journalists are conflicted. They have benefited significantly from the

U.S. military, diplomatic and aid presence in the country and do not want the U.S. government to withdraw altogether. But they are frustrated with U.S. news frames that depict Afghanistan negatively and in violent terms, while America remains the central character in the drama. This is even though the war is the principal reason why the U.S. is in Afghanistan. But if American news about Afghanistan is too negative, than it will shake the confidence of the American people of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. They rely significantly on U.S. support to do they work that they do. Since U.S. news frames are relayed through Afghan news, this reporting can also shake the confidence of the

Afghan people. According to the Afghan journalists, American journalists have a responsibility to tell the American people that there will be negative security implications if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan; a responsibility to encourage the world to look at

Afghanistan positively; and a responsibility to build the confidence of the Afghan people.

Afghan Journalists Need U.S. News

The Afghan journalists interviewed have a complicated relationship with U.S. news: They depend on it, yet are frustrated with its overwhelming focus on security. But

242 because they accord U.S. news with prestige; their lack of professionalism; their lack of access to U.S. and Afghan officials; and a high degree of self-censorship, American news is constantly relayed in Afghan media. Therefore, whatever makes it to Afghan news is already yesterday’s news in the U.S.1068 It depends, however, on the story.1069 Stories about the Afghan government, Karzai family, drug lords and warlords, and U.S. government decisions and politics about Afghanistan and Pakistan are all indispensible.

Sometimes news about NATO military offensives is, too. However, stories focused narrowly about U.S. troops are not.1070

Afghan journalists tend to think on a very local level, Farzin, a print journalist, explained, which is why they need the U.S. to identify important national stories.1071 But they particularly need investigative stories and analysis.1072 Afghan news agencies set the agenda for minor issues.1073 The lack of resources and skills for long-term, in-depth investigative reporting among Afghan journalists—compounded by the threats of intimidation they receive from their own officials—means that they turn to American reporters for guidance.1074 The “Afghan media does not have the authority or clout that

American media has,” Jahandar explained. “Talking about the warlords, for instance, is essentially a job for the American journalists; the Afghan journalists can then translate the story and relay it.”1075 Afghan journalists use American news to protect themselves.

U.S. news provides a mechanism for them to repeat information that is originally disclosed by Americans, not Afghans.1076 This includes much of the New York Times’s coverage on corruption and the Karzai family and, just as one example, the Washington

Post’s Kabul Bank story.1077 It’s often the case that Afghan reporters know about such

243 stories well before the American journalists do, but they are unable to report it themselves.1078

The Afghan reporters I interviewed admit to frequently relinquishing their stories on powerful Afghan officials, extremist groups and warlords to western reporters, due to the possible violence inflicted on them if they report it themselves.1079 “Afghan news media relies on American media because they do the stories on drugs and corruption that

Afghan journalists cannot do,” Houshmand, a radio broadcaster, said.1080 The American government, and the democratic system behind it, also protects American journalists.

This enables U.S. journalists to acquire information: They are off-limits to various

Afghan power brokers who are dependent on the U.S. for assistance, or who could be attacked by the U.S. military if they hurt an American citizen.1081 Once the news is reported, however, they can repeat it and cite the U.S. news as the source, allowing them to spread the news under the cover of the U.S. news agency. That way, should an Afghan strongman complain to an Afghan journalist about the story, they can take cover behind the American news agency.1082

Various power brokers in Afghanistan have killed more than 33 Afghan journalists since 2002, Parsa, a broadcaster, said. “So I am not able to tell all the truths, but the New York Times and Washington Post can report it. Then we can repeat it.” 1083

Ghazanfar concurred with his colleagues that U.S. journalists are essential to Afghan reporting because they have more freedom, strength and influence: “They have more freedom because there is no warlord in America to intimidate them. They are strong because they have more money, more resources. They have more influence because they are professional.” 1084

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Like in Pakistan, some Afghan journalists also insisted that they cite American reportage on Afghanistan because it makes their own reportage more credible.1085

American news is perceived to be legitimate and authoritative, and therefore adds credibility to the journalists’ reportage. “When the New York Times says something, it means something and the Afghan officials and powerbrokers react strongly,” Delewar said.1086 The newness of Afghan media, he explained, makes Afghans interested in what

Afghan journalists have to say, but the public trusts U.S. news more because it is more mature, more informed and reported with attention to detail. “Afghan journalists look to

U.S. media and see Americans talking about their rights, their civil rights and how things should be. How somebody should perform in government.”1087 Sarwar agreed that the perception is that American media and other western press are more credible, more trustworthy, than local media.1088

Most of American news’ legitimacy, however, follows from the U.S. journalists’ access to U.S. officials. Afghan journalists do not have correspondents based in the U.S. and need to know what U.S. government officials are saying.1089 How else, Abdullah asked, would they know the U.S. government’s thoughts on Afghanistan or Pakistan?1090

Khaleeq agreed that American journalists don’t just benefit from leaked information, but they also have resources to stay with a story for many months, “and, when they run it, it makes noise.”1091 Plus, Atash emphasized, U.S. and NATO officials do not trust Afghan journalists as much as American journalists.1092

When Afghan journalists do relay U.S. news, it is mostly repeated verbatim.1093

Sarwar, a Dari-language broadcaster, estimated that 40-70 percent of the content in local newspapers, especially, is based on foreign reporting and foreign sources. News is

245 reprinted from the New York Times and the Washington Post, and other major American newspapers.1094 Ghazanfar and Parsa admitted that they directly translate U.S. news articles from the Times, Post and Christian Science Monitor for their radio broadcasts on either daily or weekly bases.1095 Several of the journalists emphasized that Tolo TV,

Afghanistan’s most popular news station, regularly translates and broadcasts U.S. news.1096 “Half of the leading news on Afghanistan’s most watched stations is from

Western media. Like, ‘Karzai spoke with the New York Times and he said this,’” Morad, a radio broadcaster, explained.1097 This is especially the case when it is about the Karzai administration.1098 But U.S. news is also of value because it indicates how U.S. foreign policy will affect them in the future.1099

But it’s not just the words of Western news agencies that influence the Afghan public. Afghan television will also receive raw imagery from U.S. broadcast agencies like

Associated Press Television, and then rebroadcast it. “We literally get our picture of the war from Western media outlets, because Afghan journalists don’t go--or don’t dare-- visit battlefields,” Sarwar emphasized.1100 Imagery created for an American audience is recycled for an Afghan one with little adaptation. With APTV, “some of the footage shows patriotic images of American soldiers in combat.” Some is re-shown legally, through subscriptions; some is pirated. As a result, he said, “the picture of the war that the American media want the American public to see ends up being shown to the Afghan public. We have no alternative view of the war because we don’t generate our own images.”1101 Yet it continues to be shown because it is deemed to be credible.

Other journalists insisted that they do not repeat U.S. news verbatim, but rely on the facts reported by American and use them to find local angles. 1102 Jabar, for instance,

246 used the New York Times’ June 2010 story on Afghanistan’s trillion dollars of mine reserves and then interviewed officials in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines to find more details.1103 Many Afghan journalists look to American media for story ideas, and then assign their own journalists to follow-up on stories that they feel safe reporting. Mansoor, for instance, used the Times reportage on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and then used his wide network within Afghanistan to dispatch reporters to ask Karzai for his reaction to the

Times reports.1104 If Sarwar, Sina and Jamshid’s news agencies see a big story broken by the Post or the Times, they will reference it, but will also try to verify the news with their local sources. They then highlight the facts, delete the U.S. news frame or perspective from the news story, and frame it with their own perspectives.1105 They are increasingly succeeding in doing so.

Sometimes, U.S. news can be used to launch editorials or, more common, become fodder for the talk shows. Like in Pakistan, political commentary programs are becoming increasingly popular on Afghanistan many television stations. Aalem explained that if there is a negative story in the New York Times about President Karzai or another Afghan official, then a roundtable on a major channel will collect experts to talk about the story;

“They are quoting the New York Times, saying the New York Times said so,” he said, which is a very reliable source for Afghan journalists and producers.1106 The Afghan journalists also pay attention to U.S. news agencies’ editorials, columns and op-eds to gauge U.S. public sentiment, and then tell the Afghan public what “America” is thinking.

The waning U.S. support for the war in Afghanistan, Abdullah explained, is evident in these articles and he broadcasts them.1107 The public, he added, is frustrated when they hear of these U.S. opinions, because they feel vulnerable: They are not supporters of the

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Taliban, yet their government has failed to provide them with security. They are dependent on the U.S. to feel safe, Abdullah said, and then hear that the U.S. public wants the troops to leave. “So,” Abdullah asked, “what should they do?1108

Value of U.S. News: American Investigative Reporting on Afghanistan Central

There is also the question of what Afghan journalists will do once the U.S. news bureaus shutter in Afghanistan since they do not have the proper resources or security to do far-reaching, long-term reporting independently.1109 They relay on their American counterparts for agenda-setting, content and moral support. Many said that without sustained Western media attention on the country, journalism would slip back under authoritarian controls. Power brokers would feel emboldened to intimidate journalists.1110

Afghan journalists Jahandar, Jawid, and Farzin all believed that they and their peers got “courage” from U.S. journalists. Once U.S. news bureaus leave with the U.S. troops, though, censorship will increase and Afghans will be less likely to break news.1111

“The Afghan media is an easy target so we will lose momentum if we don’t have the

American media by our side,” Jahandar explained.1112 Many of the sensitive stories the

Afghan press does run about tribal affiliations, language, and Islam – topics that were once off limits – are inspired by the international media.1113 In addition, U.S. journalists have taught Afghan journalists “the rules and regulations of journalism. They taught us how to be precise and tell the story,” Houshmand said. He continued, “Media will die after 2014, it’s like a suckling baby. I am very confident of this.”1114 Behnam, a print journalist, agreed: “I cannot imagine Afghanistan without the New York Times, the

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Washington Post and some of the British outlets. If they leave Afghanistan, journalism will die.”1115

***

Unlike the Pakistanis, Afghan journalists are too weak, too dependent, on

American journalism about Afghanistan to outright resent it. They appreciate it because

U.S. journalists can get the information they cannot access, both within the U.S. and

Afghan governments. They want to expose malfeasances but the politicians and officials they want to take on have atrocious pasts. In a country like Afghanistan, with more than

30 years of conflict, few leaders are innocent of human rights violations and corruption.

Afghan journalists have been unleashed from authoritarian controls nominally, yet they still operate within a norm of oppression. It’s this reality that American journalists focus on. They see Afghanistan through a prism of war, which they resent partly because they do not see their country as being so violent – despite the threat of that violence stopping them from reporting and investigating the news.

Despite the frustrations with negative framing, the suspicions of U.S. government hegemony over journalism, and a general ethnocentric bias, the Afghan independent journalists are willing to accept it because America gives them the space they need to contribute to a liberal society. Without U.S. funding and American news bureaus, Afghan journalism and the free press may limp along, but insights and revelations about

Afghanistan’s most powerful will go unreported.

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Part IV: The Americans

Seven American Journalists

James Print; Afghanistan & Pakistan. Jason Print; Afghanistan. Maya Print; Afghanistan. Nathan Broadcast; Afghanistan & Pakistan. Nikki Print; Afghanistan. Roger Print; Afghanistan. Tom Print; Afghanistan.

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CHAPTER 10. ‘We Write for Us’: American Journalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan

The American journalists who work in Afghanistan and Pakistan today are a small but powerful community of storytellers. While they create narratives to appeal to

American audiences, they are hegemonic in Afghanistan and Pakistan as they also set and shape news coverage there. While the U.S. foreign correspondents may work to explain the Afghan and Pakistani contexts for Americans, they rarely adjust to that context.

Eight of these journalists agreed to speak with me during the summer of 2012 in

Kabul after I had completed the bulk of interviews with the Afghan and Pakistani journalists. Some of them reported on Pakistan as well, but the majority worked exclusively in Afghanistan. I wanted to discover their opinions about their Afghan and

Pakistani peers, to explore their working relationships with the three countries’ government officials, and to give them a chance to respond to Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ criticisms about their reportage. Those criticisms included the charges that they narrowly rely on security frames, are ethnocentrically biased, and are complicit with the U.S. government agenda in the region.

The American journalists were aware that their reportage is received and relayed in the countries, but they were not concerned about its impact on Afghan and Pakistani perceptions. They primarily consider and feel responsibility toward their American audiences. The U.S. foreign correspondents regard themselves as watchdogs, but as national watchdogs: They track how U.S. tax dollars are spent, monitor the efficiency of

American diplomatic efforts, and highlight the welfare and achievements (and their absence) of American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. In this way, the journalists actively work to hold U.S. power in Afghanistan and Pakistan accountable and to

251 criticize them when criticism is merited. Yet they do so with American national interests in mind.

The American Public Comes First

When the journalists report and write from Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are thinking about what the American people need to know but cannot determine independently.1116 The Internet has transformed the audience base for their reporting,

Nikki and James acknowledged, but Americans who are generally educated and curious about international affairs and the war make up their core audience.1117 It’s imperative,

Maya emphasized, that American citizens know what their officials are doing and saying on their behalf; she and her peers, she said, are conduits for Americans who have to

“make decisions on who they are going to vote for.” Maya continued, “my job is to come here and ask questions and get the information that they can’t get because they aren’t here.”1118 Only Tom and Jason felt as if they were writing first for policymakers in

Washington.1119 In keeping the average American citizen in mind, U.S. journalists often want to provide them with streamlined news stories, and not provide the complicated dispatches that policymakers and analysts of the region would prefer.

Reporting and writing about Afghanistan and Pakistan’s complexity can be painstakingly difficult—for Americans as for others. The constraints on American journalists are formidable, and efforts to overcome them would require resources, skills and time that these journalists often do not have. Their news bureaus include no more than one to three foreign journalists (that sometimes are non-Americans), supplemented

252 by a staff of local reporters or fixers. The New York Times bureau in Afghanistan is the largest, containing three foreign correspondents. The Wall Street Journal and Associated

Press each contain two. The Washington Post, NPR and Los Angeles Times only have one. Similarly, in Pakistan, the news bureaus are normally one-person operations. All journalists who report for U.S. news organizations rely heavily on local reporters who help them gather and interpret news stories throughout the countries. The local journalists translate information, arrange travel, coordinate interviews and also, at times, draft copy.

While the American correspondents determine with their U.S.-based editors the news agendas and frames, they are extremely limited by language, deadlines and security constraints.

The news that matters to Americans, the U.S. journalists interviewed agreed, consists of security stories that indicate how the war is going. Tom explained:

Part of our charge is that there are more than 75,000 American troops on the ground right now. When our readers think of Afghanistan they are thinking of the soldiers who are here. So I feel like we have a responsibility to write what those 80,000 guys are doing and what their lives look like. And given that those men and women are disproportionally drawn to the south and the east [of Afghanistan], I’m drawn to those places. When you’re writing about military strategy, those are the places where it’s being put to the test.

But these news stories often unfold in Afghanistan’s countryside, which is nearly impossible to access. Jason emphasized that he traveled frequently around Afghanistan in

2009, but is able to do less so in 2012 – especially in the volatile south and east -- because of fear of getting injured or killed. Leaving the relative safety of Afghanistan’s major cities demands meticulous and time-consuming planning.

As a result, American journalists focus on U.S. and Afghan government officials in Kabul, Roger said, and are delivering a “narrow definition of Afghanistan” to

253 readers.1120 U.S. journalists often have to file a news story about a part of the country they have never visited, and they do so with Kabul or Islamabad datelines; they often conduct their reporting over the phone.1121 For instance, on March 11, 2012, Army Staff Sergeant

Robert Bales killed 17 Afghans in their sleep in Panjwai, a dangerous district in

Kandahar province.1122 The massacre made global news, yet no U.S. correspondents traveled to Panjwai to get a first-hand perspective of its aftermath. “I don’t blame anyone for not going to the place,” Tom said. It was already too precarious to visit, and it would have especially been so for an American at the time. Tom lamented, “It was good that

American readers had a rough idea of what was happening, but the great stories that could’ve been done if they went to Panjwai just weren’t done. No one could write the human stories of the families and people who were affected.”1123

The American journalists agreed, however, that their U.S.-based editors do not limit their reporting’s content.1124 If there are debates, they are focused on the salience of a news story and what should merit front-page attention. Nikki, a print journalist, explained that her editors normally discuss how to frame a news story:

Our conversations are more… What are we really trying to tell? Is this a corruption story, or a favoritism story? If it is corruption to what extent is the U.S. complicit? It’s a fairly sophisticated conversation over how to tell the story. It is rare that a story is ordered up. It happens once in a while, [the editors] will say, for instance, that we need an analysis on why Karzai is going after Pakistan. But it’s mostly a topic, and not what the story should say. There is a distinction there.

While U.S.-based editors and publishers may not direct their journalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to write specific stories, the journalists admitted that security issues and events frame their reporting.

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The Security Frame

Security is the meta-frame for American news coverage on Afghanistan and

Pakistan, many of the journalists agreed, because U.S. troops are there. Nikki explained,

“We put high stock in stories about the American military, and they go on the front page often because they have a clear connection to the American reader.”1125 Americans want to know about U.S. troops, not Afghans or Europeans. The fact that Afghan and Pakistani journalists think American news about the region is too narrowly focused on security is an important and legitimate criticism, the journalists largely agreed.1126 Nonetheless, reporting on the region within a security framework is a fixed part of their mission, as they understand it, as foreign correspondents for U.S. news organizations. Jason, a print journalist, explained, “I’m not here to write a portrait of the nation of Afghanistan. I am here to write about the war. So the ebb and flow of security is definitely a guiding, major frame of how I look at this place.” It is only natural, Nathan and James concurred, that

Afghanistan is explained through a security framework in U.S. news because the war began with an attack on the United States. “The U.S. government didn’t come here because they decided they needed to provide water for people,” Nathan said.

The Afghanistan war is different from other modern wars in the sense that it is a low-intensity, chronic conflict, Jason and Nikki explained. And it can be maddening for the journalists to decipher, independent of the U.S. military, who is winning and who is losing, and when U.S. troops will be able to leave. A majority of the Kabul-based U.S. journalists said they wanted to give as much depth to Afghanistan as they could.1127 The

American public deserves to have more context about the place, Maya and Tom agreed,

255 and to hear about women and children living in conditions of war and poverty, appealing to Americans’ humanitarianism. Jason, Roger and Tom conceded that one of the faults of

U.S. reportage on Afghanistan is that they have not written enough from the Afghan perspective and have not shown the U.S. public the toll the war has taken on the Afghan public.1128 The more interesting news stories, Tom emphasized, are about Afghanistan as a country – the culture, and the Afghan public’s attitudes, habits and traditions. But at the same time, he explained, “we have a responsibility to cover the American presence here through the American military or the civilians’ words and actions. And our readers have a particular interest in those stories because those could be their sons or daughters, or friends or colleagues.”

News stories about the health of the Afghan government, civil society and economy also fall within a security frame because they affect Afghanistan’s overall stability, and whether or not the U.S.’s military mission is succeeding. Therefore, Nikki explained, she was, “writing about the larger American entanglement in Afghanistan” which includes not just warfare, but also the effects of U.S. money and policy on the stability of the country. Nathan agreed, “It doesn’t matter how many troops you have. If people don’t have jobs, then they are vulnerable to the insurgency” and conflict will continue. The prospects for long-term stability in Afghanistan affect long-term American national interests, Nathan and James similarly argued. Should Afghanistan or Pakistan become anarchic or fall to extremists again, as it did in the 1990s, then the U.S. could become embroiled in a longer, even bloodier conflict. It is in American readers’ interests to prepare for such a possibility.

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The Afghan and Pakistani journalists also criticized American journalists’ seeming unwillingness to report positive news about their countries. While the majority of U.S. journalists interviewed also saw this as a legitimate criticism, many felt that it wasn’t their jobs to do so.1129 They pointed out that Afghan and Pakistani journalists are more likely to know what is encouraging and hopeful for their societies than Americans are. “It’s very hard for us to justify [to editors] some of the good news stories that we would tell,” Nikki explained, when she has limited space to report on the region.

Moreover, good news stories often do not qualify as news. “So you have to ask yourself if that is the best use of the space, if you are really showing people something real.”1130

Usually, she answers no.

American journalists are used to complaints about their news reporting, too, from

U.S. government officials who pitch them narratives that positively depict U.S. foreign policy efforts and effects. The journalists normally turn down invitations to cover school or hospital openings that the U.S. military or the U.S. Agency for International

Development funds. The journalists agreed that reporting what the U.S. government wants would give Americans an exaggerated idea of the U.S. mission’s accomplishments in Afghanistan. The narrative that the journalists construct for Americans about the war is closer to reality, they agreed, and therefore in the American public’s interest to consume.

American Government & Media Hegemony

For this reason, the journalists vehemently disagreed with most of the Pakistani and Afghan journalists’ belief that U.S. journalists actively work to support their

257 government. They hear the criticism that they are complicit advocates of U.S. foreign policy from many Afghan and Pakistani officials, too – especially President Hamid

Karzai and his palace staff.1131 But U.S. journalists’ relationships with U.S. State

Department and military officials in country are often cold and contentious.1132 After all,

James explained, “The really great story is showing how we [the U.S.] fucked up – not how the Afghans fucked up. It’s not surprising that the Afghans fucked up. The best stories are the ones you don’t expect, and the ones you don’t expect are the ones of total malfeasance from American military and officials.”

The U.S. military regularly shuns U.S. journalists in Afghanistan once it doesn’t approve of a news story they have reported. General John Allen, the commanding general in Afghanistan at the time, “has no clue how to deal with the press,” Nikki said. While his predecessor, General David Petraeus cooperated with journalists in Iraq, he became much more cautious in Afghanistan. This was likely because, Nikki speculated, Afghanistan was far more complex and elusive for U.S. military officials than Iraq. Military spokespeople don’t honestly answer reporters’ questions; indeed, they are openly hostile.

This is likely, Nikki said, because they are unsure if they are winning the war. Recently,

Nikki reported a story that U.S. Special Forces actively worked to keep from her, even ridiculing her about it . She ultimately published the story without their assistance. “If

Afghan journalists have any illusions that we have better access to the U.S. military than they do, those are illusions. It is not reality,” Nikki said.

However, there is one advantage that the American journalists have over Afghans: traveling in embeds with the U.S. military. However, the journalists are aware that they

258 are entertaining a form of military censorship, since officials can control what the journalists see. Jason explained:

I’m pretty cynical about the U.S. military agenda with reporters…their mission is really to steer you towards whatever they want. They want you to write about success so they go out of their way to shield you from seeing something that would depict them as losing the war or doing a bad job. It feels like propaganda because they make such an active effort to send you to certain units. They don’t want you to see soldiers with bad morale or the units that have lost a lot of people.

Once they travel with American troops, the U.S. journalists see at close range how they risk their lives, but the experience is rife with attempts at manipulation. Maya copes with this by writing a story at variance with what the military pitched her, and she often turns the story the military wanted against them. For instance, on her first trip with U.S. soldiers to Ghazni, a volatile province in the east, the press officer wanted to show her 47 schools that the Taliban had shut down and American troops had subsequently reopened.

“But I definitely wasn’t going to write what they said,” Maya explained. “I was going to take advantage of a four-day trip to Ghazni.” Once she was there, she saw that the schools were open, but empty. She spoke with the local education director and discovered that the students were terrified to attend schools that the Americans had constructed, fearing that the Taliban would kill them. This was not the celebratory news story the military had imagined. “It’s pretty impossible to ever meet the U.S. military’s expectations because the reality is never as rosy as they project it to be,” Maya said. “But the facts always come out, it doesn’t matter.”

Since American journalists must keep the U.S. military accountable, Tom said, the embeds are one of the few ways that they can try to do that. In the most dangerous locations, the military does not send a public affairs minder to manage the journalists.

Therefore, the most volatile places are the ones the journalists prefer. Tom said, because

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“No one is telling you what things mean. You’re seeing it.”1133 Nikki and Nathan agreed that the embed system functions when it allows the journalists to interact with soldiers, who are often candid, and when the higher ranking officials do not try to “control the narrative.”1134 There is so much message discipline within the U.S. military that it can be difficult to uncover any truths.1135 Plus, the International Assistance Force (ISAF) bureaucracy is large and confusing, with multiple press offices. Identifying the right people to speak with and investigating the veracity of their statements can be exhausting.

Annoyingly, the military blocks journalists’ access to information when they want to keep an issue under wraps, then pester the journalists to cover stories they want covered.

“The U.S. military plays a pretty powerful gate-keeping role in that sense,” Jason said.

Journalists often are forced to give up on reporting information when military officials do not confirm it before their deadlines.1136

The idea that U.S. journalists are affiliated with or beholden to the U.S. government is even more absurd when you consider their relationship with the American diplomats.1137 “I don’t think if you ask the U.S. ambassador that he would say the U.S. reporters are on his side,” Jason said drily. Officials at the American embassy do not want to engage with the press candidly, and have no “institutional commitment to making their people talk on the record” like the military does. The State Department is much more deliberate about which officials get to speak with journalists and what they get to say. To protect the image of its diplomats and programs, the embassy public affairs section insists on its right to edit and approve embassy officials’ quotes before journalists can publish them. Most interviews between reporters and officials are off the record or on background, meaning that the journalist is not allowed to quote the official by name.

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“You can only do an on-the-record interview if it’s with the ambassador or at a press conference,” Jason explained. And even then, there is no candor. The only honest moments you have with American officials is when it is off the record, Tom, Roger and

Nathan emphasized. 1138 But the American journalists cannot quote them.

There is a widespread belief among Afghan and Pakistani journalists that U.S. officials leak information to the American press corps. It is true that U.S. officials disclose information to journalists, but they do not directly give American journalists entire news stories as most Afghans and Pakistanis suspect they do. Information sharing

“is not scripted the way it may seem from the outside, or the way it may seem to Afghans and President Karzai,” Jason said. Journalists have to be dedicated enough to investigate a small piece of information they may receive from government officials; those officials do not guide them on how to follow up on the story, what to say or how to say it. Maya insisted that U.S. embassy and military officials stonewall her when she is working on investigative news pieces. “When I first got [to Afghanistan], I thought that the U.S. government had all the answers and they just didn’t want to tell me,” Maya said. But “it’s so hard to see the U.S. make the mistakes that they do and to feel sorry for them, because they’re so stupid.” For instance, they often refuse to cooperate on news stories about corruption, Maya emphasized, and end up looking clueless in her news reports. Still, while American journalists in the region do not conspire with the U.S. government, they are American citizens and thus benefit from its protection. American journalists are public figures in Afghanistan and Pakistan because their work is closely scrutinized and copied in local media, and they are more at risk than other Americans in the country. Yet because they are American citizens, they can take more risks in their reporting and

261 investigate the countries’ most powerful people.1139 “I think everyone [in the Afghan government] knows that it’s a pretty serious line to cross to kill an American journalist,”

Jason conceded.1140 “I think other power brokers know that too.” The U.S. journalists are associated with the American government’s power, and the U.S. military could retaliate or Congress could vote to cut aid to Afghanistan if a journalist was harmed or killed. But since American journalists are linked to American power in the eyes of Afghans, they are also more valuable to the Taliban and other extremist factions who are seeking to hurt the

U.S.

Local journalists are especially vulnerable. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Maya said, “It’s like it is in the Middle East: no one could give a fuck about their citizens.

Citizens are expected to be subservient. Whereas, in the U.S., politicians – not always – but there’s a general sense that they have to serve the public.”1141 In many developing countries, Nathan emphasized, governments fear journalists and threaten them with harm; in the West, governments may see journalists as nuisances but do not threaten them.1142

While local government officials and power brokers refrain from threatening American journalists, they will threaten the Afghan and Pakistani nationals who work for U.S. news organizations but do not benefit from the U.S. embassies’ protection.1143.

American Ethnocentrism

American journalists do not work to advance the U.S. government’s foreign policies, but they do benefit from its power and its policy of protecting American citizens overseas. What makes U.S. journalists’ reporting ethnocentric is that they feel a

262 responsibility to report for their fellow Americans and in the interest of the United

States.1144 Afghan and Pakistani journalists see American journalists as putting their nationality above their profession, as being “more American than they are journalists.”

That is “inevitably true,” Nikki admitted. “We are Americans and we do see the world through a lens imbued with America.” Jason agreed that it is probably true “in ways you don’t even always understand” as sympathy toward fellow Americans can happen so naturally, especially when you see first-hand U.S. troops fighting for their country. “They are the protagonists in your story and the people they fight are the enemy, and that’s the way your story is framed -- as their success or failure against the enemy. So you are telling it from their side.”1145 Yet still, Jason said, “We might hope America wins in general, but we want to document the reality along the way.” In this way, U.S. journalism about the world is supportive of maintaining American power, but wants to monitor and report U.S. missteps and not echo the U.S. government’s general narrative about its mission, which they will almost always frame as a success.

Since the U.S. news organizations’ reportage is targeted towards Americans,

James agreed, it is “American by its very nature” James said. He continued, “The

Afghans are not my main concern here, my country is.”1146 This is less the case for U.S. news foreign coverage in countries where American troops are absent. When he covered

India, for instance, he wrote about India. When he covered Kenya, he wrote about Kenya.

But in Afghanistan, “you are writing about America. So we are American about it,”

James explained.

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A major outlier was Tom, who was emphatic that he does not have “an inherent bias toward the United States” and sees Afghanistan more as a general foreigner than as an American. He said:

I don’t feel as if I’m writing as an American but I am writing as someone who is not from Afghanistan, I see things as an outsider does. I don’t speak the language as much as I would need to have an Afghan perspective. But I don’t feel as if I’m writing from the American perspective just because I’m an American. I think that would be a real failure.

Yet Tom also noted that his reportage is also American-centric. He also views his job as holding his government accountable, which, he said, is something any journalist would want to do when they witness their country’s actions overseas. “Sometimes when you see something really egregious and you talk to the people who are responsible, it would be hard not to make the connection between your tax dollars and your country, and the damage you are seeing.” It would be negligent if he just reported on Afghanistan without illuminating the injustices the U.S. was creating.

Each U.S. journalist interviewed plainly accepted the fact that they could not detach their nationality from their job. They have an American worldview that societies should be open and just, and they report within that frame. The problem, James emphasized, is that the people in the region, with Afghan journalists to a lesser extent,

“confuse having an American worldview with having a specific Western government agenda.”1147 Just because someone is attached to their nationhood does not mean they are blindly supportive of their government. It is easy to look at the U.S. as a monolithic entity with enormous power, to strip it of its political complexities and see the entire country as subservient to the government. But that’s an oversimplification.

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CHAPTER 11. Dysfunction: American Journalists View of Reporters & Officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Ethnocentrism in journalism is not a uniquely American phenomenon. The U.S. journalists stressed that Afghan and Pakistani journalists hold the same ethnocentric biases they criticize the U.S. journalists for having: Afghan and Pakistani reporters, editors and pundits reduce the U.S. to fit their worldviews. “Just as we are Americans, they are Afghans and they are Pakistanis,” James said. Afghan and Pakistani journalists

“complain about their countries being too simplified in our coverage, and they do the same with simplifying America.” Roger agreed that Afghans are very nationalistic, as they see the world from a place that is at the nexus of Iran, China and Russia -- and along the historic Silk Road from China to North Africa, a significant trade route that developed the economies of China, India, Persia, Arabia and Europe. It is a land that

Mongols, Persians, British and Russians wanted to occupy, and the U.S. has settled there for more than a decade. This geopolitical importance naturally inclines them to think they must be great, he explained.1148

After decades of war and authoritarianism, Afghans’ also do not understand the concepts of objectivity and government accountability, Maya said. Thus they do not see

American journalists as being independent of the U.S. government. To explain, she offered an anecdote on an interaction she had with her Afghan driver earlier in the day:

It’s a hot day today, and while driving here, the driver can tell I’m uncomfortable. So he puts on the air conditioning. Now the air conditioning has never worked, it just spits out lukewarm air. He has no concept of what air conditioning is. But he knows that we as Westerners like air conditioning. But he has no concept of air conditioning and what it’s supposed to do. And I think the idea of being completely independent and detached as journalists is the same thing. They have

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no concept, they don’t really understand what that means. They can’t conceive that that would ever actually exist.

Afghans’ worldview is limited by their experience. While there has been no history of journalism, there has been a history of heavy government interference with their news media. So they assume that the same manipulative dynamic applies to U.S. officials’ relationship with U.S. reporters. They assume that where there is nationalism, there is subservience to government policies.

American Journalists’ Relationship with Afghan Government Officials and Journalists

The Afghan journalists emphasized that their American peers had greater access to Afghan government officials than they themselves did. It is true, that for the first seven years of the war, American journalists’ relationship with Afghan officials, especially members of President Hamid Karzai’s senior staff at the palace, was fairly open and uncomplicated. But that relationship deteriorated considerably after the Obama administration assumed power in 2009 and changed U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and

Pakistan considerably. Along with the increase of U.S. military and civilian personnel, the Obama administration became less protective of President Karzai and his family. The

U.S. embassy seemed to favor other candidates to replace Karzai in the presidential election that year, and the U.S. press increased reporting on corruption in the Afghan government.

Still, the American journalists acknowledged that they often have unfettered access to Afghan politicians and cabinet officials. They each have the mobile phone

266 numbers of major officials in Kabul and the other 33 provinces, and they can get quick appointments with officials for interviews most of the time.1149 Afghan officials, said

Nathan, normally invite only Western press for exclusive interviews or roundtable discussions. He confirmed that they think less of Afghan journalists. This happens in the

Arab world, too, Nathan explained:

When you go to these events and all you see is Western media, you think that they are intentionally bypassing their local media because they know the local population won’t be the primary consumers of the media they are talking to. They want to talk to the West. They want to be seen as talking at the table internationally.

The status conferral that comes with being quoted in a Western newspaper is attractive for many Afghan officials. The American journalists agreed with their Afghan peers that some Afghan officials actively seek that prestige, which they cannot acquire speaking with just local reporters. Also, the “idea of ‘social betters’ is very strong in Afghanistan

(and Pakistan),” James emphasized. Afghan officials rather talk to U.S. reporters, or the owners of Afghan media outlets, because they see them as being more important, and therefore more relevant.

Moreover, the American journalists concurred that Afghan officials do not trust

Afghan journalists to handle information professionally. This is because much of the

Afghan news media is political and/or tied to external actors, Nikki, Jason and Maya explained. Afghan government officials are naturally suspicious of journalists they see as controlled by warlords, certain ethnic groups, Iran, Pakistan or the West. Maya explained that this too is a dynamic in the Middle East and a hallmark of any authoritarian society:

Especially in closed societies like Afghanistan, people are constantly worried about who you are connected to. It’s not like Afghanistan is a small nation, there are 30 million people here. But people are very aware of where you’re from, what

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tribe you could be affiliated with, what political party you could be affiliated with, what ethnicity you are – and that plays into a lot whether or not they trust you.

This is a legitimate concern, Nikki thought, because the Afghan media is politically charged and not just influenced by Westerners, but also by Iranians and Pakistanis. Even within the media perceived to be more professional, news professionals are of different ethnic heritage that they may feel inclined to represent and support. But such suspicions about journalists’ underlying agendas were also an excuse, she said, for Afghan officials to ignore Afghan journalists.1150

Afghan officials also gravitate toward American journalists when they want to make local and international news. They eagerly chase U.S. reporters in the country and lobby them to report information that will cater to their agendas. Afghans believe that the

New York Times or Washington Post, in particular, strongly affect perceptions within and outside the U.S. government. While U.S. elite media influences U.S. government officials,

Tom and James believed the Afghans have an exaggerated sense of their impact on U.S. foreign policy. Tom explained that Afghan officials almost see him more as an advisor to the American president than an independent journalist:

There are folks that when you talk to them about a story you are working on or in the process of interviewing people, it is very clear that they are saying things they want President Obama to hear. And they think you are the conduit between this person in the palace and the White House. That’s a very grandiose way of viewing our role here. I’m not sure that’s always the case.

Afghan officials regularly come to American journalists with information because they want to send a message to Washington. Nikki explained that they approach her frequently and can be “a little more open in the way they think they can manipulate the press to get

268 their story out” than American officials. Palace officials often ignore Jason, but when they want him to write something, they hound him.

This dynamic was certainly the case after the Washington Post broke news about widespread corruption in the Kabul Bank in 2010. The story was starting to fade, James explained, but then Afghan officials and businessmen who wanted to try to manipulate the bank fallout started to talk openly to American journalists with that purpose in mind.

One of them was Mahmood Karzai, a brother of the president.. He approached U.S. reporters in Kabul, James recalled, and said: “Write this down – the Americans need to bail us [the Kabul Bank] out.” His rationale was that the U.S. government had rescued

America’s major banks and should do the same for the Kabul Bank. The story was almost dead, James explained, “but then the corrupt brother of the president called for an

American bailout of the bank… so that kept the story alive” in the U.S. news media, and

“was not that savvy.” Later, bank officials told the New York Times that the American press “destroyed Kabul bank,” though it was clearly the stakeholders’ mismanagement of the bank that ensured its demise.1151

Often, mid-to-low ranking Afghan officials approach the U.S. foreign correspondents with information about high-level officials’ high-level corruption. In

James’s words, they “are horrified with how people at the top behave, the nepotism and patronage.” They are too poor to leave Afghanistan, so exposing it to try to generate change is their only option. Maya agreed. When she speaks with Afghan palace officials, they often say to her, “‘We know that the [American] ambassador takes you and whispers things into your ear.’ And I want to say, ‘Actually, it’s Afghans who are whispering into my ear because they are so sick of corruption here.’” Those lower ranking Afghan

269 officials have become valuable sources for U.S. reportage on government corruption – reporting that has considerably damaged the journalists’ relationship with President

Hamid Karzai’s administration.

Since early 2009, the Karzai palace has become increasingly disdainful of the U.S. news media. In January of that year, soon-to-be Vice President Joe Biden walked out of a dinner with President Karzai in Kabul after Karzai refused to acknowledge corruption in his government. Later, Karzai believed that the Obama administration was openly backing other candidates for president to oust him from office in the September 2009 election. Much of the U.S. news coverage was indexed to the rocky relationship between the two governments, which led Karzai to believe that the U.S. press was working to discredit him while advancing the U.S. government’s agenda.1152 This belief intensified after the election, when many Western reporters perceived Karzai’s re-election as fraudulent. The New York Times, especially, pursued stories about bribery within

Karzai’s cabinet and his family, leading to a contentious relationship between the

American newspaper and the palace.

The U.S. government has invested more than $29 billion of civilian funds in

Afghanistan, the bulk of which has gone to the Karzai administration.1153 The American journalists therefore investigate the Afghan government because they associate it with the successes and failures of U.S. foreign policy. Nikki acknowledged how vexing it must be for Afghan government officials to see American journalists dwell on their troubles and mistakes. Yet it is part of the journalists’ job to report Karzai’s words and actions, because he is “the president of the country that we are essentially occupying and we’re very interested in the stability of the country moving forward… we helped install

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President Karzai and we helped perpetuate his term as president,” Nikki explained. “And we need to take a look at what we have done. And that’s part of what we are writing about.” Her news organization approaches Karzai with cynicism, and perhaps less empathy than an Afghan journalist would have. Nikki expanded:

But…what we’re doing is bringing with us an American framework for how you write about government officials. And here that is seen as, if not treasonous, than a betrayal on some moral level. After all, the U.S. is an ally of Afghanistan. That is the case, and yet here we are criticizing and, whether or not it is true, we don’t make them look very good. I think they view that as personal in a way that, at least speaking for myself, isn’t true.

The strong legacy of authoritarianism in Afghanistan, and a culture of deference to power, is such that officials think that journalists – or any member of the general public – questioning them is improper. As mentioned in the chapters about the Afghan journalists,

President Karzai seemingly reads all American media reports about Afghanistan. He reacts strongly to them, especially to those that address his relationship with Western diplomats and ISAF leadership. Tom explained that Karzai’s spokesman’s office has called him to make clear that the president was unhappy with a news story, even a fairly insignificant one that recently ran.1154 “The official who called couldn’t quite articulate his concerns, but he was angry that the story ran,” Tom recalled. Rarely, though, does the palace ask for corrections – they just want to note their displeasure.

Jason has been a foreign correspondent for more than a decade, covering countries in three continents, yet he’s never been in a country where U.S. news has such an impact on local politics. He explained:

Karzai seems pretty convinced that a lot of the American news stories about him are planted and manipulated by the politicians in Washington who want to attack him. So when he reads things he sees it as the U.S. diplomats and the administration saying one thing to him in person, and then attacking him through the press. So he thinks they’re using us as a tool.

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The Afghan officials’ suspicion and rejection of American journalists often works against the Karzai administration’s interests. The U.S. foreign correspondents sometimes want to reflect on the country’s progress since 2001, but the palace’s senior staff members rarely respond to the most benign interview requests, Maya explained.1155 She recently asked the palace spokesman if she could write a story on the progress of Afghan women. “I mean, it’s in his interest to tell me that Afghan women are doing incredibly well – and he never answered.” She called, texted and e-mailed him to no avail. “It’s stupid on his part, it makes him look like an idiot.”

There are times, Nikki said, when her news organization credits Karzai for the good work that he has done, especially with respect to women’s empowerment. Though she works actively to hold him accountable, she has a great deal of empathy for the position that he is in: “He’s up against a lot…he has a really troubling, corrupt family that he cannot completely abandon as an Afghan. And he has a lot of people around him who are a terrifying combination of being corrupt and bullies, and they are also armed. And he can’t get rid of any of them.” She wants to be more sympathetic in her news reports, but still thinks he has not tried hard enough to overcome these barriers. Still, she said, when she does positively portray something Karzai has done, “the palace press office wonders why we still write things that are bad for him. They do not understand the concept of balanced reporting.”1156

In Afghanistan, like Pakistan, the perception is that the U.S. is a patron for their governments. Often, the perception among Afghan and Pakistani officials, and the public, is that the U.S. owes them money and support, James and Nikki explained. Afghans and

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Pakistanis want economic and development assistance, but they also want praise and encouragement from U.S. government officials. They also want moral support from

American reporters: Because Afghan and Pakistani officials feel that they are aligning themselves with the United States, they are entitled to favorable U.S. news coverage.

They believe that not just U.S. officials, but the U.S. journalists should be grateful to them for their sacrifices to help the United States in its war. Afghan officials often complain to U.S. journalists that they do not understand how difficult their jobs are; they want reassurance from the American press, because they see them as an extension of the

American government and nation. Nikki explained:

It is has not been easy for [Afghan officials] to be an ally of the Americans. It is not a popular stand to take in this country. Even though people will say that they need the Americans privately, being seen standing next to them is a fraught position. And they have been out there doing that. And we’ve never given them credit for that… So then when anything or anyone is American in a country where honor and image and face is so terribly important comes out and criticizes them, they feel really insulted. And that’s why they feel betrayed. They say, ‘We stood up for you, we let you come into our country.’ That’s become the narrative: Here you are just saying we are blemished in every possible way.

This belief among Afghan officials that American journalists betray them by criticizing them means that the officials – and many Afghan journalists, as we have seen – perceive

U.S. journalists to be an extension of the U.S. government, and/or as representatives of the American nation. To them, U.S. journalists work to amplify government rhetoric and action; they do not provide a separate, public service. They are all, indiscriminately,

“America.”

President Karzai and other officials are also upset because American reporting reverberates through the Afghan press, the American journalists agreed.1157 Afghan journalists frequently use U.S. media for their own reporting, Nikki and Jason

273 emphasized, but they also woefully mistranslate it at times. Afghan officials can become so angry at how they are depicted in U.S. news that they sometimes hold press conferences denouncing American journalists and their news organizations. Therefore, while they write with American readers in mind, Jason and Tom also try to take into consideration local dynamics and think about how Afghan officials will react to their reportage.

Afghan journalists need American news to understand what Washington is deciding about Afghanistan, and what Americans are thinking. But Maya emphasized that the most important service U.S. news provides is this coverage of the Afghan government. The Afghan news channels Pajhwok (the national newswire) and Tolo TV

(the most popular television station), while professional, “can’t fight the big fights that we can.” She agreed with the Afghan journalists that American reportage often provides them with a cover, the space they need to expose corruption and malfeasance.

“Intimidation to journalists here, to local journalists, is nothing new. Which is a shame because I think a lot of the Afghans are sick of the corruption and would like to take on these stories, but they can’t,” she explained. A majority of the American journalists confirmed that, like Afghan officials, Afghan journalists – and media owners – come to them or their local staff with information that they feel they couldn’t make public themselves.1158

The American journalists, however, also use Afghan news as source material. To understand Afghan society, you need to speak with everyday Afghans, Nathan said, and you need to look at Afghan media. The journalists track dozens of Afghan news organizations, but the ones that are the most important to them are Tolo, Channel One,

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Ariana, and Pajhowk.1159 Tom pointed out that Afghan journalists are the go-to sources for breaking news about Taliban and other extremist groups’ attacks; they often use the microblogging platform Twitter to broadcast the information. This is a great service to

U.S. journalists, who are mostly confined to Kabul and cannot witness the attacks first- hand.

The Afghan news media does not set the news agenda for the American journalists, but local journalists can often provide fragments of information that spark new story ideas. For instance, Nikki’s organization watches Tolo frequently and, at some point, Tolo had interviewed the Governor of Wardak province, a volatile area less than one hundred miles from Kabul. The governor told the news anchor that the transfer of control from NATO to the Afghan National Army was too precipitous. Thereupon, she decided her news organization should call other provincial governors to see if they were also concerned about the military transfer. The warlord stations are also a sound resource for U.S. journalists on the warlords’ priorities and actions throughout the country.

General Abdul Rashid Dostum, for instance, often holds large rallies in northern

Afghanistan that are broadcast on his television station, Aina. Such assemblies are valuable indicators of Afghan public sentiment and the cult of personality around these warlords; yet one would only know of their existence on warlord TV.

While the U.S. journalists look to Afghan journalists for support with breaking news and story ideas, they tend to see them as unprofessional and undeveloped. Their immaturity is most evident, Nathan said, in the kinds of questions that they ask. The questions normally reflect an editorial bias. For instance, one question he heard recently at a press conference with an Afghan official was, “Don’t you think that Pakistan is the

275 problem?”1160 Maya stressed that Afghan journalists often accept certain information as truth without investigating or validating it. Nikki agreed that while Afghan journalists have improved the past decade, their standard of proof is different from American and

Western journalists and their news coverage occasionally spreads misinformation.

The American journalists also think that the majority of Afghan journalists see their work simply as a means to a paycheck, not as a public service.1161 There is corruption in Afghan journalism as well: Some local reporters extort money from politicians and businessmen by claiming that they have evidence of corruption that they will expose unless given a bribe.1162 Most Afghan journalists, though, hesitate to confront powerful figures because they fear for their lives, or they fear breaking the cultural taboo of discrediting their elders. Maya’s Afghan colleagues often raise objections to the

Americans “ruining reputations” of people by exposing malfeasances. She must spend time explaining, repeatedly, why criticism is merited. “It’s in Afghan culture that you don’t put people on the spot,” Maya explained. This experience has led her to question if

Afghan journalists will be willing to hold influential Afghans accountable without regular encouragement from the American reporters.

Yet Jason and Tom agreed that Afghan journalists from Tolo, Channel One and

Ariana have recently become more aggressive. The head of Moby Media Group, Saad

Mohseni, who owns Tolo TV, wants to push boundaries they emphasized. At news conferences, Tom sees Afghan journalists press officials for information. “They don’t put their leaders on pedestals,” he said. “They feel like their leaders ought to be criticized and held accountable the way we do when we cover Washington or any state capital.” Tom thought that Afghans believe in the principles of journalism, and that they are “hard

276 nosed” and “passionate” about their work. “Maybe the American press provided the initial spark [for this]. But now they know what they are doing. I can’t see it coming to an abrupt halt because the guys who inspired them to do it are gone,” he explained.

The other American journalists I interviewed aren’t as optimistic about the independent, or currently Western-backed, Afghan media’s future.1163 With the exception of India, Afghanistan’s neighborhood does not offer examples of a pluralistic, free press that is socially responsible and contests authority. The Afghan press’s future simply hinges, they concurred, on how the Afghan government treats them: If they crack down on freedom of speech and a free press, then it will disappear; if they protect them, they will survive.

The likelihood, however, is that the Afghan government will relinquish press freedoms after U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, and U.S. news bureaus close down because of the exodus. There will be no more investigative news about the Afghan government or the country’s power brokers. “The concept of a free media will go completely out the window,” Maya lamented. She, Nathan and Nikki agreed that the so-called independent media that benefitted from Western funding are unsustainable. Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s most popular station, is “too American” in its current form, Nikki and Nathan concurred, and it will probably regress into a more government-friendly station.1164 They expect warlord, government or Iran- and Pakistani- funded media to remain. Without the support of the U.S. government and U.S. journalists, the successes of the news media the past decade will be an American-manufactured memory.

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American Journalists’ Relationship with Pakistani Government Officials and Journalists

In neighboring Pakistan, government officials are similarly skeptical of U.S. journalists and their relationship with American officials, yet they are also responsive to requests from U.S. television or elite news publications. Still, interviews with Pakistani officials are rarely straightforward, Nathan emphasized. Often, Pakistani officials smile at him during the conversation, as if they are not taking the interview seriously. He interpreted this as them trying to “win the battle of the interview” and “outsmart the

Americans” while pushing “total nonsense.” While they are in Pakistan, American journalists regularly hear from agents with the Inter Services International (ISI), the intelligence wing of the Pakistani military, who call to complain about their reporting.

They often issue veiled threats and assign them minders who shadow them.1165 The day after Nathan aired a story on the Amadi people, a minority Muslim sect in Pakistan, and their lack of religious freedom in the country, he received a call from an agent in the ISI

“special branch.” The agent reminded Nathan that ISI was the equivalent of the CIA, and then told him that they knew he had visited the Amadi village. “But he didn’t really say anything direct. He just wanted me to know they were keeping an eye on me.” In

Pakistan, the ISI always “wanted you to know they are watching you.”1166

In other words, James said, the Pakistani government is paranoid about the presence of American journalists in the country. Not just the government, but the media and the public, he stressed, care far too much what’s written about them in the U.S. press.

It’s a measure of Pakistan’s failure and the citizenry’s collective insecurity that they

278 worry too much about American reportage. Pakistan is image-obsessed, he said, whereas their rival, India, is much more secure about its place in the world. This insecurity is palpable in the Pakistani media because journalists are insistent on destroying people’s lives through shaming politicians and others in power, whether it is warranted or not.

Pakistani journalists, James said, see “destruction [of careers and reputations] as a show of success.” Destruction is their version of holding power accountable. “Unless you bring someone down, you’re not a good journalist,” James explained. U.S. journalists, he said, know that just because they have the power to devastate individuals’ careers and institutions, does not mean they should do it unless they have indisputable evidence. But this belief does not resonate in Pakistan. He continued:

The Pakistanis [journalists] have destroyed so many fucking people. It’s really bad…The media in the U.S. totally overstates its importance – embarrassingly overstates its importance. But as a destructive force, it is incredibly potent. It’s capability for destruction is much greater than its capability for doing good. My stories can only do so much in regards to having a big policy impact, but they can very easily destroy someone’s career.

As a result, “the myth of Watergate runs amok in Pakistan.” Pakistani journalists take shortcuts. They accuse people of wrongdoing much more than they investigate wrongdoing. This does not make for a responsible, constructive force in society. Like many Pakistani journalists whom I interviewed, James agrees that broadcast media can contribute more to chaos and confusion than to a functioning liberal society.

The Pakistani news media is largely immature and agenda-driven, Nathan agreed.

They often speculate about motive while reporting information, and therefore project conspiracy theories that the Pakistani public may misinterpret as fact. To him, the

Pakistani media are irresponsible. “You just don’t get a perception that there are filters

279 there, or editors in the sense that we [American reporters] are used to…They usually pass off editorial writing for reporting.” Yet assuming that one’s perceptions are reality is part of Pakistan’s culture. He continued:

There is a perception and a belief that people in Pakistan know more about U.S. politics and motives than Americans do. Because they believe that Americans are brainwashed by [American] politicians. And they don’t … see how American policy is affecting people on the ground. So they believe that Americans are getting a rosy view through their news media… they say, ‘We live this. We know the truth.’…and I think it’s fine for them to talk about the impact since they are living in these spaces. But when they start talking about motives and intentions, then that’s where it crosses a line.

The Pakistani journalists tend to embrace falsehoods about American government conspiracies, such as the notion that the September 11 attacks were an inside job, Nathan explained. Sometimes Pakistanis do appreciate additional information about an issue, but it rarely alters their anti-American worldview. “This is what they believe, what they heard, what they want to believe. And you’re not going to change that,” Nathan said.

Nathan agreed with James that Pakistani journalists, and even Afghan ones, have a Watergate-like dream of “We’re going to expose this stuff and bring down this power.’”1167 Rarely do they think they need to inform voters about larger matters. In both countries, “Democracy is a novel concept. Leaders don’t know how to operate in a democracy, citizens don’t know how to operate in a democracy, the media doesn’t know how to operate in a democracy, and institutions are still in raw form.” At least in the U.S., the journalists interviewed agreed, reporters know what their laws and protections are.

Their Afghan and Pakistani peers are living with a great deal of uncertainty and confusion.

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Future of U.S. News Coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Each American journalist I interviewed stated that their news organization’s bureaus would remain in the region as long as U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, or as long as their organizations could afford to keep them there.1168 They likely will stop reporting from Afghanistan full time after 2015, one year after the American military’s withdrawal. Maya and Nathan stressed that Iraq is largely a dead story to American news now that U.S. troops have gone; their respective news bureaus in Baghdad, once the largest in the world, are now empty. Roger was certain that after the troops depart, his agency “will not have the stomach for this story.” There is even the chance, Nathan said, that things will stabilize in Afghanistan so much that there is no longer a news story there of relevance to Americans, or the world.

Yet many of the journalists thought that security will deteriorate, making the U.S. news bureaus much more costly and difficult to manage. One option is that the local journalists whom U.S. news organizations employ to write news stories will maintain the bureaus, Jason said. But the American journalists will only occasionally parachute in and not be able to provide much context of a post-American war Afghanistan. There may not be another civil war in Afghanistan, Nikki said, but “it will still be ugly. There will be people being killed who are innocent, which is what we [the U.S. government and military] should have stopped…I believe our job as American journalists is to document the toll that war takes and all the ways that America is complicit in creating that environment.”

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The American journalists want to continue covering Afghanistan and Pakistan after 2014. “There’s a general desire and editorial policy to stay here with as large a presence as long as we can,” Nathan said. But the American demand for Afghanistan news will decrease, many said, and that will affect their organizations’ resources.1169 The

American journalists, like the troops, are exhausted from covering a war that has lasted more than a decade. Jason noted that they have fallen into a trap of routine news coverage that is not particularly illuminating of the country or the war Americans are fighting. He said:

The biggest problem with the coverage here is that it is so rote. It’s been the same thing for so long that no one wants to read it and no one wants to write it. It’s like ‘writing by numbers’ now. Everyone knows how to write a bombing story…if you contrast that stuff to the first time there were bombings in Baghdad, people tried hard to write in creative ways. And now there’s no appetite for it from the editors or the writers…you almost need people who haven’t written this before to attempt it. Everyone else is so tired.

The news story of the region as violent and failed – and perhaps no longer worthy of

American money, time or energy – is currently the norm. The American journalists are unlikely to change that before they leave Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their jobs were to report for Americans, which they did diligently. The unintended consequences of their reportage in Afghanistan and Pakistan are ultimately not their concern. They are

Americans, and they will be going home.

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CHAPTER 12: Clarity in Chaos: Nationalism to Manage Reportage

A nation’s news media always illuminates the nation itself. How news professionals determine newsworthiness, how they construct narratives and how they present them indicate their nation’s priorities, its agreements, divisions, and its role in the world. Journalists have astounding power to construct a sense of reality for people, but despite the transnational reach of news today, editors, producers and reporters select and construct media messages to cater to their targeted audiences.1170 They often aim to deliver a worldview that feels comfortable for the audiences, and give them evidence that the “pictures in their heads” are accurate.

The picture of U.S., Afghan and Pakistani relations, no matter your vantage point, is hazy. It is infused by three decades of tunnel vision, distortion, mutual dependency and resentment. Journalists from each country try to make sense of the chaos of conflict, yet whatever clarity they arrive at comes mainly from nationalism.1171 Nationalism is equipment that reporters use to make sense of conflict. A lens that puts your country at the center can bring war into sharp focus. But it also radically oversimplifies the chaos.

The principle of objectivity might seem to hold professional journalism together, but it is much easier to supply, even simulate, in the examination of domestic issues. When reporting about their own governments, journalists can take up a certain familiar distance from a political party, and take advantage of that distance to critique officials and politicians vying for influence. They can employ a plausible mental grid with which to understand, and sometimes clarify, the various positions and conflicts. Yet detaching oneself from their government is different than detaching oneself from their nation. When

283 it comes to the question of their country’s role in the world, journalists do not disengage themselves from their national identity. In this study, each set of journalists – Afghan,

American, Pakistani – identifies with their fellow citizens and therefore with their nation.

In part this is cultural, virtually automatic – a case of emotional identification. In part it is strategic – a necessity to make their story comprehensible to their primary readers. But by reporting for one audience, they unintentionally package their nations in an efficient form for outsiders to consume. The journalists play the role of representatives, or de facto diplomats, for their nations.

This is certainly the case for American journalists who work for elite news organizations. Afghan and Pakistani journalists habitually look to them in order to understand a country that looms so large in their own affairs.1172 Yet they seek to understand the U.S. in its relation to their own nations. They do not want to understand

America in all of its complexity; they want to know what the American government and people think about them. Just as American journalists talk about America in global news,

Afghan and Pakistani journalists focus on themselves, on their nations, when talking about America. National interest is not an exclusively American concept. Ethnocentricity in journalism is universal.

The types of ethnocentricity that each country has, and the degree of it, however, differ. American-branded media dominates global news, and therefore American ethnocentricity has a special weight and significance. The United States is a global hegemon, and American journalists, as citizens, have an abiding loyalty to it. Since those journalists dominate the international media market and news flows, they can accentuate images and fix identities of other countries.

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Since the late 1970s and the New World Information and Communication Order movement, developing countries have complained about this one-way flow of communication from the West. The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO) confirmed in 1985 that the richest countries in the world with the most sway over international politics received the most coverage and also had the most influence in international news. This especially applied to the United States.1173

Leaders in Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries referred to this information imbalance as a form of neo-colonialism in which the West was serving as image-makers for others.1174 They saw it as a form of suppression: The Western media should be supporting these countries’ development, not focusing on their failures.

This sentiment is very palpable in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although more so in

Pakistan. Afghans and Pakistanis do not appreciate the recurring picture of them as failed states seething with violence and instability. I, and the very Americans journalists who write those stories, cannot blame them. This visceral reaction comes from their ethnocentricity. Pakistan’s brand of ethnocentricity is embedded in its inception. To keep the country together, Pakistani governments since 1947 have reminded their citizens that

Pakistan was founded to give South Asian Muslims a home, and the state is who they are.1175 Today, even government-created highway signs in major cities read, “Pakistan is our identity.” When U.S. elite news criticizes Pakistan and focuses on their failures as a country, Pakistani journalists feel criticized and judged.

Afghanistan’s brand was built over time, through the many battles it fought as a nation against occupying forces like the British and Soviets. Afghanistan is also home to various ethnicities bound together by Islam, but they have been a country for 5,000 years.

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They know Afghanistan’s place in the world and are less insecure about it. The Afghan journalists are disappointed that the U.S. news media focuses on the war when it attempts to explain Afghanistan to the United States, but they also accept the criticisms of their government. They value the space that the U.S. government gives them to be reporters by funding them and encouraging the Afghan government to do so; and they value the information U.S. reporters give them about the wrongdoings of their country’s most powerful people.1176 They want the U.S. news media to support their development, but do not mind them documenting their failures along the way as much.

Even though they should be able to take control of their countries’ stories,

Afghans and Pakistanis feel too overwhelmed by their situations to do so. Nominally, their press systems are free. But the degree of that freedom fluctuates. Objective investigation and quality information are especially difficult to come by. The Afghan and

Pakistani populations are afflicted with chronic conflict and political turmoil. They are only fitfully emerging from periods of harsh authoritarian rule where people were supposed to be subservient to government. The Afghan and Pakistani governments may trumpet a free news media as a sign of their liberalization and progress in international society, but the reality is only tolerated to a lesser degree. They regularly look for ways to suppress media freedoms.

Yet Afghan and Pakistani journalists deeply value their roles. They see themselves as public guides to democracy and modernity. They want to create order out of chaos, to make sense of issues and events for themselves and their fellow citizens.

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In Pakistan, News Reflects an Anxious, Uncertain Society

In Pakistan, part of modernization includes a broadcast-centric, non-stop news media that needs not just to report and analyze news, but to entertain as it informs. Their press corps has become young, fast and electronic, making it dangerously viral. A vastly uneducated populace, eager for information and entertainment, has quickly gravitated toward it. And therein lies the problem.

The Pakistani journalists covet their opportunity to hold the power accountable that they could not for decades. The purpose of Pakistan’s first newspapers, Nawa-e-Waqt and

Dawn, were to create legitimacy for a Pakistani, Muslim identity separate from British

India in the 1940s.1177 Once the Pakistani state was established though, the Pakistani government worked relentlessly to control them.1178 For decades, journalists slowly learned how to balance being defiant while paying homage to the government to survive.1179 But then, in 2002, when President Pervez Musharraf liberalized electronic media, a young crop of journalists (the average age is 23) became more vociferous. They want to avenge the wrongs of the government in the way that earlier generations could not. They work actively to destroy power in its current form. As a result, they find public acceptance and, in it, power for themselves. But the most popular broadcast news organizations today reflect a society that feels vulnerable to their military and extremist groups.

The criticisms leveled by Pakistani journalists in this study illustrate that vulnerability. A majority of those interviewed considered themselves moderate. They lamented a news system characterized by sensationalism, one that emphasizes chronic

287 conflict and political intrigue and whose emphasis has become perversely addictive.

Television stations often compete for the most gruesome, invasive news coverage of tragic events. The electronic news media has largely become desensitized to violence and relentlessly tramples on human rights to get a story.

Consider the recent death of Owais Baig, a 23-year-old man. In late November

2012, he went to an interview at the Karachi Electricity Supply Company on the eighth floor of the State Life Insurance building. While he sat waiting for the interview, a fire engulfed the building. He did not know how to save himself other than through the window. He hung from the eighth floor window as a crowd of spectators swelled outside.

Among them were cameraman from ARY and AAJ, two popular television networks.1180

Yet no one helped. Baig fell to his death, with the cameramen documenting his descent.

The media wanted him to fall, Maheen Usmani wrote in a column for the elite

English-language newspaper Dawn on Nov. 30, 2012. As Baig’s grip slipped, it was likely that “the cameraman was already licking his lips in anticipation of accolades from not only his Bureau Chief, but also from the Director News. No matter who won the media battle for cheap sensationalism and gutter press, he was destined to lose.”1181 ARY and AAJ chronicled his death, with ARY bragging that they were “the first” to bring the event to the Pakistani public.1182 Local news media defended their “right” to show the grisly footage. “What right,” Usmani asked, “does the media have to critique politicians when their behavior was no less criminal?”1183

Such criticism of the press by the press suggests some hope that the Pakistani news media will not forever be defined by sensationalist coverage. Some moderate, more reasonable voices in the print media know that it is destructive to society. A blogger for

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The Express Tribune later wrote a piece, “We are sorry, Owais Baig,” in which he said that the majority of media has become desensitized to death. “To broadcast the clips of a man dangling from a burning building until he falls to his death shows the level of empathy and social awareness that our media lacks….Let us force our media houses to publicly apologize for this particular error so that they recognize their professional code of conduct and never indulge in such indecency again.”1184 By the moderate journalists’ own admission, however, there are few of the contrite. They continue to be overpowered by their colleagues and by media owners who are narrowly focused on high ratings.

Americans look to the U.S. news media for explanations and guidance on terrorism and violence and for a feeling of unity with the rest of the nation through sharing information.1185 The Pakistani public looks to their press for the same. However, news professionals regularly, daily, assume there is intentionality behind the actions of the civilian government, their military, the Americans, the Indians and extremist groups, including the Taliban, that infest them. Conspiracy theory is pervasive in Pakistani culture, a legacy from a closed society that created habits of suspicion and resentment.

“While Pakistanis are willing to blame some of their troubles on themselves, feelings of responsibility are lessened by the alleged sinister behavior of others,” Marvin Weinbaum, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois and former Pakistan analyst at the U.S. Department of State, wrote in 1996. He continued, “It is far more comforting to contend that their impotence comes from the reality that they have been singled out for manipulation and exploitation, and regularly let down by their friends.” 1186 One of those friends is America, a great power they believe can manipulate events in Afghanistan,

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Pakistan and elsewhere.

To Pakistan, the United States has not been a loyal friend. In the 1990s, the U.S. suspended its embassy in Kabul and, upon discovery that Pakistan was pursuing nuclear weapons again, cut-off its aid -- leaving Pakistan to single-handedly deal with the post-

Cold War chaos in Afghanistan. Since the post-9/11 war began in 2001, the U.S. has also contributed to volatility along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as extremists fled U.S. troops in Afghanistan for the semi-autonomous tribal areas. The U.S. has launched multiple drone strikes into Pakistani territory to kill suspected militants. But Pakistan’s corrupt politicians, military leaders and extremists have inflicted more damage on the state’s government, economy and overall psyche. Pakistan’s news media will take on

America and Pakistan’s corrupt politicians but rarely the county’s military or homegrown extremists. Saleem Safi, a talk show host on the overwhelmingly popular Geo network, explained that there are surefire rules for high ratings in Pakistan’s broadcast media. One is to “start verbally abusing America. If you abuse the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Pakistani establishment, you face threats to your life — people say you are a non-Muslim. If you are talking against America, you become a hero.” 1187 This fixation on the U.S. is an obsession with victimhood, which is always an evasion of responsibility, an invitation to bad faith. Yet as long as sensationalism attracts viewers and conspiracy theories comfort them, this is unlikely to change.

Or is it? Pakistan’s news reflects an anxious society, but without a clear agreement on its direction or how to pursue positive change. The moderate journalistic minority sees the fundamental problems in their press and society for what they are, but feels too powerless to provide the direction for transformation. Yet the idea that market

290 forces can control journalism is overblown. Michael Schudson wrote in Sociology of

News, “the desire for profit makes a news operation vulnerable to influence by advertisers, but the more profitable a news outlet is, the more it is able to withstand such pressure.”1188 News professionals can protect themselves from market-driven censorship by educating the audience on in-depth reporting, investigation and analysis that looks at all of their society’s problems.1189 For now, the electronic Pakistani news media has chosen to embrace populism, and let mass sentiment drive their news coverage. It is up to

Pakistani journalists with moderate views who work for news organizations that put a premium on sensationalism to assert their value and lead.

They will, however, have to be exceedingly careful: 51 Pakistani journalists have been killed since 1994, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fifty-five percent of them have been intentionally murdered and in 96 percent of those cases, no one has been convicted. Sixty-one percent of the deaths have been related to Pakistani politics.1190 It is the most dangerous place to be a journalist today.

In Afghanistan, News Reflects an Uncertain yet Hopeful Society

A sense of national vulnerability and a penchant for conspiracy tales are also evident in the Afghan news media system, yet the Afghan journalists who work for independent news organizations are proud of their progress. They are largely hopeful that they can contribute to a robust, democratic society for the long-term. They are most critical of the lack of professionalism in Afghan news, but their free news system is just one decade old, and they need more time to develop.

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The Afghan news media feels pressure from many directions: the government, warlords, Iranians, Pakistanis and the West – mainly Americans. The government- sponsored news media continues its century-long tradition of uncritical reportage about official policies and actions; warlord television promotes the political agendas of men who destroyed the country in the early 1990s; and the Iranian and Pakistani sponsored press wants to bend the Afghan public in favor of their visions for the region. The

Western-backed news media, the most popular in the country, also reflects an agenda for a liberal society with a free press. But within that free press, the journalists I spoke with are much more reluctant than their Pakistani peers to hold any power accountable. The journalists want to be responsible stewards of an open society, but they fear for their lives and livelihoods. After three decades of war, one cannot blame them.

The Afghan news media does not independently pursue the major malfeasances of their government, warlords and overall society. They come from a place of severe weakness. Decades of authoritarianism have habituated them to following government dictates. They take for granted conflict, corruption, poverty, warlordism and inefficiency.

This dysfunction is remarkable and fascinating to outsiders, like American journalists.

But to the Afghans it is routine. They are just beginning to learn to recognize that they can challenge the people and institutions responsible for wreaking such havoc in the country, and the American journalists who are based in Kabul have been their tutors.

There are some Afghan journalists who desperately want to inject hope and positivity into an otherwise bleak environment through the media. This includes the coverage of the Afghan National Cricket Team by radio stations such as Salam Watandar

– and Tolo TV’s Afghan Star (an American Idol-like singing competition) and its recent

292 debut of Afghan Premier League Football. All of this gives Afghans a sort of competition they can cheer. News as entertainment in Afghanistan also aims to be more educational than its equivalent in Pakistan: Television and radio programs attempt to teach Afghan citizens about the importance of health, education and the vital role women play in their society and economy. Conspiracy, security and political intrigue show up in Afghan independent news and on talk shows, but they are not the focal points. In warlord, Iran or

Pakistan-sponsored media, however, they are.

In Afghanistan, the news media reflects a culture that is also anxious for change in security, human rights and its economy, but is reticent to push for it too quickly as the powerful forces that ran the country for decades still linger. While the United States and the West help keep those forces at bay, 10 Afghan journalists have been killed the past decade. Five of these cases have been confirmed to be murder, half of which were caused by paramilitary or political groups. Sixty-seven percent of the cases have not resulted in conviction.1191 This is a fraction of journalists’ deaths in neighboring Pakistan, but it still helps to explain the high-degree of self-censorship among Afghan journalists.

Afghan journalists are attentive to signs of progress and self-consciously aim to improve the welfare of their long-impoverished citizens. But it is not clear that their attempts are sustainable or effective. For instance, the American government funds many of the news and entertainment programs on TV stations like Tolo that encourage Afghans to send their children to school, respect women’s rights and support their Afghan

National Army and police forces. The U.S. and other Western governments also urge the

Afghan government to protect free speech. Journalists who work for U.S. news organizations, too, advise Afghan journalists on how to hold power accountable; they

293 also serve as conduits for information that the Afghans themselves do not feel safe reporting. Without a steady U.S. presence in the country to support a free and functional press, the Afghan news media will more easily be overpowered by warlords, Iran and an

Afghan government that is eager to make journalists their spokespeople. Like the

Pakistani journalists, the Afghan journalists will have to try to continue to lead, as long as security conditions and a democratic government allows them to.

In America, News Reflects Power

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries whose publics have been controlled by outsiders for decades, the general assumption is that the United States controls their fate.

To them, America is all-powerful, brutally efficient and constantly conspiring. And there is enough evidence to prove this: The decade long presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the infiltration of drones into Pakistani tribal areas, and the breach of Pakistani sovereignty in killing Osama bin Laden in May 2011 all show the insistence of the U.S. on treating their countries as battleground space to expand its power. Afghan and

Pakistani journalists react viscerally to American news about their countries, and understandably so: American political, economic and security apparatuses directly affect

Afghans and Pakistanis’ lives. It has done so for decades.

The U.S. news media amplifies that power. A nation’s soft power, by Joseph

Nye’s definition, is, “its ability to attract others by the legitimacy of U.S. policies and the values that underlie them.”1192 The U.S. news media encompasses the value of free speech and a free press. But it doesn’t look that way to foreign citizens when it comes to

294 international affairs, and it certainly does not succeed in legitimizing U.S. policies. To the contrary, it helps foreign citizens see more starkly how different they are from America.

American news professionals have considerable reach and authority in the world, and the mental image, the picture they have helped construct for Americans about

Afghanistan and Pakistan, is frightening. They have constructed a narrow, violent reality of the two countries that Afghans and Pakistanis do not accept as accurate or adequate. In their eyes, American news judges their countries harshly yet fails to apply the same standard of judgment toward America itself.

The Afghan and Pakistani journalists are correct: U.S. journalists do focus on U.S. national interests and frame the world through lenses of conflict, disaster and crisis. As

Herbert Gans emphasized in Deciding What’s News, a focus on conflict and violence is an ”enduring news value,” a significant or even decisive factor in determining the newsworthiness of events.1193 Another value at work in American journalism is the assumption that the U.S. is the most important and valued nation in the world order.1194

The framework in which Americans understand our involvement in Afghanistan and

Pakistan is overwhelmingly the question of security rooted in the al-Qaeda attacks on

America on September 11, 2001 and the ensuing warfare with the Taliban and its supporters. American journalists who report from Afghanistan and Pakistan try to give their American readers context about the countries, but a disproportionate amount of focus is on Afghanistan not as a nation, but as an arena for U.S. troops. As individuals,

U.S. foreign correspondents have gained empathy for the plight of the people and the persistent uncertainty they live with. But they describe those struggles in the context of

295

America’s role in them. The U.S. journalists’ responsibility, after all, is to report and analyze issues and events for the American people – not Afghans or Pakistanis.

Despite this focus on the American nation, the journalists who report for U.S. news organizations from Kabul and Islamabad insist that they hold U.S. government officials accountable. This is undeniably true. The American news media has told a story of this war that is frustrating, exhausting, and endlessly complicated. Some of the most sobering stories have been about the limits of American power in the region. For instance, in the past two years, the Wall Street Journal’s Maria Abi-Habib’s investigative reporting exposed the horrific neglect of the Dawood Military Hospital under the control of U.S.

Lieutenant General William Caldwell, which led to a congressional hearing;1195 the

Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff’s work has focused on the legacy of war that the U.S. will leave behind in Afghanistan, including a field of landmines that Afghan children play in with no warning ; 1196 and the New York Times’ Alissa Rubin and Matt Rosenberg cover the deaths of Afghan civilians at the hands of U.S. forces. The Afghans and Pakistanis still, though, largely do not see the humility in American news. They see a reflection of power.

The Media Boomerang Effect

American journalists report for Americans, yet they are also major purveyors of information for anyone invested in this conflict. Once reported, information from U.S. news organizations becomes a global force. The international news net is interwoven, with the American product the single most influential strand. Technology has created a

296 media boomerang effect: Whatever text is written, whatever pictures are taken, whatever words are said about a foreign land for a U.S. audience promptly travels back to the government officials, journalists and citizens of the nation American journalists are talking about.

Until “we know what others think they know,” Walter Lippmann said in 1922,

“we cannot truly understand their acts.” Consuming American news about them is a ritual for Afghan and Pakistani journalists and government elites, it’s an addiction to understanding their place in America’s world. They see the New York Times as the agenda-setter for American policy, and arguably the most important news organization in the world, with the Washington Post coming in second.1197 As Tsan-Kuo Chang said, “all countries [are] not created equal to be news” and global publics definitely sense that when they look at U.S. and western journalism.1198 But Afghans and Pakistanis have seen themselves relatively frequently in American news the past deacde, especially since the commencement of President Obama’s first term in 2009.

In one way, Pakistani journalists are proud that American elite news finds

Pakistan newsworthy. It confers legitimacy on Pakistan’s importance in the world. The

Pakistani people’s greatest resentment toward America is when it “abandoned” them in the 1990s as it pursued nuclear weapons. The Pakistani journalists want U.S. news when it confirms their worldview because elite U.S. journalism gives their reportage credibility.

When it does not, the majority of journalists and pundits rail about it being complicit with the U.S. government. In this way, the journalists display cognitive dissonance: They hold two incompatible ideas about the nature of the American press, and the value of

American power, at once. America is necessary; America is noxious. These are the

297 typical self-contradictions of the weak and dependent. The Afghan journalists are also weak and dependent, but have a more constructive relationship with their American counterparts. The openly admit that they depend on them too much. They fear the day when U.S. news will stop talking about them again, as it will confirm that Afghanistan no longer matters to America’s story.

The Diplomatic Dimension of American News

Patricia Karl wrote in her 1982 analysis of U.S. mass-mediated coverage of the

Iran hostage crisis: “The media are increasingly a part of the process (if not the entire process) in the communications between governments and publics about international politics.”1199 Governments can share information through traditional diplomatic channels, but a nation’s news systems can reach both governments and citizens, playing an unofficial diplomatic role. Since U.S. journalists’ work is regularly consumed by

American and foreign government officials, it can help shape their opinions and therefore become part of the dynamics that affect the conduct of international relations.

American journalists can play a diplomatic role in the sense that they help

Americans, who elect leaders who can shape the world, to understand the world. They also become stand-ins, surrogates, conveying to non-Americans a plausible replica of their nation’s politics and views. They signal to Afghans and Pakistanis how the U.S. government sees the region and what it wants to happen there.

Many commentators have argued that the diplomatic dimension of journalism is that reporters can write news stories that foster understanding; that they play an unofficial, mediator role between nations and are therefore “journalists of consequence” in

298 international relations.1200 In 1964, for instance, John Hohenberg, a professor at

Columbia University and the former administrator of the Pulitzer Prize, wrote that foreign correspondents could create “understanding between peoples by bringing them more meaningful news of each other.”1201 Yet this view doesn’t take into account

American news’ asymmetric power and does not stand in today’s context.

A large majority of Afghans and Pakistanis assume that journalists are advocates for the U.S. government’s foreign policies. This is not entirely true. American journalists let the U.S. government set the news agenda on foreign matters; they project foreign issues and events through an American worldview frame; and they write mainly for American audiences. They are in Afghanistan and Pakistan because the U.S. government is there, and they will likely leave with U.S. troops sometime in 2014. Rarely, does the U.S. news media challenge the norm of U.S. power in the world, but they want to keep the government accountable so that it maintains that power as a force for good and can keep

America safe. They do not, however, work in tandem with U.S. officials.

But that doesn’t really matter. When it comes to diplomacy and global public opinion, perception is more important than reality. And the effect of U.S. news on diplomacy inside Afghanistan and Pakistan has been damaging. In Afghanistan, the stories

American journalists choose to pursue and how they frame them has contributed to the tension between the administrations of Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama. The U.S. press has not mediated understanding between the two leaders. Rather, Karzai sees U.S. journalists as co-conspirators with U.S. government officials, with the American press as a means to publicly register complaints against him and the Afghan nation.

Simultaneously, however, the American journalists have played an unintended

299 development role for Afghan journalists; they have become their instructors on how to be professional reporters. Pakistani politicians and their media, in the meantime, are well served by being anti-American and they use U.S. news selectively to validate them for being so. The fact that there is only 9 percent public approval of the U.S. drives much of

U.S.-Pakistani relations, which motivates Pakistani politicians to campaign on anti-

American platforms – and media owners to encourage ant-Americanism for high ratings.

The constant U.S. news refrain that Pakistan is a violent, epicenter for terrorism and an economic basket case can harden anti-American views.

Fundamentally, what frustrates Afghan and Pakistani reporters about American news is what frustrates them about America. The Afghan and Pakistani journalists believe U.S. news should consider their perspective more, be more empathetic, stop serving itself.

That will not happen. America’s most elite news organizations can report and explain the contours of American power and its impact abroad, but they see the world through an

American-centric, security lens. As a result, it does not bridge understanding or broker goodwill between the U.S. and the two countries. Just because American news is transnational does not mean American reporters abandon their national identity.

Nationalism is how we organize the world and make sense of conflict. We cannot easily transcend it. As Americans, even when we are talking about them, we are still talking about us.

300

ENDNOTES

PREFACE.

1 The White House, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” October 2002 (Washington, DC), http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/

2 The White House, “Apparatus of Lies Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda:1990-2003.” February 2003 (Washington, DC) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.../docs/Underground-Apparatus.pdf

3 Craig Smith, “The Intimidating Face of America,” New York Times, October 13, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/international/asia/13letter.html

4 James Glanz and Alissa Rubin, “Blackwater Shootings ‘Murder,’ Iraq Says,” New York Times. October 8, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html?pagewanted=all

5 Shamim-ur-Rahman, “Pakistan should do more: Khalilzad - US envoy reiterates claim,” Dawn (Pakistan), April 19, 2004, http://archives.dawn.com/2004/04/19/top4.htm

6 Hasan Akhtar, “Khalilzad's remarks irresponsible: FO,” Dawn (Pakistan), April 20, 2004, http://archives.dawn.com/2004/04/20/top6.htm

CHAPTER 1. The Afghan, American, Pakistani Entanglement: Introduction

7 Susan B. Epstein and K. Alan Kronstadt, “Pakistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance.” Congressional Research Service. June 7, 2011; “About Those Billions,” Newsweek. Oct. 20, 2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/10/21/about-those-billions.html

8 Bumiller, Elisabeth, “Remembering Afghanistan’s Golden Age,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18bumiller.html?_r=0

9 Rhoda Margesson, “Afghan Refugees: Current States and Future Prospects,” Congressional Research Service, Jan. 26, 2007.

10 Jayshree Bajoria, “The Taliban in Afghanistan,” Council on Foreign Relations, Oct. 6, 2011. http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/taliban-afghanistan/p10551

11 “Direct Overt U.S. Aid Appropriations for and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2014,” Congressional Research Service, April 11, 2013, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/pakaid.pdf; “U.S. Spending on the Afghan War,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 15, 2012, http://csis.org/files/.../120515_US_Spending_Afghan_War_SIGAR

12 Barack Obama, “Obama's Remarks on bin Laden's Killing,” New York Times, May 1, 2011.

13 Dan Barry, “A Singular Moment, And a Mix of Emotion Stored for a Decade,” New York Times. May 2, 2011.

14 Dan Balz, “A moment of national unity at a time of deep divisions,” Washington Post. May 2, 2011.

15 “Pakistan TV show says Al-Qa'idah, splinter groups to avenge Usamah killing (GEO TV),” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2011.

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16 “Pakistan says Bin-Ladin's death major "setback" for terror groups (Associated Press of Pakistan),” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2, 2011.

17 Larisa Epatko, “10 Years Later, 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Linger in Pakistan,” PBS NewsHour, Sept. 2, 2011. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/09/view-from-pakistan-on-911.html

18 Rabia Mehmood, “Other Views On Pakistan TV,” New York Times. May 3, 2011. Abbasi from Geo also claimed that Pakistani government and military officials “admit that the U.S. is an enemy of Pakistan and of Muslims” but “when they are face to face [with Americans], [they] cannot communicate this.”

19 “Support for Campaign Against Extremists Wanes: U.S. Image in Pakistan Falls No Further Following bin Laden Killing,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 21, 2011. http://pewglobal.org/2011/06/21/u-s- image-in-pakistan-falls-no-further-following-bin-laden-killing/1/

20 Hamid Mir, “Pakistan article says Bin-Ladin never accepted responsibility for 9/11 attacks,” The News (Pakistan), May 3, 2011.

21 “Quotes from Pakistan press 3 May 11,” BBC Monitoring Service, May 4, 2011.

22 “Afghanistan Transition: The Death of bin Laden and Local Dynamics,” The International Council on Security and Development, May 2011. http://www.icosgroup.net/2011/report/bin-laden-local-dynamics2/. The International Council on Security and Development, an independent research organization, interviewed them. They also thought that bin Laden’s death would have a negative effect on the Taliban.

23 “Bin-Ladin's death "good news" for Afghanistan - opposition leader (Tolo TV).” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2, 2011.

24 “Programme summary of Afghan Tolo TV news in Dari 1330 gmt 2 May 11,” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2, 2011.

25 “Participants of Afghan TV debate welcome Usamah Bin-Ladin's killing (Radio Television Afghanistan),” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2, 2011; “Afghan president pleased by Al-Qa'idah leader's death (Radio Television Afghanistan),” BBC Monitoring Service, May 2, 2011.

26 “Afghanistan Transition: Missing Variables,” The International Council on Security and Development, November 2010. http://www.icosgroup.net/2010/report/afghanistan-transition-missing-variables/

27 Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company), 1922.

28 Adam Clayton Powell, II, “The Global News Hour,” Gannett Center Journal World Media, Vol. 4, No. 4, (Fall 1990): 10-20.

29 William A. Hachten and James Scotton, The World News Prism (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University), 2002, 34.

30 Michael Schudson, Sociology of News, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company), 2003.

31 Qtd. In Emile McAnany, “Television and Crisis: Ten Years of Network News Coverage of Central America, 1972-1981,” Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1983): 199-212.

32 See: W. Phillips Davidson, Donald R. Shanor, and Frederick T.C. Yu, News from Abroad and the Foreign Policy Public. (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1980), 12-15.

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33 See: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Many Voices, One World: Toward a More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order, (Paris: UNESCO), 1980, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066eb.pdf

34 See: S. Barakat, “Setting the Scene for Afghanistan's Reconstruction: The Challenges and Critical Dilemmas,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 5 (2002): 801-816; P. Marsden, “Afghanistan: The Reconstruction Process,” International Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 1 (2003): 91-105; A. Saikal, “Afghanistan After the Loya Jirga,” Survival, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2003): 47-56; A. Their and J. Chopra, “The Road Ahead: Political and Institutional Reconstruction in Afghanistan,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 5 (2003): 893-907.

35 S.M. Rawan. “Modern Mass Media and Traditional Communication in Afghanistan,” Political Communication, Vol. 19 (2003): 155-170.

36 “Press Freedom Index 2011-2012,” Reporters Without Borders, 2013, http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom- index-2011-2012,1043.html

CHAPTER 2. Nationalism in America, Nationalism Everywhere: Literature Review.

37 John C. Merrill, Global Journalism (New York: Longham), 1995, 40. Merrill elaborated on this point in an earlier article in 1990 that the global elite newspapers include the Western world’s Le Monde, Die Welt, The New York Times, the Washington Post. “Where are such papers as Pravda or Izvestia of the Soviet Union, and China’s Renmin Ribao? Surely they are important national papers. They are where they belong: in the more provincial, middle-area, pragmatic segment of the world’s press. Well edited, professionally produced, appealing to certain leadership groups in their countries, yes, but they are not well developed as open, free, insightful, informative and analytical journals appealing to serious cosmopolitan readers.” John C. Merrill, “Global Elite: A Newspaper Community of Freedom,” Gannett Center Journal World Media, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Fall 1990): 94-95.

38 Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkely: University of California Press), 1980; David L. Paletz, The Media in American Politics (New York: Longman), 2002; Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, “Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus,” Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 42 (1998): 29-61; Hamid Mowlana, Global Communication in Transition, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications), 1996; David L. Paletz and Robert Entman, Media, Power, and Politics, (New York: Free Press), 1991.

39 The U.S. Department of State, “Passport Statistics,” 2012, http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.html ; U.S. Office of Travel and Tourism Industries “U.S. Citizen Air Traffic to Overseas Regions, Canada and Mexico 2011,” 2011, http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/outbound.general_information.outbound_overview.html

40 Stuart N. Soroka, “Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy,” Press/Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2003): 27- 48; C. Roach, Communication and Culture in War and Peace, (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications), 1993.

41 Philio.Wasburn, The Social Construction of International News: We’re Talking about Them, They’re Talking about Us (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), 2002: 163.

42 For more on the function of American news in U.S. foreign policy see: W. Lance Bennett, “Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 40 (1990): 103-125; Eytan Gilboa, “Global Communication and Foreign Policy,” International Communication Association, 2002; Ole Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 2004; M. Linsky, Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,) 1986; Chanan Naveh, “The Role of the Media in Foreign Policy Decision-Making: A

303

Theoretical Framework,” Conflict & Communication Online, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2002); David L. Paletz and Robert Entman, Media, Power, and Politics, (New York: Free Press), 1991; David L Paletz, The Media in American Politics, (New York: Longman), 2002; James Reston, The Artillery of the Press: Its Influence on American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row), 1966; Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention, (London: Routledge), 2002; Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2001.

43 Gitlin, 1980

44 Wasburn, 2002: 163

45 A governmental agenda here is defined by John W. Kingdon, “the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time.” John W Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. (Boston: Little, Brown), 1984: 3.

46 Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking, (Lexington, Mass: D. C. Heath), 1973; Tim Cook, Governing with the News, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1996.

47 Ibid; Gitlin, 1980; Daniel Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1989; N.O. Berry, Foreign Policy and the Press: An Analysis of The New York Times’ Coverage of U.S. Foreign Policy, (New York: Greenwood Press), 1996; William A. Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference, (London: University of California Press), 1987.

48 See: Robert Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy, (Chicago: University of Chicago), 2004; Robert Entman, “Doomed to Repeat: Iraq News, 2002-2007,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 52, No. 5 (2009): 689-708; Paul Manning, News and News Sources: A Critical Introduction, (London: Sage), 2001.

49 Susan L Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2000: 5.

50 John Zaller and Dennis Chiu, “Government’s Little Helper: U.S. Press Coverage of Foreign Policy Crises, 1945-1991,” Political Communication, Vol. 13, No. 2, (1996): 385-405; This is also a typical refrain in Noam Chomsky’s work; news framing normally reflects the interests of the government and dominant ideology of the nation where the news agency is based. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, (New York: Random House), 1988.

51 Piers Robinson, “Researching U.S. Media-State Relations and Twenty-First Century Wars.” In Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, Eds. Allan, Stuart and Barbie Zelizer, (Oxford: Routledge), 2004.

52 Soraka, 2003.

53 Powlick & Katz, 1998; Behr R.L. and S. Iyengar, “Television News, Real World Cues and Changes in the Public Agenda,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 49: 38-57.

54 Bennett, 1990 and 1994.

55 Bennett, 1994; Cook, Governing with the News, 1994.

304

56 Tim Cook, “Domesticating a Crisis: Washington Newsbeats and Network News after the Iraq Invasion of Kuwait,” In Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, Eds. Lance W. Bennett and David L. Paletz, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1994.

57 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics (5th ed), (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly), 1997: 271.

58 Bennett, 1994.

59 Reston, 1966; Berry, 1996.

60 Holsti, 2004: 289, 316.

61 Robert Entman, “Framing U.S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts In Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1991)

62 Patrick O’Heffernan, Insider Perspectives on Global Journalism and the Foreign Policy Process, (Westport, CT: Alex Publishing), 1991: 232-233.

63 W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence and Steven Livingston, Journal of Communication, Vol. 56, No. 3 (2006): 467-485.

64 Meg Greenfield, Washington, (New York: Public Affairs), 2001.

65 Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston, 2006.

66 Bennett, 2004; 107.

67 Hallin, 1989: 116-117.

68 Entman, Robert M. 2003. “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House’s Frame after 9/11.” Political Communication. Vol. 20, Issue 4: Pgs. 413-432.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 John M. Goshko, “UN Chief Stresses Need for Money,” Washington Post, Nov. 22, 1992. A1, A33. Quoted in Mark D. Alleyne, International Power and International Communication, (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 1995: 66

305

78 Quoted in: Eytan Gilboa, “The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations,” Political Communication, Vol. 22 (2005): 28

79 Gal Beckerman, “Let’s Report More, Take Credit Less,” Columbia Journalism Review, May, 6, 2006

80 Steven Livingston, “Limited Vision: How Both the American Media and Government Failed Rwanda,” In The Media and The Rwanda Genocide, Ed. Thompson, Allan (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press), 2007: 188- 197

81 Linsky, 1986; Berry, 1996

82 Hallin, 1989: 169

83 Robinson, 2002: 118

84 Ibid.

85 Christiane Amanpour of CNN told McLaughlin that she perceived these media effects on policy to be short-term. “Often politicians are caught flat-footed on being forced to react to an event immediately, without taking the time to study and make considered, better informed responses.” But instant responses to media pressure, she said, “are not policy responses, but merely palliative measures to relieve urgent need. They had no long-term effect of ending the war or bringing about direct, western military intervention. Policy-making goes much deeper than that. It goes to the heart of diplomacy, realpoitik, self-interest.” Nik Gowing, the former diplomatic editor for BBC World, similarly told McLaughlin in 2002 that whether or not media can influence policy depends on how strong the policy and the communications strategy is for the issue. Only if there is “some kind of profound event, like the Kurds in southern Turkey at the end of the Gulf War in February 1991, like Srbrenica in April 1993, when there’s no policy and everyone panicked and said, ‘Oh shit, we’ve got to do something!” If the government has a strong message on the issue, that usually means they have got it under control. Greg McLaughlin, The War Correspondent, (London: Pluto Press), 2002:197-198

86 Steven Livingston and Todd Eachus, “Rwanda: U.S. Policy and Television Coverage,” in The path of a genocide: the Rwanda crisis from Uganda to Zaire, Eds H. Adelman and A. Suhrke, (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers), 2000.

87 Jonathan Mermin, “Television News and American Intervention in Somalia: The Myth of a Media- Driven Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 112, No. 3 (1997): 385-403.

88 Dorman and Farhang, 1987: 229

89 Gilboa, 2005: 38

90 Soroka, 2003; Naveh, 2002.

91 See: Paul R. Brewer, Joseph Graf and Lars Wilnat, “Priming or Framing: Media Influence on Attitudes toward Foreign Countries,” Gazette: International Journal for Mass Communication Studies, Vol. 65, No. 6 (2003): 493-508.

92 Robinson, 2002: 126.

93 M. McCombs and D. Shaw, "The agenda-setting function of mass media."Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1973).

94 Ibid: 180

306

95 Ibid

96 Bernard Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1963: 13, emphasis in the original.

97 Wayne Wanta, Guy Golan and Cheolhan Lee. “Agenda Setting and International News: Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 2 (2004): 364-377.

98 Ibid; Guy Golan and Wayne Wanta, “Second-level Agenda Setting in the New Hampshire Primary: A Comparison of Coverage in Three Newspapers and Public Perceptions of Candidates,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 78 (2001): 247-259.

99 Wayne Wanta and Yu-Wei Hu, “The Agenda-Setting Effects of International News Coverage: An Examination of Differing News Frames,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Vol. 5 (1993): 250-264; Michael B. Salwen and Frances Matera, “Public Salience of Foreign Nations,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 69 (1989): 623-632.

100 John T. McNelly and Fausto Izcaray, “International News Exposure and Images of Nations,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 63 (1992): 546-553.

101 Roger W. Cobb and Charles D. Elder, “The Politics of Agenda-Building: An Alternative Perspective for Modern Democratic Theory,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 33, No. 4 (November 1971): 892-915.

102 Graber, 1997; Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (New York: Vintage Books), 2004.

103 Powlick and Katz, 1998.

104 Dietram Scheufele, “Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication,” Mass Communication & Society, Vol. 3 (2000): 297-316.

105 G.E. Lang and K. Lang, Watergate: An Exploration of the Agenda-Building Process, (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications), 1981: 465.

106 Wasburn, 2002: 25

107 Maxwell McCombs, Setting the Agenda, (Cambridge, UK: Polity), 2004.

108 Wanta and Hu, 1993; Guy Golan and Wayne Wanta, “International Elections on the U.S. Network News: An Examination of Factors Affecting Newsworthiness,” Gazette, Vol. 65 (2003): 25-39; Denis W. Wu, “Investigating the Determinants of International News Flow: A Meta-Analysis.” The International Journal for Communication Studies, Vol. 60 (1998): 493-512.

109 Gans, 2004: 19, 37.

110 Gans, 2004; 31

111 Gans, 2004; 42

112 Gans, 2004; 31

113 Powlick and Katz, 1998.

307

114 See: Chang Tsan-Kuo, Tuen-yu Lan and Hao Xiaoming, “From the United States with News and More: International Flow, Television Coverage and the World System,” Gazette, Vol. 62, No. 6. (December 2000): 505-522; John Lent, “Foreign News in American Media,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 27 (Winter 1977): 46-51; George Gerbner and George Marvanyi, “The Many Worlds of the World’s Press,” Journal of Communications, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter 1977): 52-66; Melissa Johnson, “Predicitng News Flow from Mexico,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 2. (1997): 315-331; Denis H. Wu, “Systemic Determinants of International News Coverage: A Comparison of 38 Countries,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring 2000): 110-130.

115 See: Golan and Wayne, 2003; Wu, 1998; Wanta and Hu, 1993; K. Kim and G.A. Barnett, “The Determinants of International News Flow: A Network Analysis,” Communications Research, Vol. 23 (1996): 323-352; T.K. Chang, “All Countries Not Created Equal to be News: World System and International Communication,” Communication Research, Vol. 25 (1998): 528-566; Golan and Wanta, 2003: 25-39.

116 See: Chang, 1998; In the 1970s, ABC, CBS and NBC dedicated 32.4 percent of their international news coverage to the Middle East, 21.1 percent on Western Europe, 10.8 percent on Eastern Europe, 9.5 percent on Asia and only 6.2 percent on Latin America. James B. Weaver,, Christopher J. Porter, and Margaret E. Evans, “Patterns of Foreign News Coverage on U.S. Network TV: A Ten-Year Analysis,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 61 (1984): 356-363.

117 See: Chang and Nancy Bredlinger, 1987; Zixue Tai, “Media of the World and World of the Media: A Cross-National Study of the Rankings of the ‘Top 10 World Events’ from 1988 to 1998,” Gazette, Vol. 62, No. 5 (October 2000): 331-353.

118 See: Stephen Hess, International News and Foreign Correspondents (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 1996: Xiii and 99; Christopher E. Beaudoin and Esther Thorson, “Value Representation in Foreign News,” Gazette, Vol. 63, No. 6 (December 2001): 486; Beverly Horvit, “Combat, Political Violence Top International Categories,” Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring 2003): 23- 35; Morton Rosenblum’s “coups and earthquakes” theory showed that news from the third world is only important when it is a crisis. Morton Rosenblum, Coups and Earthquakes, (New York: Harper and Row), 1979.

119 Wayne Wanta, Guy Golan and Cheolhan Lee, “Agenda Setting and International News: Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 2 (2004): 364-377; Golan and Wanta, 2001: 247-259.

120 A course at the Poynter Center’s News University advises students to learn to “report global issues locally” and find the angle that will connect with local audiences; a course said it will “help you find local resources and show you how to tell a global story without a large travel budget. Poynter Center News University. 2009. “Reporting Global Issues Locally.” Quoted in Bella Mody, The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur, (Boulder, CO: Lexington Books), 2010: 24

121 James Carey, “The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” in Reading the News, Eds Robert Manoff and Michael Schudson, (New York: Pantheon), 1986: 146-196.

122 Russell W. Neuman, Marion R. Just and Ann N. Crigler, Common Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1992.

123 Simon Cottle, Global Crisis Reporting, (Berkshire, England: Open University Press), 2009.

124 Beaudoin, Christopher E. and Esther Thorson, “Value Representation in Foreign News.” Gazette. Vol. 63, No. 6 (December 2001): 486.

308

125 See: Daniel C. Hallin and Todd Gitlin, “The Gulf War as Popular Culture and Television Drama,” In Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War, Eds. Lance W. Bennett and David L. Paletz, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1994: 149; Carruthers, 2000: 7, 4.

126 Hallin and Gitlin. 1994: 149.

127 Carruthers, 2000: 7.

128 Cited by Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in World War I, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1927: 192.

129 Carruthers, 2000: 4.

130 J. Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power, (New York: Longman), 1995.

131 See Karl E. Weick, Sense-making in Organizations, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press), 1995; Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2004: 32-33

132 Giovanna Dell’Orto, Giving Meanings to the World: The First U.S. Foreign Correspondents, 1838-1859, (London: Greenwood Press), 2002: 122

133 Robert Entmann, “Framing U.S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts In Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1991).

134 See: Stephen Hess, International News and Foreign Correspondents, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 1996: xiii and 99; Beaudoin and Thorson, 2001: 486; Beverly Horvit, “Combat, Political Violence Top International Categories,” Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring 2003): 23-35.

135 Wasburn, 2002; 154

136 See: Dietram Scheufele, “Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication,” Mass Communication & Society, Vol. 3 (2000): 297-316; Wanta, Golan and Lee, 2004: 364-377; Golan and Wanta, 2001: 247-259.

137 See: Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on Organization and Experience, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1974; Severine Autesserre, “Hobbes and the Congo – Frames, Local Violence, and International Intervention in the Congo,” International Organization, Vol. 63 (2009): 249-280.

138 See: Entman, 2004; Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just, Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public, (London: Routledge), 2003: 11; Gitlin, 1980.

139 Maxwell McCombs, Esteban Lopez-Escobar and Juan Pablo Llamas, “Setting the Agenda of Attributes in the 1996 Spanish General Election,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 50, No. 2 ( 2000): 77-92; Scheufele, 2000.

140 Entman, 1993; 52; Nelson and Kinder, 1996; Arie S. Soesilo and Philo C. Wasburn, “Constructing a Political Spectacle: American and Indonesian Media Accounts of the ‘Crisis in the Gulf,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1994): 367-381.

141 Gitlin, 1980; 7.

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142 Cohen, 1963; Ulf Hannerz, Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2004: 211.

143 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 4-6; They define terrorism as “the systematic use of coercive intimidation against civilians for political goals.”

144 Hess, 1996: Pgs. xiii and 99; Beaudoin and Thorson, 2001: 486; Horvit, 2003: 23-35.

145 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 11

146 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 15

147 Entman, 2003.

148 Ibid.

149 Ibid.

150 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 4; Brigitte Nacos and Torres Reyna pointed out that before 9/11, national news coverage – but especially news in New York – employed negative news frames for Arabs and Muslims. Brigitte Nacos and Torres Reyna, ”Framing Muslim-Americans Before and After 9/11.” In Eds. Norris, Pippa, Montague Kern and Marion Just, Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public, (London: Routledge), 2003: 154.

151 Z. Pan and G.M. Kosicki, “Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse,” Political Communication, Vol. 10 (1993): 55–75.

152 Scheufele, 2000.

153 Autessere, 2009.

154 Weick,1995.

155 Ibid.

156 Autessere, 2009; Weick 1995.

157 Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1996: 15

158 Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1998; Keck and Sikkink argue that frames either already exist, or they emerge by people – including officials and journalists – relying on them repeatedly. Barnett and Finnemore take a more organizational approach to framing, finding it part of the culture of international bureaucracies.

159 See: Weick, 1995; Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Eden, 2004; Autessere, 2009.

160 This is not just for foreign correspondents; Michael Schudson found that the constraints of journalistic practice, compounded by the demands of a 24-hour news cycle, makes explanation in news limited. Michael Schudson, “The Sociology of News Production (Again),” In Mass Media and Society, Eds. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, (London: Arnold), 2003; Also see: Philip M Taylor, “The Military and the Media Past, Present and Future,” In The Media and International Security, Eds. Stephen Badsey, (London: Frank Cass), 2003: 179.

310

161 Taylor, 2000: 184-185.

162 Mark Pedelty, War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents, (New York: Routledge), 1995; Hannerz, 2004: 211; Jaap Van Ginneken, Understanding global news: A Critical Introduction, (California: Sage Publications), 1998: 65-75.

163 Pedelty, 1995; Hannerz, 2004: 211.

164 Pedelty, 1995: 220.

165 John Maxwell Hamilton, Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting, (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press), 2011; Bennett, 1990.

166 Taylor, 2000: 179.

167 Taylor, 2000: 184-185.

168 Van Ginneken, 1998: 65-75.

169 Hannerz, 2004: 212, 217.

170 Bella Mody, The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur (Boulder, CO: Lexington Books), 2010: 328.

171 Cook, Governing with the News, 1994.

172 Ibid; Carruthers, 2000: 16.

173 A note on technology: The tools modern day foreign correspondents have to tell their stories range from the Internet to satellite and video phones. The video-phone, McLaughlin argued, gave a sense of immediacy and grittiness to western audiences that had long dismissed Afghanistan as a remote and intangible country. With the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, just a small number of international journalists – including those from the BBC and al Jazeera -- were licensed to operate in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. When the war began, the U.S. military gave a few journalists the opportunity to embed with soldiers, who were mainly Special Forces. Most reportage of Afghanistan actually came from Pakistan. Stories came mostly from government officials and Afghan refugees in Pakistan. In this way, technology compounds journalism’s struggle to remain objective; the sheer quantity and speed of news does not necessarily lend itself to the airing of diverse views (24-25).. McLaughlin, 2002: 203

174 Pedelty, 1995; 126.

175 Van Ginneken, 1998: 86.

176 Taylor, 2000: 190.

177 Mody, 2010.

178 Carruthers, 2000: 10.

179 McLaughlin, 2002: 13.

180 McLaughlin, 2002: 23.

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181 Hannerz, 2004.

182 Powlick and Katz, 1998: 42.

183 Hess, 2005: 101.

184 Wasburn, 2002: 20; See: Colin Cherry, World Communication: Threat or Promise? (New York: Wiley), 1978; Thomas L. McPhail, Electronic Colonialism: The Future of International Broadcasting and Communication (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage), 1978; Herbert I. Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination, (White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press), 1976; Jeremy Tunstall, The Media are American, (London: Constable), 1977.

185 Stephen Reese, “Theorizing a Globalized Journalism,” in Global Journalism Research: Theories, Methods, Findings, Future,” Eds. Martin Loffelholz and David Weaver, (Boston: Blackwell Publishing), 2008.

186 Dell’Orto, Giovanna, “Foreign Policy and Foreign Correspondence: Integrating IR and Communication Theories to Examine the History of Press Involvement in International Affairs,” International Studies Association Annual Conference, Montreal, 2011.

187 Mody, 2010: 22.

188 Dell’Orto, 2011.

189 Gans, 2004; Beaudoin and Thorson, 2002.

190 Reese, 2008. Reese’s definition of global journalism is “a system of newsgathering, editing and distribution not based on national or regional boundaries—where it is not expected that shared national or community citizenship is the common reference uniting newsmakers, journalists, and audience.” These outlets include CNN International and the BBC.

191 Reese, 2008.

192 Dennis Wu, “Systemic Determinants of International News Coverage: A Comparison of 38 Countries,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring 2000):110-130.

193 Hess, 2005; 129; Wasburn, 2002: 20.

194 Wasburn, 2002: 43-44.

195 Ibid.

196 Wasburn, 2002: 45.

197 Wasburn, 2002; 4, 129, 148-149. The news cleavages are not just the U.S., or West, vs. the rest of the world. Even within the West – or countries that are considered liberal democracies, like Japan – there are fractions.

198 Frank Louis Rusciano, “Framing World Opinion in the Elite Press,” In Norris, Pippa, Montague Kern and Marion Just. Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public, (London: Routledge), 2003: 174-175.

199 Ingrid Lehmann, “Exploring the Transatlantic Media Divide over Iraq: How and Why U.S. and German Media Differed in Reporting on UN Weapons Inspections in Iraq, 2002-2003,” The International Journal

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of Press/Politics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter 2003): 63-89; Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck, “Mission Accomplished? Framing of the Iraq War in the Elite Newspapers in Sweden and the United States,” Gazette, Vol. 67, No. 5 (2004): 399–417.

200 C.C. Lee and J. Yang, “Foreign News and National Interest: Comparing U.S. and Japanese Coverage of the Chinese Student Movement.” Gazette. Vol. 56 (1995): 1-18; Chin-Chuan Lee and Joseph Man Chan, Zhongdang Pan and Clement Y. K. So, “National Prisms of a Global ‘Media Event,’” In Mass Media and Society. Ed. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, (London: Arnold), 2000.

201 Betwa Sharma, “Good COP, Bad COP: Reflections on Covering the Copenhagen Climate Summit,” Columbia Journalism Review, Dec. 22, 2009.

202 Taylor, 2000: 179.

203 Wasburn, 2002: 124.

204 Soesilo and Wasburn, 1994: 377.

204 Ibid; Gaye Tuchman, Making News (New York: The Free Press), 1978.

205 Chin-Chuan Lee, Joseph Man Chan, Zhongdang Pan and Clement Y. K. So, “National Prisms of a Global ‘Media Event,’” In Mass Media and Society, Ed. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, (London: Arnold), 2000.

206 Stephen D. Reese, “Understanding the Global Journalist: A Hierarchy-of-Influences Approach,” Journalism Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2001): 173-187.

207 Kai Hafez, The Myth of Media Globalization, (Cambridge, UK: Polity), 2007.

208 Mody, 2010: 321.

209 Mody, 2010: 322.

210 Mody, 2010: 29.

211 World Bank, “The Information Age,” World Development Report, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2009.

212 M. Ayish, “Political Communication on Arab World Television: Evolving Patterns,” Political Communication, Vol. 19 (2002): 137-154.

213 Joseph Straubhaar, World Television: From Global to Local, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 2007.

214 Mody, 2010: 322.

215 Taylor, 2000: 179.

216 Werner A. Meier, “Media Ownership—Does It Matter?” in Networking Knowledge for Information Societies, Eds. Mansell, Robin, Rohan Samarajiwa and Amy Mahan, (Delft: Delft University Press), 2003; Mody, 2010: 25.

217 Wasburn, 2002:101; See also: C. Anthony Gifford, “Developed and Developing Nation News in the U.S. Wire Service Files to Asia,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 61 (1984): 14-19; Mustapha Masmoudi, “The New World Information Order,” Document 21, UNESCO International Commission for the Study of Social

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Problems (Paris: UNESCO), 1978; McPhail, 1987; Rita Cruise O’Brien, “The Political Economy of Information: A North-South Perspective,” In George Gerbner and Marsha Siefert, eds, World Communications: A Handbook, (New York, Longman), 1984: 37-44.; Rosenblume, 1978: 104-126; Elizabeth Fox, Media and Politics in Latin America: The Struggle for Democracy, (Newbury Park, CA: Sage), 1988; Goran Hedebro, Communication and Social Change in Developing Nations: A Critical View, (Ames: Iowa State University Press), 1982.

218 Wasburn, 2002: 124.

219 Narsimhan Ravi, “Looking Beyond Flawed Journalism: How National Interests, Patriotism and Cultural Values Shaped the Coverage of the Iraq War,” Harvard Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 10. No. 1, 2005: 45- 62.

220 Jeremy Tunstall and David Machin, The Anglo-American Media Connection, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1999; Mody, 2010: 14.

221 Daya Kishan Thussu, “Managing the Media in an Era of Round-the-Clock News: Notes from India’s First Tele-War,” Journalism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2002): 203-212.

222 William A. Hachten and James Scotton, The World News Prism, (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University), 2002; The normative framework of western news media, too, is often emulated overseas. Western media, Nisbet et. al argued in 2004, has had a large impact on how news organizations are structured in the Muslim world, and how publics consume news, as emerging news networks have been pushed to be globally competitive. Al Jazeera created a new model for countries in the Middle East and South Asia based on western global news networks; although, “Even though the Muslim public has had limited exposure to Western media, the diversity, structure, and format of Western media coverage has provided an alternative image of what Muslim news media could provide.” Erik C. Nisbet, Matthew C. Nisbet, Dietram A. Scheufele and James E. Shanahan, “Public Diplomacy, Television News and Muslim Opinion,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 9, Issue 2 (2002): 11-37.

223 Chang, 1998.

224 Dell’Orto, 2011; Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 34-35.

225 William H. Meyer, “Structures of North-South Information Flows: An Empirical Test of Galtung’s Theory,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1991): 230-237.

226 Dell’Orto, 2011.

227 Stephen D. McDowell, “Theory and Research in International Communication: A Historical and Institutional Account,” In Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication, Second Edition, Eds. Gudykunst, William B. and Bella Mody, (London: Sage Publications), 2002: 302.

228 Quoted in W. Phillips Davidson, Donald R. Shanor, and Frederick T.C. Yu, News from Abroad and the Foreign Policy Public, (New York: Foreign Policy Association), 1980: 12-15.

229 Mustapha, 1978.

230 Robert G. Picard, “Global Communication Controversies,” In Global Journalism, Ed. John C. Merrill, (New York: Longman), 1991.

231 A. Sreberny-Mohammadi, Kaarle Nordenstreng, R. L. Stevesnon and Frank Ugboajah, “Foreign News in the Media. International Reporting in 29 Countries. Final Report of the “Foreign Images” Study Undertaken for UNESCO by the IAMCR,” UNESCO, 1985.

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232 Roxanne Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1996.

233 D. Campbell, Writing Security: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1992.

234 Mahmoud Mamdani, "Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 43, No. 4 (October 2001): 651- 664

235 Autessere, 2009.

236 Mody, 2010: 20.

237 Susan L Carruthers, “Tribalism and Tribulation: Media Constructions of ‘African Savagery’ and ‘Western Humanitarianism’ in the 1990s,” In Reporting War, eds. Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer, (New York: Routledge), 2004.

238 Dell’Orto, 2011.

239 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 34.

240 Hess, 1996.

241 Wasburn, 2002.

242 Dell’Orto, 2002: 9.

243 Stuart Hall, “The Rediscovery of ‘Ideology’: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies,” In Culture, Society and the Media, Eds. Bennett, Tony, James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woollacott, (London: Methuan), 1982: 56-90.

244 Lippmann, 1922.

CHAPTER 3. Twice the Forgotten War: American News on Afghanistan & Pakistan, 2001-2012

245 Barry Bearak and James Risen, “Reports Disagree on Fate of Anti-Taliban Rebel Chief,” New York Times, September 11, 2001.

246 Barry Bearak, “Accused Aid Workers Face Islamic Judges in Afghanistan,” New York Times, September 9, 2001.

247 Barry Bearak, “Over World Protests, Taliban Are Destroying Ancient Buddhas,” New York Times, March 4, 2001.

248 Ibid.

249 See: Hess, 1996: xiii and 99; Beaudoin and Thorson, 2001: 486; Horvit, 2003: pgs. 23-35; Chang, Tsan- Kuo, Pamela Shoemaker and Nancy Bredlinger, “Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media,” Communications Research, Vol. 14, No. 4 (August 1987): 396-414.; Zixue Tai, “Media of the World and World of the Media: A Cross-National Study of the Rankings of the ‘Top 10 World Events’ from 1988 to 1998,” Gazette, Vol. 62, No. 5 (October 2000): 331-353; Rosemary Righter, Whose News: Politics, the Press and the Third World, (New York: Times Books), 1978; Sally Bedall Smith, “Why TV

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News Can’t Be A Complete View of the World,” New York Times, Aug. 8, 1982. Holding Carter, a media critic, said in 1982 that American news networks, by focusing on violence, showed an “extraordinary lack of continuity and perspective, which is the shadow of all television news.” This is because, Gerald Long of Reuters said in 1978, that the rule is to show the exception, not the norm in a country: “In other words, you don’t report that everything is fine in Pakistan. You report that there has been an air crash.”

250 The papers included were the elite newspapers, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post; and five, lesser-read newspapers, Boston Globe, Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, San Francisco Chronicle and Tampa Tribune.

251 Beverly Horvit, “Some Papers Gave Scant Space to Taliban, Afghanistan Pre-9/11,” In Media in an American Crisis: Studies of September 11, 2001, Eds. Grusin, Elinor Kelley and Sandra H. Utt , (New York: University Press of America), 2005: 131-142.

252 Serge Schmemann, “U.S. ATTACKED; President Vows to Exact Punishment for 'Evil',” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2001.

253 Barry, Bearak, “A DAY OF TERROR: THE AFGHANS; Condemning Attacks, Taliban Says bin Laden Not Involved,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2001.

254 Frank Newport, “Overwhelming Support for War Continues,” Gallup, Nov. 29, 2001. http://www.gallup.com/poll/5083/overwhelming-support-war-continues.aspx

255 Donald Matheson and Stuart Allan. Digital War Reporting, (Malden, MA: Polity Press), 2009: 12.

256 Daniel Riffe, Charles F. Aust, Ted C. Jones, Barbara Shoemake and Shyam Sundar, “The Shrinking Foreign Newshole of the New York Times,” Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer 1994): 74-89; Michael Emery, “An Endangered Species: The International Newshole,” Freedom Forum Media Studies Journal, Vol. 3 (Fall 1989): 151-164; John Maxwell Hamilton and George A. Krimsky, “’Juju’ News from Abroad,” Freedom Forum Media Studies Journal, Vol. 20, No. 9 (November 1998): 50-67; Ed Seaton, “The Diminishing Use of Foreign News Reporting (Remarks),” International Press Institute, May 26, 1998. http://www.asne.org/ideas/seatonmoscow.htm

257 Max Frankel, “The Shroud,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 17, 1994; Dan Rather was also quoted as telling Harvard students: “Foreign coverage requires the most space and the most air time because you are dealing with complicated situations, in which you have to explain a lot. And then there’s always somebody around who says people don’t give a damn about this stuff anyway.” Qtd in Hess, “International News and Foreign Correspondents”: 61.

258 James B. Weaver, Christopher J. Porter and Margaret E. Evans, “Patterns of Foreign News Coverage on U.S. Network TV: A Ten-Year Analysis,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 61 (1984): 356-363; Seaton, 1998; Emery, 1989; Hachten and Scotton, 116; The decline in coverage of international news in the magazines Time and Newsweek, particularly, was significant. Throughout 1995, Time devoted 14 percent of its coverage to international news; and Newsweek 12 percent of its coverage. But in 1985, Time dedicated 24 percent to foreign news; Newsweek 22 percent.” By 1995, foreign news represented only 13.5 percent of total coverage; budgets and staff were cut, foreign bureaus were closed, and media began to emphasize economic concerns.

259 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 15.

260 Matheson and Allan, 2009: 12.

261 George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” The White House, Sept. 20, 2001. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html

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262 Andrew Calabrese and Barbara Burke, “American Identities: Nationalism, the Media and the Public Sphere,” Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer 1992): 52-73; John Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism, (Glasgow: Harper Collins), 1994; Vanessa Beasely, “The Rhetoric of Ideological Consensus in the United States: American Principles and American Prose in Presidential Inaugurals,” Communications Monographs, Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 2001): 169-183; Nancy K. Rivenburgh, “Social Identity and News Portrayals of Citizens Involved in International Affairs,” Media Psychology, Vol. 2, No. 4 (November 2000): 303-329; Philip Schlesinger, “Media, the Political Order and National Identity,” Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3 (July 1991): 297-308; David Katz, “Nationalism and Conflict Resolution,” International Behavior: A Social Psychological Analysis, Ed. Herbert C. Kelman, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 1965.

263 Entman, 2003.

264 Congressional Quarterly, 1990.

265 Schudson, 2003: 188.

266 Cohen, J. 1995; 88

267 Denton and Hahn, 1986; 53

268 George W. Bush, “Address to the Joint Session of Congress, 20 Sept. 2001,” The White House, Jan. 20, 2001; Jarol B. Manheim, All the People, All the Times: Strategic Communication and American Politics, (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe), 1991; Jarol B. Maheim, “Strategic Public Diplomacy,” in Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf Wars, Eds. W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1994: 131-148.

269 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 20.

270 Ibid; The U.S. media received just a 43 percent approval rating.

271 Eric Lipton, “Death Toll is Near 3,000 but Some Uncertainty Over the Count Remains,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 2002.

272 Grusin and Utt, 2005: 6.

273 Grusin and Utt, 2005: 1.

274 Pat Aufderheide, “All-Too-Reality TV: Challenge for Television Journalists after September 11,” Journalism, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2002): 11.

275 “Return to Normalcy? How the Media Covered the War on Terrorism,” Project for Excellence in Journalism and Princeton Survey Research Associates, June 11, 2003.

276 Ibid; By mid-November 2001, however, the factual reportage began to yield toward more analysis and speculation.

277 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 290; Also see: Brigitte Nacos, Mass Mediated Terrorism, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield), 2002; Bradley S. Greenberg and Marcia Thomson, Communication and Terrorism: Public and Media Responses to 9/11, (New York: Hampton Press), 2002.

278 Norris, Kern and Just, 2003: 291.

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279 Ibid; They concluded that “The power of the War on Terrorism frame in America was such that, although there was no published intelligence of a proven link connecting President [Saddam] Hussein directly to the events of 9/11, in early-March 2003, prior to military intervention, when a representative sample of the American public was asked by Gallup polls whether they thought that Saddam Hussein was involved in supporting terrorist groups that had plans to attach the United States, most people agreed.”

280 Entman, 2003.

281 See: Bennett, 1990; John Zaller, “Elite Leadership of Mass Opinion: New Evidence from the Gulf War,” In Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War. eds. W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1994: 186-209.

282 Richard F. Grimmett, “Authorization for Use of Military Force in Response to the 9/11 Attacks (P.L. 107-40): Legislative History,” CRS Report for Congress, January 16, 2007.

283 Entman, 2003.

284 See: Herbert Gans, “The Message Behind the News,” Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 17, No. 1. (1979); Tuchman, 1978; George Gerbner, “Ideological Perspectives and Political Tendencies in News Reporting,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 41 (Fall 1964): 495-508; Daniel C. Hallin, “Hegemony: The American News Media from Vietnam to El Salvador, a Study of Ideological Change and its Limits,” Political Communication Research, Ed. David Paletz, (Norwood, NJ: Albex). 1987: 3-25.

285 Carruthers, 2000: 15.

286 Dwight Dewerth-Pallmeyer, The Audience in the News, (Mahwah, NJ: LEAA), 1996.

287 Marc Seamon and Matt Peters, “News Mix Reflects Media’s Gatekeeping Role in Crises,” In Media in an American Crisis: Studies of September 11, 2001, Eds. Grusin, Elinor Kelley and Sandra H. Utt, (New York: University Press of America), 2005: 265-273.

288 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 33.

289 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 40.

290 Changho Lee, “Post, Times Highlight Government’s War Efforts,” Newspaper Research Journal, No. 1 (Winter 2003): 190-203.

291 Elizabeth Perse, Media Effects and Society, (Florence, Kentucky: Psychology Press), 2001: 73; Grusin, Elinor Kelley and Sandra H. Utt. “ The Challenge: To Examine Media’s Role, Performance on 9/11 and After.” In Media in an American Crisis: Studies of September 11, 2001. New York: University Press of America. 2005. P. 11

292 Changho Lee, “Washington Post, New York Times Highlight Government’s War Efforts,” In Media in an American Crisis: Studies of September 11, 2001, Eds. Grusin, Elinor Kelley and Sandra H. Utt, (New York: University Press of America), 2005: 87

293 Lee, 2005: 86.

294 The Editors, “Rules of Engagement,” Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2001.

295 Jack Lule, “Myth and Terror on the Editorial Page: The New York Times Responds to September 11, 2001,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Summer 2002): 286; Jack Lule’s analysis of the New York Times’ editorials also identified four myths promulgated in their content: the end

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of innocence, the victims, the heroes and the foreboding future. He wrote: “The Times lamented a loss of innocence and grieved over a world in which everything had changed. It offered the myth of the victim, called out for vengeance, and built support for survivors. It constructed and celebrated heroes and bolstered leaders as they responded to the crisis. It mobilized for war and warned of a foreboding future, or suffering and sacrifice to come.”

296 The Editors, “Calibrating the Use of Force,” New York Times, Sept. 22, 2001.

297 Ibid.

298 Andre Billeaudeaux, David Dinke, John S. Hutcheson and Philip Garland, “Newspaper Editorials Follow Lead of Bush Administration,” Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter 2003).

299 The Editors, “The American Offensive Begins,” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2001.

300 Billeaudeaux, Dinke, Hutcheson and Garland: 2003: 73.

301 Ibid.

302 “Murders in Afghanistan Send Chill Through Media,” Press Gazette, Nov. 21, 2001, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=21157§ioncode=1

303 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 19.

304 Ibid.

305 Amy E. Jasperson and Mansour O. El-Kikhia, “CNN and al Jazeera’s Media Coverage of America’s War in Afghanistan,” In Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and the Public, Eds. Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just, (London: Routledge), 2003: 115; Al Jazeera also gave an alternative news frame to CNN’s coverage of post-9/11 events, found Amy Jasperson and Mansour O. El-Kikhia. CNN stories, they said, “followed the format of typical international crisis stories with frames of consensus, a focus on strategy, technological precision, and a euphemistic description of events.” Al Jazeera’s coverage was different from the U.S.-based coverage, but also analogous in its sense of Arab nationalism. According to Jasperson and El-Kikhia, al Jazeera “also rallied its viewers by calling for unification of the Arab world in international issues. Further, it mimicked some of the same frames of American technological superiority.” The main difference between the two outlets was that al Jazeera, “did not gloss over a humanistic portrayal of the consequences of war.”

306 Gans, 2004.

307 Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 18. 308 “Afghanistan: Media round-up Monday 3 December 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, Dec. 3, 2001.

309 “Tyndall Report Weekly Archives 2003,” Tyndall Report, http://tyndallreport.com/weekly/archive/2003/

310 Jim Lobe, “Iraq Blotted Out Rest of the World in 2003 TV News,” Global Policy Forum, Jan. 6, 2004. http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/media/2004/0106blotted.htm

311 George W. Bush, “State of the Union,” Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/bushtext_012803.html

312 See: Sean Aday, “Chasing the Bad News: An Analysis of 2005 Iraq and Afghanistan War Coverage on NBC and Fox News Channel,” Journal of Communication, Vol. 60 (2003): 144-164.

319

313 Brian Stelter, “Goodbye Baghdad, Hello Kabul,” New York Times, Oct. 19, 2009.

314 Seamon and Peters, 2005: 265-273.

315 Michael Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 2006: 182.; In an age of digital and satellite media, the news was instantaneous, causing the players within the war theatre to “live it and watch it at the same time.”

316 “The Times and Iraq,” New York Times, May 26, 2004.

317 Sweeney, 2006: 209; Michelle Ferrari, Reporting America at War: An Oral History, (New York: Hyperion), 2003: 213. Some journalists recognized that they had neglected the war in Afghanistan, but others blamed the U.S. military for restricting journalists’ access to the country. The chief foreign affairs correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour, blamed the U.S. military’s restrictions on access to Afghanistan in 2003 for limited coverage of the country, and a total account of U.S. reconstruction efforts there. She said, “We have gotten a very empty view of what is happening in Afghanistan, and it is a dangerous view, because you get the impression that all America is about bombing and high tech and bulldozing.” This narrow sense of the war was negative for the United States’s image, too, she said: “I think America needs to have its other side shown to the world—its human side, the good things, the constructive things it is doing.”

318 W. Russell Neuman, “The Threshold of Public Attention,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer 1990): 159-176; Anthony Downs, “Up and Down with Ecology: The Issue-Attention Cycle,” Public Interest, Vol. 28 (Summer 1972): 28-50; Joe Bob Hester, “New York Times’ Coverage Before, During and After 9/11,” In Media in an American Crisis: Studies of September 11, 2001, Eds. Grusin, Elinor Kelley and Sandra H. Utt, (New York: University Press of America), 2005: 40-41. W. Russel Nueman’s 1990 work, “The Threshold of Public Attention,” used Anthony Downs’s “Issue-Attention Cycle” to show that the public’s perception of most crises is more about a systematic cycle of increased public interest, followed by a saturation/boredom effect, and then a general decline of public attention. It’s therefore not so much about the issue than just a general cycle in people’s attention. There are specifically five stages. First, the pre-problem stage where the problem exists, but has yet to be recognized by the public. Second, a discovery stage, where the problem is suddenly part of public consciousness and gets much attention, which Downs calls “the threshold.” Third, the plateau stage, when the public realizes the problem is complex and will not be easy to solve. Fourth, the decline stage, when the public becomes frustrated with the problem and more inattentive to it. And fifth, the postproblem stage, where the problem still exists, but there is a period of inattention. All of this despite the fundamental issue never changing itself.

319 Stephen Hess, “Media Mavens,” Society, Vol. 33, No. 3 (March/April 1996): 70.

320 David Rohde and David Sanger, “How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad,” The New York Times, Aug. 12, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?pagewanted=all; Hester, 2005: 45-46. This, Hester argued, is prevalent in the New York Times’ own coverage, which had covered terrorism sparsely, averaging 23.3 stories per week, as an issue before Sept. 11, 2001. For the first 16 weeks after Sept. 10, 2001, the Times averaged 578.9 stories per week. By Dec. 31, 2001, the news had hit a plateau, averaging 170.8 stories a week.

321 Rohde and Sanger, 2007.

322 Maura Reynolds, “Bush presses NATO to send more troops to Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2007, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007-02-16/news/0702160410_1_nato-offensive-in-afghanistan- troops-to-afghanistan

320

323 “Iraq News: Less Dominant, Still Important,” Pew Center for the People and the Press, Nov. 9. 2007, http://www.people-press.org/2007/11/09/iraq-news-less-dominant-still-important/

324 Brian Stelter, 2009.

325 “Network TV News—State of the News Media in 2010,” Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2011, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/network_tv_news_investment.php; Since 2008, there have been only an average of twelve foreign bureaus for each news network. In 2009, ABC had 10 overseas news bureaus – 2 in Latin America, three in Europe, two in the Middle East and three in Asia; CBS had 14 – one in Latin America, four in Europe, three in the Middle East, one in Africa and five in Asia – including Afghanistan and Pakistan. NBC had 12 – one in Latin America, two in Europe, three in the Middle East and six in Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note: However, in 2009 CBS did partner with the international news website, GlobalPost, which expanded its reach to 70 affiliated correspondents in 50 countries.

326 “Hours Devoted to Stories with a Foreign Dateline,” The State of the News Media 2010, March 2011, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010; On the domestic side, one topic that grew noticeably in 2009 was the U.S. campaign against terrorism, up to 4% of the newshole from 1% a year earlier. That coverage spiked after the April release of memos documenting Bush-era interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, of terror suspects, which triggered a major political debate. Foreign news on U.S. television has ranged from 23-46 hours between 1996 and 2009. The lowest, 23 hours, was in 2000; the highest, 46 hours, was in 2003 – the year the Iraq War began.

327 “Time Devoted to the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Over Time,” The State of the News Media 2010, March 2011, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010; in 2004, 1.76 hours; in 2005, 1.71 hours; in 2006, 1.73 hours; in 2007, 1.68 hours; in 2008; 2.1 hours.

328 “Afghanistan—State of the News Media in 2009,” Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/year_overview.php

329 After the economy and health care, however, there were six other stories that accounted for 2% of newshole or more in 2009. They were the new Obama administration (5%), Afghanistan (5%), U.S. efforts to combat terrorism (4%), Iran (2%), the swine flu outbreak (2%) and the Iraq war (2%).

330 Stelter, Brian. 2009.

331 Ibid

332 Ibid

333 The Editors, “The War Up Close,” Time, Oct. 12, 2009, http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20091012,00.html

334 “2010 in Review—State of the News Media in 2010,” Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2011, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/year_overview.php

335 Note: In 2007, the U.S. policy debate had also accounted for about half the coverage of the Iraq war – 8 percent out of a total Iraq newshole of 16 percent — following the same pattern.

336 There are two basic components of international coverage measured by PEJ. One is when the United States is a significant actor with a direct involvement in the situation. The other involves global events that are not directly related to the U.S. There were a few notable shifts in global hotspot coverage in 2009. Coverage of Iran jumped to 2% from 1% in 2008, largely because of the election there and protests over the outcome. Iraq continued to fall down the media priority list, down to 2% in 2009 from 4% in 2008.

321

337 http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for- journalism/year-in-2011/

338 Bill Keller, “Being There,” New York Times, Dec. 2, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/opinion/keller-being-there.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

Chapter 4. From Quiet to Chaos: Pakistani Media History

339 “Between Radicalization and Democratization in an Unfolding Conflict: Media in Pakistan,” International Media Support, Sept. 15, 2009. http://www.i-m-s.dk/article/war-terror%E2%80%9D-cripples- media-pakistan-said-new-ims-report

340 Smruti S. Pattanaik, Elite Perceptions in Foreign Policy: Role of Print Media in Influencing India- Pakistan Relations, 1989-1999, (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies), 2004: 9.

341 Daya Kishan Thussu, “Managing the Media in an Era of Round-the-Clock News: Notes from India’s First Tele-War,” Journalism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2002): 203-212.

342 Ibid

343 Pattanaik, 2004.

344 qtd in Pattanaik, 2004: 14.

345 “Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S.,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 27, 2012. http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion-ever-more-critical-of-u-s/

346 Ibid.

347 Hachten and Scotton. 2002: 96.

348 Thussu, Daya Kishan. 2002. “Managing the Media in an Era of Round-the-Clock News: Notes from India’s First Tele-War.” Journalism Studies. Vol. 3, No. 2. Pgs. 203-212.

349 Ibid

350 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

351 Ibid

352 Ibid

353 Ibid

354 “Understanding the Militants’ Media in Pakistan: Outreach and Impact,” Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Islamabad, 2010: 9-10.

355 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

356 Ibid.

357 Ibid.

322

358 “Understanding the Militants’ Media,” 2010: 10.

359 Merrill, John C. 1959. A Handbook of the Foreign Press. Louisiana State University Press. Pgs. 261-266

360 Akhtar, Rai Shakil. 2000. Media, Religion, and Politics in Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press. P. 10

361 John C. Merrill, A Handbook of the Foreign Press, (Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press), 1959: 261-266.

362 Ibid

363 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

364 “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Jan. 16, 1996.

365 Rai Shakil Akhtar, Media, Religion, and Politics in Pakistan, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2000: 23.

366 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

367 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009. As a sign that Sunni Islam was to be the dominant sect within Pakistan, the minority Ahmadi sect was labeled as non-Muslim.

368 Report on State of Media in Pakistan; Jan-Dec 1998. (Islamabad: Green Press), 1999.

369 Ibid

370 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

371 Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country, (Washington: Public Affairs Books), 2011: 229.

372 Akhtar, 2000: 23.

373 Akhtar, 2000: 25.

374 Akhtar, 2000: 29; “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Jan. 16, 1996. “For Official Use Only.” Page 1.

375 Report on State of Media in Pakistan, 1999.

376 “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan,” 1996.

377 Report on State of Media in Pakistan, 1999.

378 “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan,” 1996.

379 Ibid

380 Ibid

381 Report on State of Media in Pakistan, 1999.

382 Ibid

323

383 “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan,” 1996.

384 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

385 Report on State of Media in Pakistan, 1999.

386 Ibid

387 Ibid

388 Ibid

389 Akhtar, 2000: 19.

390 Ibid

391 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

392 Hamid Khan and Paula R. Newberg, “The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement and the Popular Currency of Judicial Power,’ Harvard Law Review, 123 Harv. L. Rev. 1705 (2010)

393 Lieven, 2011: 113.

394 New York Times,

395 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

396 “Two Pakistani news networks are shut down in Dubai,” Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 16, 2007, http://cpj.org/2007/11/two-pakistani-news-networks-are-shut-down-in-dubai.php

397 Karen Brulliard, “In Pakistan, top media group wields clout amid controversy,” Washington Post, August 19, 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/in-pakistan-top-media-group-wields- clout-amid-controversy/2011/08/12/gIQAZ0uUPJ_story.html

398 “Pakistan demands broadcasters sign conduct code,” Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 12 2007, http://cpj.org/2007/11/pakistan-demands-broadcasters-sign-conduct-code.php

399 “Two Pakistani news networks are shut down,” 2007.

400 “Action Against Judges Unpopular,” Dawn (Pakistan), Dec. 14, 2007. http://www.dawn.com/2007/12/14/top1.htm

401 Brulliard, 2011.

402 Ibid.

403 Ibid.

404 Ibid.

405 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

324

406 State-owned Pakistani television also has six channels: PTV News, a news-only channel; PTV National, which broadcasts programs in various languages in Pakistan; and PTV Global broadcasts in Europe, Asia and the US.

407 Ibid

408 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009; One of the few private stations that produces news and social programming is Radio Power 99; International Media Support.

409 Ibid.

410 Ibid.

411 Ibid.

412 Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. “Understanding the Militants’ Media in Pakistan: Outreach and Impact”. PIPS: Islamabad, 2010.

413 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

414 Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. “Understanding the Militants’ Media in Pakistan: Outreach and Impact”. PIPS: Islamabad, 2010.

415 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

416 “Understanding the Militants’ Media,” 2010: 10.

417 Ibid

418 qtd. in Pattanaik, 2004: 19.

419 Ibid.

420 Lawrence Pintak, “Inside Pakistani Journalism,” New York Times, Dec. 15, 2011. http://pintak.com/2011/12/15/inside-pakistani-journalism-the-new-york-times/

421 Ibid; “Thinking Patterns of Pakistan’s Youth.” Foreign Policy Magazine. Aug. 30, 2010, http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/30/thinking_patterns_of_pakistans_youth. Pakistani youth, which makes up half of the population, is a vital demographic as they could steer the country into either a military or a democratic state, toward secular rule or Islamic rule. A study the Pakistani Institute of Peace Studies conducted on youth attitudes found that media, family and religious influences heavily shaped the “socio-cultural, religious and political views of Pakistan's educated youth.” 421 93 percent of those interviewed watched television and 86 percent read newspapers, indicating a significant desire for information from the media. The Jang Group had the largest impact: almost half, 50.2 percent, watched Geo News and 38.8 percent read the Daily Jang. The other influential newspapers included Express, which almost a fifth of the respondents read; 9 percent read Nawa-e-Waqt, Pakistan’s oldest newspaper. Only 3.1 percent of the educated youth interviewed were interested in militant media publications, such as Islam or Zarb-e-Momin. But militant narratives can still make it into mainstream Pakistani media, PIPS warned: “Reports in the mainstream, mainly Urdu media, often glorify the actions of militants and militant organizations and refer to militants killed during their operations as ‘martyrs.'” 421 As a result, Pakistan’s youth were exposed to radical ideas whether or not they actively sought out militant publications.

422 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009; There are few trained professionals who can report on radio. With training in television more in demand than training in radio, universities with

325

journalism departments largely overlook training for radio. This results in there being more small talk and music on Pakistani radio stations than news.

423 “Journalism Cultures – Epistemologies,” Worlds of Journalism, 2010. http://www.worldsofjournalism.org; And with “I always stay away from information that cannot be verified,” the average was 3.96 – with Pakistani reporters saying 4.30 and the American reporters saying 4.05. Of all the questions posed, the Pakistani journalists scored themselves the highest when it came to impartiality and letting the facts speak for themselves. However, they also scored the highest with the question, “I always make clear which side in a dispute has the better position.” Pakistani journalists had a score of 3.67, behind only Egypt at 3.73 – Americans came in at the lowest 1.98. When asked, “Reporting and publishing a story that can potentially harm other is always wrong, irrespective of the benefits to be gained,” Pakistani journalists had the highest mean score at 3.77. Coming in second was Chile at 3.44 – tied for third was China and Bulgaria at 3.21. Last were U.S. and Brazil, at 2.17 and 2.16, respectively. While they asserted such ethical values in this survey, they scored second only to Chile, at 3.74 in saying that journalism ethics varies from situation to situation.

424 “Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S.,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 27, 2012, http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion-ever-more-critical-of-u-s/; “Support for Campaign Against Extremists Wanes: U.S. Image in Pakistan Falls No Further Following bin Laden Killing,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 21, 2011, http://pewglobal.org/2011/06/21/u-s-image-in- pakistan-falls-no-further-following-bin-laden-killing/1/

425 Ibid

426 Ibid

427 Pintak, 2011.

428 Mosharraf Zaidi, “When the News Becomes News,” The News (Karachi, Pakistan), Jan. 5, 2010.

429 Lieven, 2011: 232.

430 Nasim Zehra, “How a vibrant media can thwart a coup,” South Asian News Agency, Jan. 12, 2012. http://www.sananews.net/english/2012/01/how-a-vibrant-media-can-thwart-a-coup/

431 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

432 Ibid

433 Lieven, 2011: 231

434 Griff Witte, “In Pakistan, pro-American sentiment is rare,” Washington Post. June 23, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/in-pakistan-pro-american-expressions-are- are/2011/06/22/AGdj5shH_story.html

435 Pattanaik, 2004: 17.

436 Ibid: 177.

437 “Influences on News Work,” 2010; In Pakistani journalists, too, range 12 different influences on their daily work – peers, editors, managers, owners, advertising consideration, profit expectations, market research, technology, newsroom norms, resource shortages, deadlines and standards – as 3.05 to 3.97, with profit expectations as the lowest but ownership as the highest. In contrast, American reporters range their

326

influences from 2.86 to 4.15, with market research as the lowest and their editors as the highest. Ownership ranks at just 2.44.

438 “Understanding the Militants’ Media,” 2010; “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

439 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

440 Ibid

441 Ibid; Newcomers such as ARY TV and Ajj TV have challenged the newspaper groups’ dominating status.

442 “Understanding the Militants’ Media,” 2010.

443 "Journalists Killed in Pakistan," Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013. http://www.cpj.org/killed/asia/pakistan/

444 Declan Walsh, “Missing Pakistan Journalist Saleem Shahzad Found Dead Near Islamabad,” The Guardian, June 1, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/31/missing-pakistan-journalist-found- dead

445 Dexter Filkins, “The Journalist and the Spies” The New Yorker, Sept. 19, 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/19/110919fa_fact_filkins?currentPage=all

446 “Between Radicalization and Democratization,” 2009.

447 Huma Yusuf, “Communications Strategy,” Dawn, June 25, 2012, http://dawn.com/2012/06/25/communications-strategy/

Chapter 5. “We Realized Our Power”: The Pakistani Journalists’ Experience.

448 Sharif. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010.

449 Rao. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

450 Shafqat, Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

451 Hamid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

452 Sharif. Interview by author.

453 Rao. Interview by author.

454 Yousaf. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

455 Rao. Interview by author.

456 Ibid.

457 Yousaf. Interview by author.

458 Hamid. Interview by author.

459 Wali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

327

460 Salim. Interview by author. Tape recording. New York, NY. March 2010.

461 Sharif. Interview by author.

462 Rao. Interview by author.

463 Salim. Interview by author; Wali. Interview by author.

464 Rao. Interview by author; Usama. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Vazir. Interview by author. Tape recording. New York, NY. March 2011.

465 Rao. Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010; Abida. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

466 Imran. Interview by author.

467 Vazir. Interview by author.

468 Ibid.

469 Ibid.

470 Ibid.

471 Ibid.

472 Amir Mir, “Ten years after 9/11: Suicide attacks declining in Pakistan,” The News (Pakistan), Sept. 13, 2011, http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=67436&Cat=6&dt=9/13/2011

473 Rao. Interview by author.

474 Hamid. Interview by author; Omar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010; Vazir. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Raheem. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Salim. Interview by author; Yousaf. Interview by author; Shafqat, Interview by author.

475 Hamid. Interview by author.

476 Omar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010; Vazir. Interview by author.

477 Vazir. Interview by author.

478 Hamid. Interview by author; Omar. Interview by author; Vazir. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author; Yousaf. Interview by author; Shafqat. Interview by author.

479 Yousaf. Interview by author; Hamid. Interview by author; Omar. Interview by author; Vazir. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author; Yousaf. Interview by author; Shafqat, Interview by author.

480 Hamid. Interview by author.

481 Malik. Interview by author.

328

482 Hamid. Interview by author.

483 Shaid, Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

484 Salim. Interview by author.

485 Yousaf. Interview by author.

486 Ibid.

487 Yousaf, an English-language journalist, believed that print media was trusted more than television, because it was seen to be more serious.

488 Wajahat. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

489 Shaid. Interview by author.

490 Salim. Interview by author.

491 Ibid.

492 Usama. Interview by author.

493 Yousaf. Interview by author.

494 Sharif. Interview by author.

495 Salim. Interview by author.

496 Yousaf. Interview by author.

497 Rao. Interview by author.

498 Salim, Interview by author.

499 Usama. Interview by author.

500 Ibid.

501 Hali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

502 Abida. Interview by author.

503 Shaid, Interview by author.

504 Ibid.

505 Ibid.

506 Malik. Interview by author.

507 Ibid.

329

508 Ibid.

509 Hali. Interview by author.

510 Abida. Interview by author.

511 Salim, Interview by author.

512 Ibid.

513 Usama. Interview by author.

514 Raheem. Interview by author.

515 Usama. Interview by author.

516 Salim, Interview by author.

517 Rao, Interview by author.

518 Hamid. Interview by author.

519 Yousaf. Interview by author.

520 Vazir. Interview by author.

521 Ibid; In tribal areas like FATA, Vazir said, newspapers are subsidized by government agencies and are therefore beholden to the Pakistani government. No one is paid for journalism work, but people want the fame of seeing their bylines in print, faces on television and their voices on radio. Because they are not paid, they have no incentive to work hard and unveil the truths that would come through investigating stories of corruption and malfeasance.521 Journalists in the tribal areas are also often caught between the Taliban and the military: If they dig deep into the dynamic between these two forces, they can be jailed or killed.521 Therefore, reportage is episodic and events-based; for instance, news on drone strikes and casualties, but never any kind of analysis.

522 Ibid.

523 “Journalists Killed in Pakistan," Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013, http://www.cpj.org/killed/asia/pakistan/

CHAPTER 6.

524 Katherine Brown, “For Afghanistan and Pakistan, Final Reflections of a Dark Anniversary,” Bloomberg, Sept. 16, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-16/for-afghanistan-and-pakistan-final- reflections-on-a-dark-anniversary-brown.html

525 “2010: The Year of the Drone,” The New America Foundation, 2010, http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones/2010

526 Salim. Interview by author.; Rao. Interview by author; Ibrahim. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Malik. Interview by author; Mahmood. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010; Sharif. Interview by author; Wali. Interview by author; Shaid, Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author. Tape recording.

330

Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010; Vazir. Interview by author; Jabbar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010; Nabeel. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010; Abida. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010. Yousaf. Interview by author.

527 “Factbox: Pakistan, India troop strength, deployments,” Reuters, Feb. 25, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/25/us-pakistan-india-militaries-factbox- idUSTRE61O0BJ20100225

528 Rao. Interview by author.

529 Ibrahim. Interview by author.

530 Salim. Interview by author.

531 Ibid.

532 “Lahore: Multiple blasts at Data Darbar shrine, 38 killed,” NDTV (India), July 2, 2010, http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/lahore-multiple-blasts-at-data-darbar-shrine-38-killed-35022

533 Malik. Interview by author.

534 Susan Cornwell, “Factbox: U.S. has allocated $20 billion for Pakistan,” Reuters, Apr. 11, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/21/us-pakistan-usa-aid-factbox-idUSTRE73K7F420110421

535 Mahmood. Interview by author.

536 Sharif. Interview by author.

537 Malik. Interview by author.

538 Shireen Mazari, “Our leaders' voluntary submission to colonization,” The News International (Pakistan), Aug. 26, 2009, http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=194868&Cat=9&dt=8/26/2009> http://www.daily.pk/news-break-anne-patterson-blocks-shireen-mazari-10053/

539 “The Pearl Project: The Truth Left Behind, inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl,” The Center for Public Integrity, Jan. 20, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/world/documents/daniel-pearl-project/

540 Kaswar Klasra, “Journalists as Spies in FATA?” The Nation (Pakistan), Nov. 5, 2009, http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/05-Nov- 2009/Journalists-as-spies-in-FATA?

541 Ali Shah Syed Fawad, “Mysterious US Nationals,” Nov. 20, 2009, http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/20-Nov- 2009/Mysterious-US-nationals

542 “Letter from Hugh Pinney to Shireen Mazari, Nov. 21, 2009,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 2009, http://cpj.org/blog/Nov%2021%20getty%20letter%20to%20the%20The%20Nation.pdf

543 Ibid.

544 Mahmood. Interview by author.

331

545 Ibid.

546 Vazir. Interview by author.

547 Wali. Interview by author.

548 Imran. Interview by author; Shaid. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010; Nabeel. Interview by author.

549 Abida. Interview by author; Jabbar. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Malik, Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author; Mahmood. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author; Salim, Interview by author; Nabeel. Interview by author; Sharif. Interview by author; Vazir. Interview by author; Mumtaz. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

550 Shaid. Interview by author.

551 Muhammed. Interview by author.

552 Ibid.

553 Parvez. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010. 554 Vazir. Interview by author. Vazir noted that this is because U.S. news agencies rely on Pakistani stringers – not Westerners -- to uncover the news.

555 Mumtaz. Interview by author. The Wall Street Journal, Mumtaz pointed out, became well known in Pakistan, after the brutal murder of Danny Pearl in 2001.

556 Malik. Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author; Mahmood. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author; Nabeel. Interview by author; Sharif Interview by author; Mumtaz. Interview by author.

557 Jabbar. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author.

558 Malik, Interview by author.

559 Yousaf. Interview by author.

560 Shaid. Interview by author; Mahmood. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author; Nabeel. Interview by author; Mumtaz, Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; American broadcast news has also become less important since the advent of Al Jazeera, Raheem offered.

561 Nabeel. Interview by author; Jabbar, Interview by author; March 2010. Washington, DC.

562 Yousaf. Interview by author.

563 Malik. Interview by author.

564 Ibid.

565 Abida. Interview by author; Sharif. Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author.

566 Malik. Interview by author.

567 Bahaar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

332

568 Wali. Interview by author.

569 Ibid.

570 Hali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

571 “Profile: Asif Ali Zardari,” BBC News Asia, Dec. 7, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia- 16066406

572 Bahaar. Interview by author. Bahaar gave an example of U.S. policy toward Israel. In 2010, he said, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden criticized its construction of settlements in Palestinian territories while he was visiting Israel, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu announced the decision to increase the settlements. The U.S. media focused on how Netanyahu bucked the U.S. administration’s wishes. But Bahaar was frustrated that U.S. news coverage focused just on U.S.-Israel relations and gave no example of Palestinian perceptions on the issue. Rory McCarthy, “Biden Condemns Israel over Homes Plans,” The Guardian, March 9, 201, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/09/israel-jerusalem-settlement- homes-biden; Edmund Sanders, “Israel's Netanyahu seeks to ease tension after Biden's Mideast trip,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/15/world/la-fg-israel-tensions15- 2010mar15

573 Ibid.

574 Danish. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

575 Mumtaz, Interview by author.

576 Ibid.

577 Ibid; Danish, Interview by author; Hali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Raheem. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author.

578 Sharif. Interview by author.

579 Malik. Interview by author; Malik, personally, believed that not everything printed or broadcasted in American media is the U.S. government’s point of view, however.

580 Imran. Interview by author.

581 Raheem. Interview by author. Note: Raheem assumed that the U.S. government is completely controlled by the executive branch; the U.S. legislative branch, he pointed out, has no power when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

582 Mumtaz, Interview by author; Danish. Interview by author; Hali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010; Raheem. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author.

583 Raheem. Interivew by author.

584 Andrea Elliot, “Militant’s Path From Pakistan to Times Square,” New York Times, June 22, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/23terror.html?pagewanted=all

585 Muhammed. Interview by author.

333

586 Ibid.

587 Ibid.

588 Salim. Interview by author.

589 Ibid.

590 Mumtaz, Interview by author; Danish. Interview by author; Hali. Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author.

591 Rao. Interview by author.

592 Salim. Interview by author. Salim, the English-language print journalist, made sense of it like this: I think that the people who are writing for these [American] newspapers actually believe that Pakistan is playing a double game. Which is why when an American official said that Pakistan is doing good, they print that. But then they also analyze and talk to a couple of people here who neutralize that statement. This is how it is.

593 Vazir. Interview by author.

594 Ibid.

595 Ibid.

596 Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazetti, “Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/asia/16intel.html?pagewanted=all

597 Vazir. Interview by author.

598 Arthur Brisbane, “An American in Pakistan,” New York Times, Feb. 26, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/opinion/27pubed.html

599 Vazir. Interview by author.

600 Jabbar. Interview by author.

601 Ibid.

602 Imran. Interview by author.

603 Hali. Interview by author.

604 Bahaar. Interview by author.

605 Ibid.

606 Yousaf. Interview by author.

607 Ibid.

608 Ibid.

334

609 Rao. Interview by author.

610 Aban. Interview by author.

611 Nabeel, Interview by author.

612 Mumtaz. Interview by author.

613 Parvez. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010. 614 Interview with Omar, Pashto Broadcaster IV. March 2010. Washington, DC

615 Mumtaz. Interview by author; Danish. Interview by author; Hali. Interview by author; Raheem. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Malik. Interview by author; Imran. Interview by author; Jabbar. Interview by author; Aban. Interview by author; Nabeel. Interview by author; Vazir. Interview by author; Omar. Interview by author; Parvez, Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author; Rao. Interview by author; Bahaar. Interview by author; Muhammed. Interview by author; Abida. Interview by author.

616 Jabbar. Interview by author.

617 “Pakistani agents 'funding and training Afghan Taliban,'” BBC, June 13, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10302946; Declan Walsh, “Pakistan spy agency accused over Taliban,” The Guardian, June 13, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/13/pakistan-spy-agency-accused- taliban

618 Salim. Interview by author; Salim lamented that there were not enough stories about Pakistani culture— and the sheer resilience of the Pakistani people and their ability to survive despite the country’s problems.

619 Bahaar. Interview by author.

620 Sharif. Interview by author.

621 Rao. Interview by author.

622 Ibrahim. Interview by author.

623 Salim. Interview by author.

624 Malik. Interview by author.

625 Ibid.

626 Mahmood. Interview by author.

627 Bahaar. Interview by author.

628 Nabeel. Interview by author.

629 Salim. Interview by author.

630 Ibid.

631 Sharif. Interview by author.

335

632 Ibid.

633 Rao. Interview by author.

634 Mahmood. Interview by author.

635 Vazir. Interview by author.

636 Ibid.

637 Rao. Interview by author.

638 Muhammed. Interview by author.

639 Malik. Interview by author.

640 Ibid.

641 Ibid.

642 Rao. Interview by author.

643 Mumtaz, Interview by author.

644 Malik. Interview by author.

645 Sharif. Interview by author; Salim. Interview by author.

646 Mahmood. Interview by author; Rao. Interview by author.

647 Nabeel. Interview by author.

648 Malik. Interview by author.

649 Danish. Interview by author.

650 Muhammed. Interview by author.

651 Ibid.

652 Sharif. Interview by author.

653 Imran. Interview by author; One of Imran’s final comments in his interview was the “Washington Post is speculative and has proven to be speculative.”

654 Salim. Interview by author.

655 Ibid.

656 Nabeel. Interview by author.

657 Rao, Interview by author.

336

658 Ibid.

659 Vazir. Interview by author.

660 Ibid.

661 Malik. Interview by author.

662 Muhammed. Interview by author; Yousaf. Interview by author; Parvez. Interview by author.

663 Jabbar. Interview by author.

664 Abida. Interview by author.

665 Mahmood. Interview by author.

666 Ibid.

667 Parvez, Interview by author.

668 Omar, Interview by author.

669 Ibid.

670 Mahmood. Interview by author.

671 Vazir. Interview by author.

672 Ibid.

673 Raheem. Interview by author.

674 Vazir. Interview by author.

675 Malik. Interview by author.

676 Vazir. Interview by author.

CHAPTER 7. A New, Shaky Start: History of Afghan News Media

677 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 12 Oct 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, October 12, 2001. As the article notes, on October 9, 2001, the radio station’s two control buildings were damaged in a U.S. air raid, according to the Pentagon.

678 Ibid.

679 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 24 Oct 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media. October 24, 2001.

680 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 10 Nov 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, November 10, 2001.

681 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 11 Nov 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, November 11, 2001.

682 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 13 Nov 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, November 13, 2001.

337

683 “Afghanistan: Media Round-Up 13 Nov 2001,” BBC Monitoring World Media, Nov. 13, 2001.

684 “Afghanistan Press, Media, TV, Radio, Newspapers,” Press Reference, 2003, http://www.pressreference.com/A-Be/Afghanistan.html

685 Lisa Anne Hartenberger, Mediating Transition in Afghanistan, 2001-2004. Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. 200; M. Ewans, Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics, (New York: Harper Collins), 2002; S.N. Nawid, Religious Response to Social Change in Afghanistan 1919- 29: King Aman-Allah and the Afghan Ulama, (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers), 1999; S.M. Rawan, “Modern Mass Media and Traditional Communication in Afghanistan,” Political Communication, Vol. 19, (2002): 155-170; Barnett Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 2002.

686 Ibid.

687 Press Reference. 2003.

688 Hartenberger, 2005.

689 Hartenberger, 2005; Rawan, 2002. Radio Afghanistan was not officially given the name until 1964. Germany continued to support Afghanistan’s radio system by giving King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) news transmitters in 1966 and 1970.

690 Rawan, 2002.

691 Press Reference. 2003.

692 Razi, M. H., “Afghanistan,” In Mass media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook, eds. Y. R. Kamalipour and H. Mowlana, (Westport and London: Greenwood Press), 2002.

693 Press Reference. 2003.

694 Hartenberger, 2005.

695 Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1995: 15

696 Hartenberger, 2005; Rawan, 2002.

697 Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.), 2009: 15-17

698 Nabi Misdaq, Afghanistan: Political Frailty and External Interference, New York: Taylor and Francis), 2006: 125.

699 Hartenberger, 2005.

700 Bill Keller, “Last Soviet Soldiers Leave Afghanistan,” New York Times. Feb. 15, 1989, http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/021689afghan-laden.html

701 Vanessa Gezari, “Unlikely Stories, or the Making of an Afghan News Agency,” Pulitzer Center of Crisis Reporting, Nov. 19, 2010, http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/untold-stories/afghanistan-journalism-pajhwok- afghan-news-taliban

338

702 Raymond Whitaker, “Kabul Falls to the Tide of the Taliban” The Independent, Sept. 28. 1996, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/kabul-falls-to-the-tide-of-the-taliban-1365343.html

703 “Afghan Media Assessment and Development,” International Media Support, 2001, http://www.i-m- s.dk/pic/Afgh-Media%20assessment.pdf;

704 Press Reference. 2003.

705 Ibid.

706 Vanessa Gezari, “Reporting from Afghanistan,” Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Dec. 10, 2010, http://pulitzercenter.org/video/pajhwok-afghan-news-afghanistan-journalism

707 Press Reference, 2003.

708 “Filling the Vacuum: The Bonn Conference,” PBS Frontline, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/withus/cbonn.html

709 “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-Establishment of Permanent Government Institutions,” United Nations. Dec. 5, 2001, http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest/afghan/afghan- agree.htm

710 “Filling the Vacuum,” 2003.

711 Ibid; David Rohde, “A Nation Challenged: Transfer of Power; Afghan Leaders Is Sworn In, Asking for Help to Rebuild,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/world/nation- challenged-transfer-power-afghan-leader-sworn-asking-for-help-rebuild.html; Also of note in that article was this point on corruption: “The line in his speech that had received especially loud applause was a call to end the corruption that plagues the country and could threaten the efficient use of an estimated $16 billion in reconstruction and development aid. ''The significance of this day in Afghan history really depends on what happens in the future,'' Mr. Karzai said in fluent English. ''If we deliver, this will be a great day. If we don't deliver, this will go into oblivion.''

712 Rohde, 2001.

713 B. Girard and J. Van der Spek, “The Potential for Community Radio in Afghanistan,” Comunica, 2002, www.comunica.org.

714 Girard and Van der Spek, 2002; “Internews Radio Summary 2003,” Internews, 2003, http://www.internews.org/regions/afghanistan/afghan_radioreport_2003-07.htm; B.N. Bonde, “The Afghan Media Landscape,” Baltic Media Centre, 2003, www.bmc.dk

715 V. Brossel, “Press freedom one year after the fall of the Taliban,” Reporters Sans Frontières, 2002, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=4278; Girard and Van der Spek, 2002.

716 Brossel, 2002.

717 C. Levine, “Afghanistan Project Formulation Mission Report,” Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society, 2002, http://www.impacs.org/pdfs/afghanprojmissionrep.pdf

718 D. Widiastuti and R. Sulaiman, Situation of Freedom of Expression and the Media in Afghanistan, (London: Article 19), 2003.

339

719 Ken Auletta, “The Networker: Afghanistan’s First Media Mogul,” The New Yorker, July 5, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/05/100705fa_fact_auletta

720 Ibid.

721 Brossel, 2002; Girard and Van der Spek, 2002; Hartenberger, 2005.

722 Auletta, 2010.

723 Gezari, “Unlikely Stories,” 2010.

724 Brossel, 2002; A. Tarzi, A, “The State of the Media in Afghanistan,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2003, http://www.rferl.org/afghanreport/2003/02/6-130203.asp; Bonde, 2003.

725 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” BBC Trust, 2010; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide,” Info AusAid, March 2012.

726 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010; “The printed press largely serve as the mouthpieces of the political elite and tend to reflect more openly on domestic issues than broadcast sources,” the report read.

727 Ibid.

728 Ibid.

729 Ibid.

730 Ibid.

731 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

732 Ibid; “Afghan Media in 2010: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Afghan Media Landscape, Audience Preferences and Impact on Opinions,” Altai Consulting, Oct. 13, 2010. Altai Consulting found that a third of all households with television have two or more sets. It also found that nearly a quarter of households with television have a satellite dish and that nearly a quarter of homes with a television set own a DVD player. Other recent audience surveys by BBC World Service Trust and the Asia Foundation indicate a slightly higher rate of radio listening than the Altai Consulting study. But all three point to a steady drift of broadcasting audiences from radio to television

733 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

734 Sophia Wilkinson and Shireen Sultan, “Audience Perceptions of Radio Programming in Afghanistan: An Evaluation of Listeners’ Opinions,” BBC World Service Trust, 2004; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

735 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

736 “Afghan Media in 2010,” 2010; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

737 Auletta, 2011.

738 Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

739 “Afghan Media in 2010,” 2010; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

340

740 Ibid.

741 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

742 Majority Staff Report, “Evaluating U.S. Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan,” Committee on Foreign Relations at the United States Senate. June 8, 2011. http://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/?id=f157bdb1-9544-4d4c-ae1f-e02929086730; Eran Fraenkel, Sheldon Himelfarb and Emrys Schoemaker, “Afghanistan Media Assessment: Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding,” U.S. Institute for Peace, (Washington: Peaceworks), 2010.

743 There are also roughly eight Taliban Voice of Shari’ah stations in Afghanistan, still, according to the BBC Monitoring Service.

744 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010.

745 “Afghanistan Media Development and Empowerment Project,” U.S. Agency for International Development, Aug. 7, 2012, http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/USAID/Activity/205/Afghanistan_Media_Development_and_Empowermen t_Project_AMDEP

746 Ibid.

747 Amie Ferris-Rotman, “Insight: Iran's ‘Great Game’ in Afghanistan,” Reuters, May 24, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/24/us-afghanistan-iran-media-idUSBRE84N0CB20120524

748 Ibid.

749 Ibid.

750 Ibid.

751 Ibid.

752 “Fact Sheet: The U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement,” The White House, May 1, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/01/fact-sheet-us-afghanistan-strategic-partnership- agreement

753 Ferris-Rotman, 2012. In 2011, Tamadon broadcasted an entire speech by Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani criticizing the presence of Western troops in Afghanistan.

754 Katherine Brown and Tom Glaisyer, “Warlord TV,” Foreign Policy Magazine, Sept. 10, 2010, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/23/warlord_tv>; Peter Carey, “An Explosion of News: The State of Media in Afghanistan,” Center for International Media Assistance, Feb. 23, 2012, http://cima.ned.org/publications/explosion-news-state-media-afghanistan

755 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

756 Ibid.

757 Freedom of speech is enshrined in the 2004 constitution, and the Media Law has been updated twice since 2002, in 2006 and 2009.

758 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

341

759 Ibid; Amie Ferris-Rotman, “New Afghan law ignites fear over shrinking press freedoms,” Reuters, July 1, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/01/afghanistan-media-law-idUSL3E8HR4R120120701

760 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

761 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012; Benawa.com protested that the mistake had been rectified within half an hour and accused Information Minister Sayed Makhdum Rahin of imposing the ban because the website had published unflattering stories about him.

762 “Afghanistan: Draft Law Threatens Media Freedom,” Human Rights Watch. July 2, 2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/02/afghanistan-draft-law-threatens-media-freedom; Ferris-Rotman, “New Afghan Law,” 2012; In July 2012, the Ministry of Information and Culture circulated a new media law to Afghan government officials for their comment before they sent it to parliament. It would. The minister would become the director of the High Media Council -- a 13-member body that includes a religious scholar and civil society representatives – that would have vast control over ethics and legal procedures for the media. It would reduce the number of journalists on the nongovernmental Mass Media Commission, curtailing the current role of experienced and independent journalists in providing media oversight. And it would remove several of the commission’s key functions, including reviewing complaints and violations, and instead creating a powerful new Media Violation Assessments Commission controlled by government representatives. The draft law would also establish a costly and unnecessary new system of prosecutors and courts specifically to bring and hear civil cases regarding media abuses – and create civil sanctions for a long new list of vaguely defined media violations. One major violation would be broadcasting foreign programming, such Turkish soap operas and Bollywood films that have become particularly popular with the Afghan public, without the Council’s “acknowledgement.” The foreign programs are seen to promote liberal views of women and romance and are criticized by conservative elements in the country.762 Print media and websites would also be required to observe a “guideline of phraseology and orthography” determined by Afghan officials.

763 “Afghanistan: Draft Law Threatens,” 2012; Ferris-Rotman, “New Afghan Law,” 2012. At first, the Ministry did not seek comment from the journalism community and civil society. Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar, the executive director of media advocacy group Nai, told Reuters that the revised media law was attempting to prepare for the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and the re-surfacing of conservative elements. But in June, the ministry began to solicit feedback from the journalism community to reverse the most severe restrictions and allow it to build on progress from the 2009 Media Law. Its passage through parliament is expected sometime in 2013.

764 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010

765 “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms,” 2012.

766 Ibid.

767 Ibid.

768 Ibid.

769 Ferris-Rotman, “Insight: Iran's ‘Great Game’,” 2012.

770 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

771 Gezari, “Crossfire in Kandahar,” 2011.

772 Ibid.

342

773 Ibid.

774 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010.

775 Ibid.

776 The Regional Stabilization Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan aimed to focus on the training of new journalists, enable more communities to receive information through mobile phones, and help public and private radio stations gain a wider reach throughout the region (BBC 2010 Survey).

777 Gezari, “Crossfire in Kandahar,” 2011.

778 Ibid.

779 Gezari, “Unlikely Stories,” 2010.

780 “Afghanistan in 2011: A Survey of the Afghan People,” The Asia Foundation, October 2012, http://asiafoundation.org/publications/pdf/976

781 “Afghanistan in 2011,” 2011; “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

782 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

783 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010.

784 Ibid; “Afghan Media in 2010,” 2010.; “Afghanistan: Media and Telecoms Landscape, 2011.

785 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010; Afghans also largely saw television as a tool to educate and open minds and a positive force in Afghan society since it tackled key issues such as corruption, the economy and crime. The Afghan people, however, seem split on what content on Afghan media they prefer. The BBC Survey explained that the largest point of contention among Afghans was over pop culture on television—specifically music videos and soap operas imported mainly from India. Private stations, especially those from Tolo TV, ran them throughout the day to acquire higher ratings. As a result, television has become a symbol of conflict between those who want to modernize Afghanistan, politicians who want to advance their own interests, and conservatives who want to regulate television.

786 Tom Peter, “Afghanistan funding: Local media already feeling the pinch,” Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 2012.

787 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010; Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010; For instance, the Afghan public, USIP found, perceived Pajhwok News Agency to be against the Karzai government, Tolo TV as influenced by the United States, and the Afghan Voice Agency as supported by Iran. Also, most Afghans know which stations are influenced by the Taliban, and those that seem to advance a western agenda are received as propaganda—especially information associated with the U.S. military or NATO. Any anonymous, mass media is immediately rejected; media perceived to have a foreign influence— explicitly coming from foreign sources--is also mistrusted. Pakistan was also seen as having a damaging effect on Afghan media, especially since Pakistani newscasts are received via along the border. Killid Radio in Jalalabad uses Pakistani news feeds for its own content, but edits the language to make it less inflammatory. “For example, Pakistani sources would refer to deaths from violence as ‘martyrdom,’ whereas Killid would refer to the same deaths as ‘military casualties.’”;

788 “Afghanistan Media Survey,” 2010.

789 Peter, 2012.

343

790 Ibid.

791 Ben Flanagan, Ben, “News Corps Takes Stake in Dubai Company,” The National (United Arab Emirates), January 12, 2012, http://www.thenational.ae/business/media/news-corp-takes-stake-in-dubai- media-company

CHAPTER 8. Optimistic, But Uncertain: The Afghan Journalist Experience

792 Farhang. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

793 Parsa. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

794 Faisal. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Abdullah. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Sina. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Aalem, Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Fazia. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Jamshid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Mitra. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Kambas. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Jawid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

795 Ghazanfar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Jabar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

796 Sina. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012; Delewar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

797 Sina. Interview by author.

798 Aalem. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author.

799 Jawid. Interview by author.

800 Sina. Interview by author.

801 Aalem. Interview by author; Aalem also had this curious point about Tolo News. He said it was not as influential as the New York Times for Afghan media when it comes to explaining the war, United States policy, and relations with Afghanistan’s neighbors, “but its probably the next best thing for Afghan media” because it is being supported and promoted by the U.S. government.

802 Omaid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

803 Mansoor. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

804 Aalem. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

805 Atash. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

806 Kambas. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012. Aalem. Interview by author. The main outlier was Aalem, a broadcast journalist, who believed that all news agencies that receive foreign funds largely work for those donors’ agendas – no matter if the West or Iran or Pakistan funds them. Since the journalists want to keep the money coming, they are normally preoccupied with trying to please the donors through their content and finding the topics that they are interested in. Even news agencies that don’t get donor funds want it. Aalem also saw the U.S. interfering

344

with news content. Stations that receive U.S. subsidies--like Tolo TV and Shamshad—are the first—and sometimes only—stations that land interviews with U.S. officials. Also, those stations’ journalists are often allowed to ask the first question at U.S. government officials’ news conferences in Afghanistan. This is the case with Tolo news especially; because Tolo News received not just a vast sum of money from the U.S., but a large quantity of one-on-one interviews with American government officials like Richard Holbrooke, Stanley McChrystal, and Hillary Clinton, there was the widespread perception that the Americans are promoting Tolo. The station, Aalem concluded, is the “agenda-setter” for Afghan news media, but it could maintain the quality or quantity of their coverage, and its influence on the Afghan people, without American dollars and personnel to help shape the business’s direction. Aalem was an outlier in that he believed the U.S. sponsored media regularly receives phone calls and guidance from the U.S. embassy. With any news story, Aalem said, channels that are sponsored by Iran promote one side; those sponsored by the U.S. promote another. The Iranians and the Americans alike, “they are setting their own agenda” and the journalists from the sponsored news agencies “are receiving direct instructions from them.”

807 Sina. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Omaid. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

808 Aalem. Interview by author; Note: According to Aalem, the Pakistani government was sponsoring Afghan print media through providing machinery and technicians for printing facilities, but their influence is just less than five percent. There are two television channels that are widely known, Aalem said, to be sponsored by Pakistan and are in the Pashto-language; so they have a great impact on Afghans living in the south and along the Pakistan border. You can tell which stations are supported by Pakistan, Aalem said, because they blame bad events on both the U.S. and India. Plus, the Indian influence of Afghan media is largely seen as providing Indian government-sponsored technical assistance and the importation of Indian entertainment, such as dramas that are dubbed in Dari and shown largely on Tolo daytime television.

809 Sina. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Omaid. Interview by author.

810 Sina. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

811 Ibid.

812 Babur. Interview by author; Omaid. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Jawid. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

813 Houshmand. Interview by author.

814 Ibid.

815 Khaleeq. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

816 Sarwar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Sina. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

817 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

818 Sarwar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

819 Aalem. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Omaid. Interview by author.

345

820 Sina. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Aalem. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

821 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

822 Feda. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Jabar. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Behnam. Print. Interview by author.

823 Behnam. Print. Interview by author.

824 Jabar. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

825 Behnam. Interview by author; The problem with upholding the principal of objectivity in a place like Afghanistan, according to Delewar, was that it was at war—and forces were manipulating the democratic process, which included the Afghan media. This disturbed him immensely. By giving someone who was against democracy the equal respect they would have in a democracy, they would just use it to take your freedom away from you. “By being balanced, you want to be promoting these values and protecting these values but” warlords, insurgents, and international donors who don’t want a democratic Afghanistan are all trying to manipulate the Afghan people in the interim. Journalists are also easily swayed by powerful figures. Interview with Delewar. Broadcast. June 2010. Kabul, Afghanistan.

826 Faisal. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; With print, the editorial pages of newspapers are fiercely partisan and a lot of them are anti-American, Sarwar explained.

827 Sarwar. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author.

828 Sarwar. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author.

829 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Matteen. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012; Often, Matteen said, journalists report verbatim what the government wants and then complain about the government’s inefficiencies in talk shows or editorials. Rarely does any Afghan journalist investigate the root of the problem and provide any constructive solution.

830 Mansoor. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author.

831 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

832 Sina. Interview by author; Badi. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Mansoor. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010; Badi. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Hakim. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

833 Sarwar. Interview by author.

834 Farhang. Interview by author.

835 Atash. Interview by author.

836 Kambas. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

837 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

346

838 Sina. Interview by author.

839 Aalem. Interview by author.

840 Behnam. Interview by author.

841 Ibid.

842 Sina. Interview by author.

843 Abdullah. Interview by author.

844 Farhang. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author.

845 Mansoor. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author.

846 Atash. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; In addition to Nai, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting has provided some workshop training on investigative, long-term reporting.

847 Houshmand. Interview by author.

848 Jamshid. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author.

849 Abdullah. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

850 Daniel Magnowski, “Taliban death stadium reborn as Afghan sporting hope,” Reuters, Dec. 15. 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/15/us-afghanistan-stadium-taliban-idUSTRE7BE0LB20111215

851 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author.

852 Mansoor. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author.

853 Mansoor. Interview by author

854 Ibid.

855 Mansoor. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author.

856 Sina. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author.

857 Sina. Interview by author.

858 Ibid.

859 Delewar. Broadcast. Interview by author.

860 “Afghan Premier League,” April 26, 2013, http://www.afghanpremierleague.com/

861 Sarwar. Interview by author.

347

862 Ibid.

863 Atash. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by author.

864 Atash. Interview by author; Fawzia. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Hakim. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Hakim acknowledged that his news outlet needs to become more multimedia online, and needs more content, so that it can become more modern and international in its reach. But the style of news also needs developing, to challenge power more but to also be constructive for the government and the Afghan public. He sees the model as being more British news than American.

865 Mansoor. Interview by author.

866 Sarwar. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author.

867 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

868 Jahandar. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Mitra’s concern is that they are extremist channels that capitalize on anti-Americanism. For instance, he gave the example of the spring 2012 incident when U.S. soldiers partially burned Korans in a trash pile. “Can you imagine how many Korans were burned in cars, in mosques, in other buildings that have been attacked by the Taliban? They all have Korans inside of them. They are taking advantage of that one moment and encouraging people to go out and incite violence.”

869 Jahandar. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author.

870 Houshmand. Interview by author.

871 Jamshid. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author.

872 Mansoor. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Behnam predicted that, if security and the economy really deteriorated, the warlords would flee the country with their money: “If I’m a warlord and I have $100 million why would I waste my neck? That’s enough for generations.” The people who can leave Afghanistan will leave, he predicted.

873 Farhang. Interview by author.

874 Babur. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Hakim. Interview by author; Hakim acknowledged that his news outlet needs to become more multimedia online, and needs more content, so that it can become more modern and international in its reach. But the style of news also needs developing, to challenge power more but to also be constructive for the government and the Afghan public. He sees the model as being more British news than American.

875 Faisal. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author.

876 Babur. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

877 Delewar. Interview by author; Omaid. Interview by author.

878 Jahandar. Interview by author.

348

879 Farhang. Interview by author.

880 Mitra. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author.

881 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

882 Kambas. Interview by author.

883 Ibid.

884 “A Survey of the Afghan People, 2012,” The Asia Foundation, 2012, http://asiafoundation.org/country/afghanistan/2012-poll.php; Jamshid. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author.

885 Abdullah. Interview by author.

886 Sarwar. Interview by author.

887 Abdullah. Interview by author.

888 Ibid.

889 Sarwar. Interview by author.

890 Delewar. Interview by author.

891 Abdullah. Interview by author.

892 Delewar. Interview by author.

893 Abdullah. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author.

894 Faisal. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author.

895 Parsa agrees that the Afghan government gives him some protection, which is why he can criticize it. Parsa. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author.

896 Atash. Interview by author.

897 Ibid; For instance, government officials have not tried to stop special interest money from Pakistan and Iran from hijacking a free press, Atash pointed out.

898 Abdullah. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Abdullah was the most vocal about Afghan government attempts to silence him. He said that his journalistic colleagues regularly receive threats from government officials via phone, or face to face. He credits his news agency with being the first to be brave enough to discuss the story that President Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was involved in the drug business and invited a parliamentarian from Kandahar to come to the news station and confirm it. Abdullah then received a call from a high-ranking official in the Karzai administration to complain; Abdullah invited him—or President Karzai—to come on the air to refute the allegation but they never did. Afterward, several

349

of his fellow journalists received calls from government officials saying, “be careful.” One time, Abdullah said, he was directly threatened by the Minister of Interior.

899 Abdullah. Interview by author.

900 Babur. Interview by author.

901 Houshmand. Interview by author.

902 Atash. Interview by author.

903 Behnam. Interview by author.

904 Babur. Interview by author; Parsa also pointed out that there is much corruption among the journalists themselves: Ministers of Parliament often pay cameramen and reporters “to keep them in a close shot so they get more publicity.” Parsa. Interview by author.

905 Mitra. Interview by author.

906 Farhang. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author.

907 Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

908 Jahandar. Interview by author.

909 Farhang. Interview by author.

910 Farhang. Interview by author.

911 Feda. Interview by author.

912 Babur. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

913 Jawid. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author.

914 Houshmand. Interview by author.

915 Abdullah. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

916 Fazia. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author.

917 Kambas. Interview by author.

918 Babur. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author.

919 Morad. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by author.

920 Babur. Interview by author; One time, during a press conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani, Karzai asked where the Tolo reporter was and then told Gilani “Tolo is our Geo News.” To Babur, this signaled that President Karzai knew about Tolo’s influence, but did not want to legitimize them.

921 Babur. Interview by author.

350

922 Houshmand. Interview by author.

923 Jabar. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author.

924 Sina. Interview by author.

925 Mitra. Interview by author.

926 Behnam. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

927 Morad. Interview by author.

928 Abdullah. Interview by author;Abdullah, who also directs news for the Pashto-language, said that news programming is not necessarily conservative, but it is sensitive to Pashtun traditions. It is focused on government issues, corruption, and the presence of international troops in Pashtun areas. Journalists based in Kandahar and Helmand—two large, Pashto-speaking cities—offer original content. He insisted that his fellow reporters at his agency provided investigative reporting.

929 Farhang. Interview by author; Ghazanfar said his reporters are often defenseless when it comes to breaking news on the Taliban. Ghazanfar. Interview by author; This is why some Afghan journalists work for U.S. news agencies: “They do 50-70 percent of the work -- the reporting, arrange for the interviews, and find the materials. But then somebody else writes it. And if the Afghan journalists realize that any of those stories could put us in danger, then they don’t ask for credit. Because we know they will come after us.”; Behnam. Interview by author.

930 Atash. Interview by author.

931 Ibid.

932 Ibid.

933 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

934 Kambas. Interview by author.

935 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

936 Khaleeq. Interview by author. Abdullah. Interview by author.

937 Kambas. Interview by author.

938 Atash. Interview by author.

939 Mitra. Interview by author.

940 Atash. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

941 Atash. Interview by author.

942 Jamshid. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author.

943 Morad. Interview by author.

944 Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

351

945 Ibid.

946 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010.

CHAPTER 9. ‘We Can’t Do This Alone’: Afghan Journalists and the U.S.

947 Feda. Interview by author.

948 Aalem. Interview by author; Sometimes, Afghan journalists will take reports from U.S. think tanks that are weeks, even months old, and report it as news. As an example, he spoke of a report from the International Crisis Group that was released in May 2010 that was reported on a news broadcast in June 2010 as the “new report.”

949 Jabar. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author.

950 Morad. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author.

951 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

952 Atash. Interview by author.

953 Jamshid. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author.

954 Delewar. Interview by author.

955 Jawid. Print. Interview by author.

956 Sina. Interview by author; Sina insisted that he looks to American news for guidance on how to cover news stories, but he does believe that U.S. news on Afghanistan serves as an agenda-setter for his own agency’s news coverage, only on what the international community thinks about Afghanistan; Aalem. Interview by author.

957 Houshmand. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by author.

958 Faisal; Interview by author.

959 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Faisal Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Babur gave the example of an MP who, during her travels to the United Kingdom, had been interviewed on the BBC and Al Jazeera. When she returned to Kabul, she insisted that she only do exclusive interviews with Afghan media agencies because of her newfound, international recognition. Eventually, however, she realized she was losing her place with the Afghan people and returned to Afghan new.

960 Faisal. Interview by author.

352

961 Babur. Interview by author; Babur gave the example of an MP who, during her travels to the United Kingdom, had been interviewed on the BBC and Al Jazeera. When she returned to Kabul, she insisted that she only do exclusive interviews with Afghan media agencies because of her newfound, international recognition. Eventually, however, she realized she was losing her place with the Afghan people and returned to Afghan new; Atash. Interview by author.

962 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Afghan officials, Aalem said, would not go to a warlord-owned news station because they would only reach a small fraction of the Afghan public—and lose their credibility with the rest of the Afghan public for the fact that it granted the interview. Since there is a general perception that each Afghan station is controlled by a warlord, politicians, or donor country, it’s easier to protect their own reputations by going to the international media; Babur. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Ghazanfar said its because foreign journalists are guests, and Afghan culture puts a high premium on hospitality. Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

963 Aalem. Interview by author.

964 Jamshid. Interview by author.

965 Farhang. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

966 Houshmand. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Also, however, Abdullah said that Afghan officials who want to speak out on corruption go to American journalists rather than Afghan journalists because they know they cannot protect the Afghan journalists— but the U.S. journalists are untouchable. “They think if they offer this information to foreign media, somehow they will be safe because the international community will protect them.” But for most of the time, they would prefer not to offer any information, Abdullah said.

967 Jahandar. Interview by author.

968 Parsa. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Another reason, Mansoor said, is that the American reporters have more resources to woo sources. He said he knows of situations when western news agencies gave equipment or money to government spokespeople in return for information.

969 Alissa Rubin, “Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.,” New York Times, April 1, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02afghan.html

970 Alisa Rubin and Habib Zohrai, “Karzai Accuses U.S. of Duplicity in Fighting Afghan Enemies,” New York Times, Oct. 4, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/asia/karzai-accuses-us-of-duplicity- in-fighting-afghan-enemies.html

971 Jamshid. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

972 Houshmand. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author.

973 Houshmand. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

974 Farzin. Interview by author.

975 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author.

976 Sarwar. Interview by author.

353

977 Jamshid. Interview by author; This is usually indicated by the fact that U.S. officials prefer U.S. news media to Afghan media, especially when American officials and politicians visit Afghanistan and hold press conferences and routinely give the first question to American journalists. Jamshid found this utterly frustrating. “What is the reason for this? Why don’t they let journalists belonging to Afghanistan get the first question?”

978 Delewar. Interview by author.

979 Houshmand. Interview by author.

980 Aalem. Interview by author.

981 Ibid.

982 Aalem. Interview by author; One example Aalem cited was from the June 2010 Peace Jirga in Kabul, which was organized to explore the possibility of reconciliation with the Taliban. Aalem explains, “when the Jirga was in progress, during the second day of the Jirga, something was published on international media. That publication was like a copycat of the final agreement of the Jirga and the reporter was claiming that he received it from one of the embassies.”

983 Atash. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Jabar, however, credited the U.S. press with being reflective and acknowledging that they did largely follow the U.S. government’s talking points.

984 Jabar. Interview by author.

985 However, the degree to which the U.S. press complied with presidential talking points, Jabar said, depended on the agenda of the editors for each newspaper or television agency. Each election year, editors decide whether or not to support republican or democratic candidates. Fox News is known to support conservatives; MSNBC is known to support liberals. He explained, “News and editorial is blurred in the United States, because when you cover the story then you do an analysis” and invite specific pundits to comment. “I'm not saying partisan media applies to all American media, but I mean, if you see a big newspaper supporting one presidential candidate or the other.” He acknowledged that the editorial board is different from the reporters but believes that, in the end, the editors’ opinions impact the overall slant of the paper’s reporting. He said, “everyone says: ‘The New York Times is supporting Obama.’”

986 Atash. Interview by author.

987 Feda. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

988 Maria Abi-Habib, “Afghan Military Hospital, Graft and Deadly Neglect,“ Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904480904576496703389391710.html

989 Atash. Interview by author.

990 Abdullah. Interview by author.

991 Jahandar. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

992 Babur. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

354

993 Morad. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Jahandar; Parsa. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

994 Kambas. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

995 Jahandar. Interview by author.

996 Jawid. Interview by author.

997 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

998 Kambas. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

999 Mitra. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

1000 Faisal. Interview by author.

1001 Jamshid. Interview by author.

1002 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1003 Jahandar. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author.

1004 Kambas. Interview by author.

1005 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1006 Babur. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1007 Houshmand. Interview by author.

1008 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author.

1009 Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

1010 Behnam. Interview by author.

1011 Behnam. Interview by author.

1012 Kambas. Interview by author; The U.S. media has also given the Taliban more publicity. “The more you give them publicity, the more you encourage supporters as well to help them.” This was the U.S. press’s biggest, and worst, contribution to Afghanistan, Delewar said. Delewar. Interview by author.

1013 Dexter Filkins, ““Will civil war hit Afghanistan when the U.S. leaves?” The New Yorker, July 9, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/09/120709fa_fact_filkins

1014 Mitra. Interview by author.

1015 Ibid.

355

1016 Farhang. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Delewar did not appreciate U.S. news stories that talked about Afghanistan as a backwards society, with conservative traditions that keep it from making progress along the lines of democratic governance and human rights. The U.S. press tries, he said, reports on Afghanistan from a western perspective and points out the cultural clash between the two countries.

1017 Farhang. Interview by author.

1018 Joshua Partlow and Pam Constable, “Accusations of Vote Fraud Multiply in Afghanistan” Washington Post, Aug., 27, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704199.html; Sabrina Tavernise and Abdul Waheed Wafa, “U.N. Official Acknowledges ‘Widespread Fraud’ in Afghan Election” New York Times, Oct. 11, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/world/asia/12afghan.html

1019 Fazia. Interview by author.

1020 Jamshid. Interview by author.

1021 Farhang. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by autho; Jabar. Jamshid. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author.

1022 Mansoor. Interview by author; Two in particular are from James Risen: James Risen, “Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghan Heroin Trade,” New York Times, Oct. 4, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?ref=ahmedwalikarzai; James Risen “Karzai’s Kin Use Ties to Gain Power in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Oct. 6, 2008, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/ahmed_wali_karzai/index.html?offset=10&s= newest

1023 Atash. Interview by author.

1024 Farzin. Interview by author.

1025 Matthew Rosenberg and Graham Bowley, “Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy,” New York Times, March 7, 2012.

1026 Morad. Interview by author; Jabar. Interview by author.

1027 Jabar. Interview by author.

1028 Parsa. Interview by author.

1029 Mitra. Interview by author.

1030 Babur. Interview by author.

1031 Farzin. Interview by author.

1032 Delewar. Interview by author.

1033 Atash. Interview by author.

356

1034 Ibid.

1035 Abdullah. Interview by author.

1036 Faisal. Interview by author.

1037 Babur. Interview by author.

1038 Faisal. Interview by author.

1039 Delewar. Interview by author.

1040 Jahandar. Interview by author.

1041 Faisal. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author.

1042 Sarwar. Interview by author.

1043 Ibid.

1044 Mansoor. Print. Interview by author.

1045 Atash. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author.

1046 Atash. Interview by author.

1047 Behnam. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author.

1048 Behnam. Interview by author.

1049 Jawid. Interview by author.

1050 Farzin. Interview by author.

1051 Jawid. Interview by author.

1052 Mansoor. Interview by author.

1053 Houshmand. Interview by author

1054 Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

1055 Faisal. Interview by author.

1056 Mitra. Interview by author.

1057 Faisal. Interview by author.

1058 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1059 Houshmand. Interview by author.

357

1060 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Feda. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

1061 Houshmand. Interview by author.

1062 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1063 Faisal. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author.

1064 See: Schudson, 2003; Gans, 2004.

1065 Farhang. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Fazia. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1066 Delewar. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author. Faisel thought that it is not just the U.S. press and U.S. government. He thinks the U.S. press is influencing the NATO countries’ public perceptions of Afghanistan, and their publics are in turn asking their governments why their policies there have been such failures. Delewar also thought that the U.S. mediahad much responsibility in helping Afghanistan’s future, especially since it played a negative role in Afghanistan the days after September 11, 2001. He blamed the U.S. press for helping to bring back the Taliban after their nominal defeat after 2001 because the U.S. press gave them attention. He explained, “the Taliban always needs publicity. Getting that enlarged audience not only helps them, but it also somehow helps their donors because the Taliban becomes more interesting. So they continue to fund them or increase funds and support.”

1067 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1068 Aalem. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author.

1069 Jamshid. Interview by author.

1070 Jawid. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author.

1071 Sina, Interview by author.

1072 Khaleeq. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

1073 Kambas. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author; Especially when there are erroneous reports that make it into the international realm. Aalem was frustrated that the power of U.S. news is especially palpable when they make a mistake. The news agency may correct it later, but the original copy with the mistake is already unleashed to the world and picked up and relayed as truth by other global news agencies.

1074 Abdullah. Interview by author.

1075 Jahandar. Interview by author.

1076 Morad. Interview by author.

1077 Sarwar. Interview by author.

358

1078 Mitra. Interview by author.

1079 Mansoor. Interview by author; Sarwar. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author.

1080 Houshmand. Interview by author.

1081 Behnam. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Mitra. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Khaleeq. Interview by author; Behnam. Interview by author.

1082 Mansoor. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author; Faisal. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Aalem. Interview by author.

1083 Parsa. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author; Another option, Mansoor said, is to partner with other Afghan news agencies, finding strength in numbers so that strongmen cannot threaten the entire Afghan press corps. However, the norm is to pass the story to a U.S. or British journalist; Aalem. Interview by author; Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Mansoor. Interview by author.

1084 Ghazanfar. Interview by author.

1085 Some Afghan journalists said that they, too, are source for western reporters—especially American reporters. American journalists, Faisel said, come to him for clarification on issues and to get his point of view “almost everyday.” Jamshid, too, said U.S. news agencies, especially NBC and Fox News, come to gather information from him; Faisal. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author.

1086 Delewar. Interview by author.

1087 Ibid.

1088 Sarwar. Interview by author.

1089 Farhang. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author.

1090 Abdullah. Interview by author.

1091 Khaleeq. Interview by author.

1092 Atash. Print. Interview by author.

1093 Feda. Interview by author.

1094 Sarwar. Interview by author; Kambas. Interview by author.

1095 Ghazanfar. Interview by author; Parsa. Interview by author.

1096 Sarwar. Interview by author; Morad. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author.

1097 Morad. Interview by author.

1098 Houshmand. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author. Farzin speculated that this was possibly because Saad Mohseni heavily depended on U.S. funds for his broadcast stations.

359

1099 Behnam. Interview by author; Abdullah. Interview by author.

1100 Sarwar. Interview by author.

1101 Ibid.

1102 Behnam. Interview by author; Delewar. Interview by author; Jawid. Interview by author.

1103 Jabar. Interview by author.

1104 Mansoor. Interview by author.

1105 Sina. Interview by author; Jamshid. Interview by author.

1106 Aalem. Interview by author.

1107 Abdullah. Interview by author.

1108 Ibid.

1109 Babur. Interview by author; Farhang. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Babur. Interview by author; Sina. Interview by author; Atash. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author.

1110 Jawid. Interview by author; Houshmand. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author.

1111 Jawid. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author; Jahandar. Interview by author.

1112 Jahandar. Interview by author.

1113 Jahandar. Interview by author; Farzin. Interview by author.

1114 Houshmand. Interview by author.

1115 Behnam. Interview by author.

CHAPTER 10. ‘WE WRITE FOR US’: AMERICAN JOURNALISTS IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

1116 Nathan. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Roger. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; James. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Jason. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Tom. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Nikki. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012; Maya. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

1117 James. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author; Roger. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author.

1118 Maya. Interview by author.

1119 Tom said that he also imagines a global audience when he reports and feels as if he has a wider responsibility to them: “It’s not just Americans reading [our work] but Afghans and Pakistanis and Indians,” he said. Tom. Interview by author.

360

1120 Roger. Interview by author.

1121 James. Interview by author. Note: Covering Afghanistan and Pakistan accurately is particularly difficult for journalists who parachute into the region for short stints, Tom emphasized. So many journalists come in and out of the region on short freelancing work, and often can completely misinterpret the facts. It also depends on the talent and persistence and talent of the American press corps, James said. There are less people who want to sign up for the job, since the news stories are risky, take you away from your family, and is dying down – so is less of a career maker. “If you’re young, it’s an opportunity to launch your career as a foreign correspondent – but they’re the only people who will step up.” Simultaneously, however, if you stay in Afghanistan for too long, reporting can become too simplistic, James said.

1122 “Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Identified in Afghan Killings,” Army Times, March 17, 2012, http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/03/army-staff-sgt-robert-bales-named-suspect-afghan-killings- 031712w/

1123 Nikki. Interview by author. The journalists consistently feel constrained by the security environment, and the lack of support. Ideally, Nikki said, her news organization would have one journalist who focuses only on investigative reporting and one who only covers the military, but it’s not possible and they regularly become absorbed with writing on daily events. Still, Tom pointed out, American journalists often have more resources and sources available to them to report than most Afghan journalists have.

1124 James. Interview by author; Tom. Interview by author. James and Tom felt some pressure from their Washington bureau, but their editors have never told them not to write a story.

1125 Nikki. Interview by author.

1126 Tom. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author. Jason. Interview by author; Jason thought that, since I mainly interviewed Afghan journalists in Kabul, that they likely see Afghanistan differently than Afghanis who live in the south or east who are regularly afflicted by poor security: “I wonder if you ask a person in Helmand or Kandahar or along the Pakistani border then they might feel differently. It’s easy to say that security isn’t everything when you’re in Kabul because it doesn’t affect your life as much. But there are large swaths of this country where security and the war and the Taliban are very real parts of the daily life.”

1127 Maya. Interview by author. Afghanistan stories written in Washington are mainly security ones, Maya emphasized, because journalists’ main sources are contacts in the Pentagon or the White House. But stories with an Afghanistan dateline tend to be more focused on Afghanistan the country, and have more nuance and context about Afghanistan the country, she said.

1128 Roger. Interview by author. The European news coverage about Afghanistan is different from the American coverage, Roger pointed out. They focus more on war crimes, atrocities and human rights abuses.

1129 James. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author; Roger. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author.

1130 Nikki. Interview by author. Nikki later conceded, however, that they could make an effort to run an occasional story of hope, as they are “what people pin their stars to. Otherwise, what’s there to live for?”

1131 James. Interview by author. “There’s not a lot we can say to that criticism,” James said. “We try to point to stories that show we are critical but nothing seems to dissuade them.”

1132 Nathan. Interview by author. Nathan said he has never felt a responsibility to defend U.S. policies, but sometimes he will hear a U.S. policy depicted inaccurately by a local official or journalist. He will interject to correct them, “Because that’s a responsibility to the audience – whether it be Afghan, Pakistani or

361

American – that information is getting out there fairly and accurately.” Often, this is interpreted, he said, as being defensive of the United States.

1133 Tom. Interview by author. Tom said that covering the military, too, as an institution is fascinating: “To be able to write what is a very local story about a few Americans that also happens to be a global story because those Americans are in a far off place that is of geopolitical – that’s very neat. There are few other places in the world where you can report on that kind of intersection. A kid from a small town and the province that hangs in the balance – for those things to intersect are really interesting, and important.”

1134 Nikki. Interview by author. The military, Nikki said, doesn’t know how to work with the Western elite media: “They have this huge press operation and they don’t know how to use us. And one way they could do it is to tell stories of things that aren’t going well to their leadership back in Washington. Whether if it’s that they need more time or backing for one thing or another, they should use the press to get their message. The press should be in their arsenal,” Nikki said. “We’re doing our job which is to report what we see, and they are doing their job which is to get people to hear what is difficult.”

1135 Nathan. Interview by author

1136Tom. Interview by author. If Afghans and Pakistanis do see the U.S. media as being sycophantic or stuck on security frames, it is often the journalists who parachute into the country for short reports, Tom emphasized. The U.S. military makes it easy for American journalists to travel to Afghanistan for succinct time periods, and then has great control over the narrative they write. The stories those parachute journalists produce are weak, Tom said, and are definitely American centric because they interact only with Americans and no Afghans. “But if you look at the journalists who are based here, I think our coverage is fair,” Tom said. They know the military officials – and the region – well enough to criticize the military strategy and policy separate from covering the troops whose lives are at stake.

1137 Nathan. Interview by author. Access to U.S. government officials in Kabul is more difficult than it is in Washington, Nathan agreed. In Washington, you have access to a variety of legislators or White House, Pentagon or State Department officials. But in Islamabad and Kabul, there are far more physical and bureaucratic barriers in place for journalists to interface and develop relationships with them, he said.

1138 James. Interview by author. One of the stories that began with off the record comments was the Kabul Bank story, which Washington Post broke in February 2010. One of the journalists who worked on the story told me it began with U.S. officials telling him that a lot of money was leaving Kabul to buy homes in Dubai. A Post journalist went to Dubai to speak with the housing authority and the Afghan community there to investigate where exactly the money was coming from. They brought that information to the U.S. embassy for commentary, but a Wikileaks cable later showed that the embassy seemed to be surprised by the extent of information the Post had gathered.

1139 Nikki. Interview by author. Nikki said, “But what Afghan journalists don’t realize is that protection will diminish as U.S. aid and the presence of the U.S. military diminishes. So it is true that Afghans will have to do it themselves because we won’t be able to do it either, or we’ll be able to do much less.” Afghan power brokers and government officials often threaten the local staffs of the U.S. news bureaus; it’s frightening to think what could happen to them if they did not work for an American news organization, Nikki said. “In the end, though, we do have the protection of the U.S. government and that helps us a great deal. And it’s something that Afghan reporters don’t have. They are much more vulnerable.”

1140 Jason. Interview by author; Given recent episodes of American journalists who had been taken hostage – New York Times’ David Rohde and Steve Ferrel, for instance, Jason said, “It is nice to know how much effort [the U.S. government] puts into getting you out.”

1141 Maya. Interview by author. Recently, the Afghan Minister of Defense had threatened her over a story about his malfeasance. He called Maya an American spy, and said that her reporting had been false, and

362

that she reported it to seek fame. She did not know about the statement until the U.S. embassy called her to tell her, “And they really stood up for me, because I’m an American… I don’t think I expected it, but after they did it I wasn’t surprised,” Maya said. But the American embassies will also stand up against injustice, Maya thought, “I think they would do the same for any Afghan journalist who was thrust into the limelight…Unfortunately, it take a lot of attention to be protected by the U.S. government but when there’s a sense of injustice that’s in your face like that and really pervasive, people tend to react,” Maya said.

1142 Nathan. Interview by author. Nathan was not sure if the U.S. government would support him if he angered the Afghan government, but should something happen to him, it would likely get much media attention. “Good, bad or otherwise, Western journalists are going to cover what happens to other Western journalists in an environment like this. So you just know how much of a black eye it would be if the government detains you, beats you, etc,” he said. There’s a high probability that Afghan and Pakistani officials could pick up, intimidate or harass Afghan and Pakistani journalists, or insurgents can take them. They are often legitimately afraid to report stories of corruption or malfeasance, or on the inner network of the insurgencies for that reason.

1143 Tom. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author.

1144 Roger. Interview by author. Despite this, American journalists do not come to the region to protect U.S. interests, Roger emphatically said.

1145 Jason. Interview by author. The Taliban could also invoke sympathy if they allowed American journalists to embed with them in the same way the Mujahdeen allowed Americans to in their fight against the Soviets. “Then, the Americans had access to the rebels and saw the story through their heroic efforts to fight the evil Soviets. I think it the Taliban had a smarter media strategy they would let us in and embed with then, then I think they would get much more sympathetic coverage – much like the mujahedeen did – if they took in journalists. I think they missed an opportunity to portray themselves as human beings with a legitimate struggle. A lot of people would be more sympathetic to their cause if they explained it a different way, that they just wanted to get foreign troops out of their country,” Jason said.

1146 James. Interview by author. James was aware that in 2009, 46 percent of the U.S. news coverage on Afghanistan was indexed to the ‘Af-Pak’ policy debate in Washington. But he attributes this to the fact that many foreign correspondents came from covering the war in Iraq and realized quickly that Afghanistan and Iraq were vastly different countries, and wars. “The two countries are both Muslim, but that’s where the similarities end. It would be like saying, ‘Well, I covered a war in England, so I could definitely cover a war in Bulgaria.’ So you don’t totally get Afghanistan – but the one thing you do know is Washington, you get that. So it was easier to write about that for awhile in 2009.”

1147 James. Interview by author.

CHAPTER 11. DYSFUNCTION: AMERICAN JOURNALISTS VIEW OF REPORTERS & OFFICIALS IN AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN.

1148 Roger. Interview by author.

1149 Tom. Interview by author; Jason. Interview by author.

1150 Nikki. Interview by author. The presidential palace and cabinet officials may use U.S. media or European media to send signals to Western governments, but that’s not the case in parliament. With ministers, you can be received immediately – or you have to wait months. Once Afghan officials are named in corruption stories in U.S. media, they tend to shun the U.S. media all together. It’s strange, Nikki said, that they take so personally what an American newspaper writes about them but “We can’t change what’s true…so we just keep going.”

363

1151 James. Interview by author.

1152 See: “Afghanistan—State of the News Media in 2009.” Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. 2010. http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/year_overview.php

1153 Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations,” Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

1154 Tom. Interview by author. So does Karzai’s cabinet. A top defense official complained to Tom that he was misquoted and threatened to arrest the local journalist if there was not an official apology. Tom had a recording of the quote so the situation defused, but it showed to him how seriously the Afghan government took American news stories.

1155 Maya. Interview by author. Maya is convinced that whatever relationship she created with Afghan officials is because she is a woman, and they were more willing to speak with her because they did not find her threatening. “I really do think they think that women are stupider than men. So that helps sometimes because people don’t expect much of you. I think they’ve learned that’s not the case, since,” she said.

1156 Nikki. Interview by author.

1157 Nikki. Interview by author; Jason. Interview by author. The idea that elite American news organizations are the agenda setter for local news was the same in other countries where there is a strong U.S. presence, like Iraq, Nikki and Jason said.

1158 James. Interview by author; Jason. Interview by author.

1159 Nikki. Interview by author; Maya. Interview by author.

1160 Nathan. Interview by author.

1161 Maya. Interview by author; James. Interview by author; Jason. Interview by author.

1162 A friend of Maya’s who is the CEO of a large company was recently approached by a TV reporter who told him he had evidence that the CEO was corrupt. “And I believe my friend to be honest and not corrupt, although I could be fooled by him. But he was strong enough to say I’m not going to give you $500 to not run this story. You do find journalists who put people in a tough spot to extract money,” Maya said.

1163 Jason. Interview by author; Maya. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author; Roger. Interview by author.

1164 Nikki. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author.

1165 James. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author.

1166 Nathan. Interview by author.

1167 Nathan. Interview by author.

1168 James. Interview by author; Jason. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author; Maya. Interview by author.

1169 James. Interview by author; Nathan. Interview by author; Roger. Interview by author; Nikki. Interview by author.

364

CHAPTER 12: CLARITY IN CHAOS: NATIONALISM AS A DEVICE TO MANAGE REPORTAGE

1170 Dewerth-Pallmeyer,1996.

1171 Lee and Yang, 1995; Lee, Man, Chan, Pan Clement and So, 2000; Lee and Yang found that journalists from five different countries – Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the U.K. – who covered the same event – the return of Hong Kong to China in 2000 – employed their own national lenses to tell the story to their audiences.

1172 See: Chaudhary, 2000; Murthy, 2000; Ramaprasad, 2003; Rampal, 1995; In 2002, Downing said development media was “the pursuit of cultural and informational autonomy” and “support for democracy” among other goals. Hachten in 1999, on the other hand, said that it was a “guided press” that was “a rationale for an autocratic press.” Downing, 2002; Hachten, 1999; Jiafei Yin, “Beyond Four Theories of the Press: A New Model for the Asian and the World Press,” Journalism Communication Monographs, Vol. 10 (Spring 2008): 35; In Four Theories of the Press, Fred Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wilbur Shramm looked at how much freedom the news media had under political systems under authoritarian, communist and democratic rule. But the degrees of press freedom varies when media is in development as their societies are ever-changing, Jiafei Yin argued in “Beyond Four Theories of the Press” in 2008. She proposed a “Freedom-Responsibility” coordinate system to identify the categories of press systems that don’t clearly fall into authoritarian, communism, libertarian or social responsibility. Press systems would fall in the categories of “free and responsible,” which would require a public demand for responsible journalism; “free and not responsible,” which exist in “intensely competitive media markets, such as new democracies”; “responsible but not free,” which would mean that the press supports the societal goals of their government or from public pressure; and “not free and not responsible,” which includes press systems that are often controlled by its leaders and therefore glorify their leaders.

1173 See: Sreberny-Mohammadi, Nordenstreng, Stevesnon and Ugboajah, 1985; Wu, 2007.

1174 Meyer, 1991: 230-237.

1175 “Understanding the Militants’ Media,” 2010: 10.

1176 Fraenkel, Himelfarb and Schoemaker, 2010; Yin, 2008.

1177 Ibid

1178 Akhtar, 2000: 10.

1179 Akhtar, 2000: 29; “FBIS Media Guide: Pakistan, 1996.

1180 “No Life Insurance If You Fall from Insurance Building,” The Nation (Pakistan), Nov. 29, 2012, http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/karachi/29-Nov-2012/no-life- insurance-if-you-fall-from-insurance-building

1181 Maheen Usmani, “They Don’t Care About Us,” Dawn (Pakistan), Nov. 30, 2012, http://dawn.com/2012/11/30/they-dont-care-about-us/

1182 Fawad Khan, “Young Man Jumps from 8th Floor to Escape Fire,” AAJ TV (Pakistan), Nov. 28, 2012, http://www.aaj.tv/2012/11/young-man-jumps-from-8th-floor-to-escape-fire/

1183 Usmani, 2012.

365

1184 Jamaluddin, “We Are Sorry, Owais Baig,” The Express Tribune (Pakistan), Dec. 6, 2012, http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/15039/we-are-sorry-owais-baig/

1185 Grusin and Utt, 1.

1186 Marvin G. Weinbaum, “Civic Culture and Democracy in Pakistan,” Asian Survey, Vol. 36, No. 7 (1996): 639-654

1187 Griffe Witte, “In Pakistan, pro-American sentiment is rare” Washington Post, June 23, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/in-pakistan-pro-american-expressions-are- are/2011/06/22/AGdj5shH_story.html

1188 Schudson, Sociology of News, 2003: 125-126.

1189 Ibid.

1190 “51 Journalists Killed in Pakistan since 1992/Motive Confirmed,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013, https://cpj.org/killed/asia/pakistan/

1191 Ibid.

1192 Joseph Nye, “The Decline of America’s Soft Power,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59888/joseph-s-nye-jr/the-decline-of-americas-soft-power

1193 Gans, 2004: 19, 37.

1194 Gans, 2004; 42.

1195 Abi-Habib, Maria, “At Afghan Military Hospital, Graft and Deadly Neglect,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 3, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904480904576496703389391710.html

1196 Kevin Sieff, “Next to U.S. firing range in Afghanistan, a village of victims,” Washington Post, May 26, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/next-to-us-firing-range-in-afghanistan-a-village- of-victims/2012/05/26/gJQAeQEIsU_story.html

1197 Wasburn, 2002.

1198 Chang, 1998; Dell’Orto, 2011; Hachten and Scotton, 2002: 34-35.

1199 Patricia A. Karl, “Media Diplomacy,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 34 No. 4,(1982): 143-152.

1200 Merrill, 1959: 3.

1201 John Hohenberg, Foreign Correspondence: The Great Reporters and Their Times, (New York: Columbia University Press), 1965.

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Pakistani Journalist Interviews

Aban. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Abida. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Bahaar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Danish. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Hali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Hamid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Ibrahim. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Imran. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

Jabbar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010.

Mahmood. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

Malik. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Muhammed. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010.

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Mumtaz. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

Nadia. Interview by author. Tape recording. New York, NY. March 2011.

Nabeel. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

Omar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010.

Parvez. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010.

Raheem. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Rao. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Salim. Interview by author. Tape recording. New York, NY. March 2010.

Shafqat, Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

Shaid, Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. June 2010.

Sharif. Interview by author. Tape recording. Washington, DC. March 2010.

Yousaf. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

Wali. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Usama. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Vazir. Interview by author. Tape recording. New York, NY. March 2011.

Yousaf. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. June 2010.

Wajahat. Interview by author. Tape recording. Islamabad, Pakistan. July 2010.

Zafar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Lahore, Pakistan. July 2010.

Afghan Journalist Interviews

Aalem, Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Abdullah. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Atash. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

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Babur. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Badi. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Behnam. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Delewar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Faisal. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Farhang. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Farzin. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

Fazia. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Feda. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Ghazanfar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Hakim. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Houshmand. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Jabar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Jahandar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Jamshid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Jawid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Kambas. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Khaleeq. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Mansoor. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Matteen. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

Mitra. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Morad. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

Nasir. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

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Omaid. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2012.

Parsa. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Sarwar. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Sina. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. June 2010.

American Journalist Interviews

James. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Jason. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Maya. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Nathan. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Nikki. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Roger. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

Tom. Interview by author. Tape recording. Kabul, Afghanistan. July 2012.

APPENDIX. Methods and Design.

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The argument of this dissertation is that elite Afghan and Pakistani journalists routinely use American news for source material to report on and create meaning of events in their countries, and the entire South Asia region. They do this because the

United States is perceived to be a hegemon that is particularly central to the health of

Afghanistan and Pakistan’s economy and security, in addition to the various constraints placed on them to report quality news. U.S. journalists, especially those who represent elite publications, are therefore powerful but overlooked players in the international conflict. They not only influence U.S. policymakers and the American public, but are taken to represent the views of the United States in a compact form that Afghan and

Pakistani journalists can recycle and relay to their audiences. U.S. journalists’ representation of both Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s realities, and the U.S. government’s policy towards both countries, make them unofficial diplomats for anyone seeking to understand U.S. thought about, and action within, the South Asia region.

Since I was studying how journalists used the work of their American peers, I concluded that the best approach was to speak with Afghan and Pakistani journalists directly about the media landscape they work within.

In-Depth Interviewing

This qualitative study seeks to explain Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ philosophies through the analysis of interviews.1201 In-depth interviews are an intensive method that is tailored to the individual respondent. It seeks to understand the background of answers,

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allows for observation of non-verbal responses, and can be influenced by the dynamic between the interviewer and the interviewee.1201 I might have used ethnography, participant-observation, or a quantitative analysis of Afghan or Pakistani news products.

But possible biases and interpretations can be subtle in print or broadcast transcripts, and these are not always available. In-depth qualitative interviews, however, allow journalists to explore, in their own words, their approaches to their own work and their use of U.S. news narratives about their countries. Robert Lane, in his book, Political Ideology, noted that in-depth interviewing provides the opportunity for discursiveness, rambling, anecdote, argument, moral comment and rationalization. It provides the opportunity for extensive probing, testing and reflecting, and thus insight into connotative meanings.1201

This method allows the journalists to reflect at length on their habits and philosophies toward journalism, and how they justify and make meaning of the current conflict for national audiences.1201

Scholarship on Afghan and Pakistani journalists is rare. 1201 Non-governmental organization and think tank reports lack in-depth interviews. Such interviews enabled me to develop a detailed description of journalistic life in the capitals of Afghanistan and

Pakistan, to integrate multiple perspectives, describe the journalists’ thinking processes, learn their interpretations – and give inside accounts of journalistic experiences.1201

Afghan and Pakistani journalists, who are creating habits and relaying interpretations almost daily, are in position to observe themselves, their peers, government officials, and the public they reach – as well as American journalism.

I was able to gain access to their experiences and views through interviews that panned between 45 minutes and three hours. I wanted to know how these journalists

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understood their situations, and the conceptual frameworks they used to make sense of their role as journalists, their relationships with their governments and their relationship with American news.1201 I kept to a structured interview schedule, but also allowed respondents to deviate. I worked to steer the conversations toward topics relevant to my study, but my subjects at times provided unexpected insight or color that enriched it.1201

Whenever possible, I dug to understand where these understandings came from. Many of the 50 interviews were imperfect. Some were more detailed than others.

The Sample

In 2003, I began traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan for jobs in media and public affairs. My capacity in both countries as a State Department official and a staff member with the non-governmental organization, The Asia Foundation, enabled me to create relationships that were helpful to me with my research. Those relationships helped me begin my fieldwork in 2010 in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. with relative ease.

In May and June 2010, I was able to interview 15 Afghan journalists in Kabul.

Between March 2010 and April 2011, I encountered 27 Pakistani journalists not just in

Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, but also in Washington, DC; New York City; and Lahore.

In the summer of 2012, I returned to Kabul to interview 15 more Afghan journalists and reach comparable parity with the Pakistani journalists. Once those interviews were completed, I interviewed seven American reporters who regularly cover Afghanistan and

Pakistan on whether or not they thought Afghan and Pakistani journalists’ perceptions of them were fair. I discuss those findings in the conclusion.

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Creating a meaningful sample, however, meant targeting American, Afghan and

Pakistani journalists who represented the most popular news outlets in their countries and could be assumed to wield most influence with local publics. These were “elite” journalists, those who have “an impact with intellectuals and opinion leaders,” are respected within their communities, and have “the biggest impact on the serious thinking of a nation.”1201 Each participant signed a Columbia University institutional review board

(IRB) form that promised confidentiality;1201 therefore, this dissertation withholds information that could lead the reader to identify the respondent. Pseudonyms were chosen for all respondents. Only their gender, the language in which they report, and the medium they use to deliver news is used to draw comparisons. While IRB protocols limits me from describing the journalists and the institutions they represent, they are well- known figures to news consumers in their respective societies.

Finding elite journalists to speak with meant using the technique of purposive sampling, which aims to strategically collect participants that have direct relevance to the research questions and have specific characteristics or qualities that will enhance the study.1201 Purposive sampling helped me target journalists who represented both print and broadcast outlets in both countries; who reported in the English, Urdu or Pashto languages in Pakistan; and Dari or Pashto-languages in Afghanistan.1201 Because I was also conducting research in a space in which I had previously worked professionally, I was also partaking in convenience sampling, or and snowball sampling. In other words, I was approaching former colleagues and acquaintances first, and then contacting the people that they recommended I speak with. By choosing selectively among the people I

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knew and the people they referred me to, I found the most robust samples of elite journalists in both countries.1201

My samples of elite Afghan and Pakistani journalists show considerable variance in how they approach journalism, how they perceive American journalists’ work, and how they use American journalism to build their own narratives about current reality.

Each group of journalists is grappling with their own journalistic and national cultures, and with a seemingly ever-proliferating electronic media landscape. Afghan journalists especially have seen staggering growth within electronic media, putting new demands on a nascent press corps with little experience. In neighboring Pakistan, a dramatic expansion of news media has also taken place since 2002, but Pakistanis have a more consistent history of civil society and strong tradition of print media.

Interview Schedule & Analysis

My interview schedule included 15 questions, initially tested during a small pilot study in spring 2010 with 10 Pakistani journalists based in Washington, DC. The questions were then re-assessed for my fieldwork in Kabul, Islamabad and Lahore in the summers of 2010 and 2012.

The first half of the schedule was designed to let the journalists give their impressions of the media spaces their worked within – how far they had come since the U.S. war in

Afghanistan began in 2001, and where their news media may be going; their general habits and philosophies of news-gathering, especially during wartime; and how they see

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their role in the conflict. It also included questions that encouraged them to comment on press-state relations in their country. These questions included:

• What is your job in journalism? • What type of news do you normally cover? • How has media in your country developed the past decade? • What is the difference between print and broadcast media? • Do you think that media has an influence on your government? • Do you think media has an influence on public opinion? • Do you think that the public trusts the media? • Is there a TV channel or newspaper that is the most influential? • Do you think there is much distinction between what is news and what is opinion in media here? • Do you foresee a positive future about the direction of the news media in your country? The second half of the schedule was intended to discover specifically how the respondents used U.S. news about their country (and the greater South Asia region), what they thought of it, and how – if at all – they relayed it to their respective audiences. These questions included:

• How much American news do you follow? • Which American newspapers, channels, or websites do you follow regularly? (Why? How often do you check them?) • Do you use American news articles as sources for your own reporting? • How often do you cite American news stories in your own stories?; Please describe your thoughts about American news about your country • Do you read American editorials/opinions about your country? If so, what do you think about them? • Do you see the U.S. media being independent of the United States government?

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• Do you think the American press is an official representation of the U.S. government? • In your opinion, what is the most repeated storyline that Americans read about your country? • If you were to use three words to describe American press attitudes towards your country, what would they be?

My questions for the American journalists were different in scope, but I also wanted to uncover their habits, biases and grounding philosophies toward journalism. They included:

• How long have you been covering Afghanistan and/or Pakistan? • Are you reliant on U.S. officials for information – here or in Washington? • Do you feel as if you have the backing of the U.S. government should you be threatened or at risk here? • Do you depend on Afghan and/or Pakistani officials for information? • What audience do you think you are writing for? • Do you think about the transnational audience, or how your stories may be received within the countries you are writing about? • Do you think you are covering Afghanistan or Pakistan? Or America’s war and foreign policy impact in the countries? • What do you say to criticism that U.S. news focuses too much on Washington decision-making and security? • Who do you follow in the local media? • Do you track how your work may be received within Afghanistan or Pakistan? • What do you think about the Afghan or Pakistani media’s level of

professionalism?

• Do you think it is a fair criticism that you have an inherent bias toward

protecting U.S. national interests?

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Transcribing, sorting, sifting and integrating the material into a wider analysis took months. Each of the 64 respondents provided a great deal of information and it required significant time to interpret, summarize and integrate their different viewpoints.1201 Once the interviews were transcribed, I coded them into the meta-categories of common themes, deviations and journalists’ backgrounds. These largely mirrored the interview schedule: How the journalists saw their media environments, and how they used and perceived American news. I then re-examined the data and coded it into more detailed sub-categories. Mapping these journalists’ thoughts allowed for both coherence and inconsistency, but it put them in a “wider web of beliefs” that exist within elite journalism communities.1201

Research Limitations

There are good reasons for a lack of sociological scholarship on Afghanistan in general, although it certainly has increased in the past decade. Due to years of war that ravaged the country, Afghan intellectuals fled; and then Taliban control of the country dictated that education focus on religion. In Pakistan, there is certainly more academic work. Dozens of universities and think tanks produce regular commentary and analysis by Pakistanis about Pakistan, often in English. But for westerners trying to advance research on the countries, there are multiple barriers to doing so. Language, security precautions and the difficulty of travel to remote locations make social inquiry inherently difficult – and all of these factors played a role in why and how I created this study.

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I focused on elite journalists not just because they are influential but because they could speak English. While I speak intermediate-level Farsi, of which Dari is a dialect, I do not speak Pashto or Urdu, which made conversing in English necessary. The journalists’ level of education made them appreciate the contribution they were making to scholarship and willing to speak at length about their experiences and opinions. These

English-speaking, elite journalists would often report in two languages and, because they could speak English, they were most affected by western media development programs and regularly used U.S. journalism as source material for their reportage.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not acknowledge the limitations of my own identity as a researcher in these countries as well as the biases journalists may have had toward me because of my nationality, gender and past professional history as an

American government official. While I believe that I captured their unfiltered, candid opinions on the issues I asked out during the interview, it is not entirely unlikely that they expected my research to have administrative value for the U.S. government. Despite signing a form that clearly communicated their protection of privacy, it is not entirely unlikely that – despite every effort to protect their identity – they did not believe I would adhere to it.

The concept of “parachute journalism” is discussed in parts of the dissertation. The idea is that journalists spend limited time in a country to get the legitimacy they need to publish or broadcast a story that they have more or less pre-determined in their home country. It is a constant criticism of western foreign correspondents—their, or their news agency’s, for home-country views over reporting undertaken abroad. Given the costs of on-the-ground reporting, and the perception (at least) that there is little taste for foreign

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news, parachute journalism is normal. Parachuting in and out of countries for news stories lends itself to episodic journalism. Instead of a developing “film” of a country, we get “snapshots” of specific evens and issues. Because these are normally matters of disaster or war, the image of the country are distorted. The western audience encounters a country as a field of chaos and craziness.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that, to a certain extent, my own research was a fort of parachute journalism. For the sake of this research project, my time in Afghanistan amounted to approximately three months; in Pakistan, it was just six weeks. Collectively, however, I have spent 1.5 years in the countries over the course of nine years, which gives me some long-term perspective on the places and the ability to filter out the most salient issues worthy of exploration.