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 © 2013 Katherine Ann Brown All rights reserved 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 i 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 ii 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. iii 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, iv 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.