Author: Political Bureau
Publication: Economic Times
Date: October 19, 2001
Famous for its 'objectivity' and
being on the ball with news, America's favourite TV channel, CNN, as come
to be regarded as the extension counter of the US state department.
But in their coverage of the US
war against terrorism in Afghanistan, the premier western news channel
has failed to reproduce the magic of their Gulf war coverage.
The gaping holes in their information-gathering
exercise ranges from their complete inability to grasp something as basic
as the ethnic composition of the Taliban, vital these days as the world
searches for the best ethnic cocktail in a future Afghan arrangement to
tripping over frequent territorial gaffes like referring to Kashmir as
a separate national entity.
While it is public domain knowledge
that Pashtuns comprise 37 per cent of the population and the Taliban are
mainly Kandaharis, CNN finds it more politic to accept Pakistan's point
of view that the Taliban and all Pashtun tribes are synonymous, overlooking
for instance, tribes that are actually opposed to the Taliban.
In the aftermath of the September
11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, there was a veritable shift away
from CNN to other channels like Murdoch's favourite, Fox News, as viewers
discovered the latter had the most accurate fix on the country's surge
of nationalistic fervour.
CNN prevailed later partly because
US government leaders preferred to make their policy statements on the
channel.
But in this region it is probably
regarded as a weird sort of poetic justice that most of the TV footage
CNN shows is credited to the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeerah.
Instead, CNN's crack news-anchors
decided to accept unquestioningly Pakistan's propaganda about India's aggressive
designs on the Line of Control without doing India the simple courtesy
of a cross check.
The reasons for this is not far
to seek. CNN is being seen to be so completely identified with the US government
and the way it sees its interests that it is reluctant to pose hard questions
to its front-line ally Pakistan. The same shyness is absent in its treatment
of India.
