US Media Coverage and Pakistan

To judge by what appears in the nightly TV news or the morning newspapers, the American people spend most of their time pondering their gallbladders and cheering for cat-rescue stories. Yes, there's still news out there. But hard news, and particularly hard foreign news, is increasingly being squeezed by soft family, health, celebrity and "lifestyle" stories.

While the fate of O.J. Simpson led every broadcast and headlined every newspaper for a year, the genocide in Rwanda quickly grew old and disappeared. Many nights, you won't even see a foreign story on the evening news. Bombs in Johannesburg? Crisis in Paris? Sorry -- but are you interested in the library crisis in Bangor? According to Andrew Tyndall, whose New York-based Tyndall Report monitors the three nightly network newscasts, there's only half as much international coverage today as there was in 1989. Last year, for example, NBC aired only 327 minutes of stories filed by reporters from abroad, compared to 1,013 minutes at the end of the Cold War. (1)
The American media is notorious for its lack of foreign news coverage. It's shocking that the only superpower with the strongest military and most far-reaching cultural influence is inhabited by people who couldn't care less about what happens around the world.

This lack of viewer/reader interest, which news media say they are simply reflecting in their lack of coverage, is no less when it comes to a country like Pakistan.

Pakistan tends to be in the news when something big happens, like a military takeover, or when something bad happens, like honour killings. Beyond that, there has typically been little or no coverage of the day-to-day happenings in Pakistan.

Given the current crisis, there is a great deal of focus today on Pakistan, especially the madrassah school system. Although there is a huge journalistic presence there, that doesn't mean the stories coming out of Pakistan are terribly informative. Many stories are shallow or have basic factual errors. There is also an interesting development in which cultural institutions have taken on a whole new meaning given the events of September 11th.

The whole concept of madrassah education is one cultural institution that is being completely misrepresented. Another is the "havala" system of money exchange; "havala" as in giving someone something in trust. This is a fairly common practice throughout the developing world. Person A in one country needs to send money to person B in another country. Person A gives money to a "money broker" here and his associate will pass on the equivalent in local currency to person B over there. The broker will take a cut of the exchange, say two rupees for every dollar, and that will be his fee. This is a system used throughout south Asia, the Middle East, Africa, southeast Asia, etc. given the dearth of financial institutions and people's general preference to work with cash.

However, the news media are portraying this system as somehow being a terrorist masterminded plot to transfer money without leaving a paper trail. On closer inspection, they would understand that this system predates the events of September 11th.

Foreign news coverage is already eroding in the US. When countries are not tied to the daily events in America, it is not likely there will be any mention of them regardless of how big an event happens. Within a few years in the late '80s and early '90s all three major television networks were bought up by corporations whose engines are fuelled by profits. NBC was purchased by General Electric, CBS was taken over by Westinghouse and ABC was sold to Disney. (2)

Study after study has shown that the public is not interested in foreign news and will tune out. Given that news now has quest for profits as a prime motivator, the least lucrative thing will be the first to go.

It will be interesting to see how the recent events in New York and Washington and the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan will affect people's overall appetite for knowing what goes on in the world.

References (1) and (2) can be found at: http://www.salon.com/july97/media/media970701.html