Be suspicious of Americans analyzing Pakistan.
I'm not even going to try to dip into the ramifications of the Bhutto assassination, but I would say this: With the US media grading this assassination as a huge story, they suddenly have lots of airtime and column inches to fill. The majority of the analysis will be cribbed from the same sources and it will be fairly inexpertly extrapolated and reconveyed.
If we've learned anything over the past seven years, it's that the US media doesn't understand politics beyond near neighbors and European allies. The oversimplification and repeated trust in "the experts" has led to some very poor, misleading, and inaccurate coverage.
Just a word of caution.
(PS. When did "news" become predicting the future instead of reporting what happened?)
If we've learned anything over the past seven years, it's that the US media doesn't understand politics beyond near neighbors and European allies. The oversimplification and repeated trust in "the experts" has led to some very poor, misleading, and inaccurate coverage.
Just a word of caution.
(PS. When did "news" become predicting the future instead of reporting what happened?)
posted by mikevotes at
1:31 PM
7 Comments:
One thing you can count on with the US media. Al Quaida, terrorism and nukes will be top of the bill.
By
Anonymous, at 2:06 PM
The Bhutto's was just as corrupt and violent as the Peron's. What a joke. Making her a martyr. She must have been running out of money and need to get her fingers wet again with the blood of her countrymen.
By
matt, at 2:37 PM
Anon, I noticed a little predictive frenzy going on this morning and just tuned it out.
Despite the reporting, Al Qaeda's not taking over the government tomorrow and there aren't nukes aimed at my head.
This is definitely not good, and there may be some street violence, but we're not going to get a good look at the implications for a couple of days.
What do they do about the elections? I don't think they will allow a replacement on the ballot, so with Sharif off for legal reasons, the ballot is now basically Musharraf.
Who steps up to head the PPP?
None of that is likely to be decided today.
....
Matt, Bhutto was very corrupt. The reasons for the mood is that she was the least militaristic, the least Islamic (in the crazy way,) and the one who knew her way best around Washington and London.
Despite her corruption, she represented the more educated, more urban, business side of Pakistan (a large chunk of the country.)
Her death does not represent the end of any of that (despite the coverage.)
By
mikevotes, at 3:27 PM
I also think that the Bhutto assassination is a chance for our mainstream media to bleed attention away from more pressing issues. My impression is that disasters and events that don't immediately affect American politics are used to divert attention from concerns that ought to get front-burner brain space.
By
r8r, at 4:24 PM
I'm not sure it's that conscious. I think that this is a very easy story (for cable news especially) to cover the way they cover news now.
There's no research, there's no complex presentation. Just rerun the tape loop, and have people voiceover their expectations about "what this means...."
It's not like racism, or budget analysis or real national security priorities.
By
mikevotes, at 6:26 PM
In the Chomsky documentary the key phrase is "...if it bleeds it leads...". Also if the leader happens to be "...our kind of person...", then they will get more coverage.
By
matt, at 7:01 PM
Very true. If Nawaz Sharif had been killed, it wouldn't have gotten this coverage.
Not quite as big a bloc as Bhutto, but definitely lacking the years of US tie ins.
By
mikevotes, at 8:59 PM
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