Tuesday, March 22, 2011

America's Media War

Just in case you thought the Pakistani electronic media was unique in its bittter, on-screen, infighting, you might want to check out yesterday's flap between Fox News and CNN over reporting from Libya.

Here's what Fox News said about an officially-sponsored trip to view the damage to one of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's compounds, caused by the US/UK Tomahawk missile attacks. Having not actually got the footage that other news outlets managed to get, they accused the other journalists of allowing themselves to be used as "human shields" by the Libyan regime to prevent more attacks.

Here's how CNN correspondent Nic Robertson responded to those claims on Wolf Blitzer's programme:




Personally, I find Robertson's indignation that Western journalists could sometimes lie, have personal agendas, cover up for their professional failures and promote propagandistic drivel a bit... how shall I put it delicately?... naive. And to top it all off, we're talking Fox News here folks. But chalo, it's nice to hear someone in CNN (a great proponent of embedded journalism) has the same thoughts about 'one of their own' that most of us know as a truism about the media in general.

On a lighter note, do not miss this encapsulation of American foreign policy hypocrisy vis a vis 'freedom movements in the Middle East', brought to you by the sharpest satirical show in mainstream American media, The Daily Show.







1 comment:

Farrukh Ejaz said...

Touche' Hamid Mir, Ansar Abbasi & Najam Sethi