Guest guest Posted October 18, 2001 Report Share Posted October 18, 2001 Title: CNN:They better call it PNN now: Propaganda News Network Author:Political Bureau Publication: Economic Times October 19, 2001 NEW DELHI 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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