Archived Writing

<< back to the search results

A roster of under-reported news

Thursday, August 5, 2010

AS IF STORIES out of Pakistan weren’t already bad enough, floods of biblical severity have now killed 1500 citizens and driven 3 million from their homes … a leading politician has been assassinated and vicious riots sparked in the teeming city of Karachi … and the long running Kashmiri dispute has turned violent once again.

But there’s also a further, under-reported dimension to the messy governance of that country.

Only yesterday did the Cabinet get around to holding an emergency session to deal with the floods - a whole week after disaster struck the country’s northern regions. Exasperated Pakistani journalists have invoked the sarcastic usage favored by headline-writers everywhere to slam oblivious, reality-challenged politicians: “Crisis? What crisis?” 

 

And yet there is even more to Pakistan's governmental dysfunction that we should all be aware of.

American media-consumers might be forgiven for not knowing (since few US sources have bothered with this aspect of the story) but despite the nation's tribulations, the nation’s president is not even there. He’s abroad. Asif Ali Zardari has declined to curtail a previously-planned visit to Britain, stretching over five days.

Staying on so long as guest of his country’s former colonial rulers has, arguably, enabled Zardari to complain to the fullest extent about Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent remarkably undiplomatic castigation of Pakistan for promoting “the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world”.

But it’s all too evident that Zardari's most compelling reason for remaining in the UK is actually – in an astonishing piece of personal indulgence, given his country’s dire straights – the launching of his 22 year-old son Bilawal Zardari Bhutto onto a political career of his own … starting with a mass rally to bolster this third generation of their dynasty, being held on Saturday at Birmingham in the English Midlands, home to many Britons of Pakistani origin.

Such arrant self-interest puts Zardari (pictured above left, with his son behind) firmly on a par with his neighboring president, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan – another so-called leader with a recurring habit of putting himself and his ethically questionable family-members ahead of his country.

These two men are just the kind of allies the White House doesn’t need - but is stuck with - as it struggles to manage the story of US disengagement (with a long, long tail of residual commitment that will stretch out over the next decade) and as it tries, increasingly unconvincingly, to keep a skeptical public on board with its plans.

   

 

You can follow this column on TWITTER – by clicking HERE  

EVERY WEEK THE CONNECTICUT NPR STATION, WHDD, AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN, with program host MARSHALL MILES joining DAVID TERESHCHUK
  - Broadcast on Fridays at 7.35am, Saturdays at 4.45pm and Sundays at 6.45pm.

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by  clicking HERE

 

 - and subscribe for a weekly feed of the show

 

                                                        (Also available at iTunes)

 

US MEDIA OUTLETS HAVE been similarly inattentive to an important step along democracy’s journey in the East African nation of Kenya.

This week a referendum took place on a new constitution, the first since Kenya gained its independence nearly 70 years ago (from the British again, of course - the ubiquitous colonialists who have left a disastrous legacies throughout the globe). The new measures have been drawn up to prevent the kind of mass killings that 2007’s bitterly disputed national elections so dramatically provoked. Prominent and fundamental are serious proposals to defuse resentment over land-possession based on tribal and ethnic affiliation. It’s all a follow-through from recommendations by my old boss, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

It’s a pity the issue hasn’t strongly engaged American newsrooms – there’s enough color, as it were, to encourage some vivid editorial writing.

Kenyan campaigners in support of the changes have been labeling themselves “Green”, and those against are “Red” - as in, of course, “Go” and "Stop” traffic lights. And this same color convention is carried through on the ballot paper (above right).

 

However there is also, local reporters are finding, a sizeable body of “Watermelons”.

These are citizens who publicly profess to favor change (they’re green on the outside) but in reality are red and are voting against the new charter.

 

The count should be completed sometime later today. Don't expect the results to cause much of a blip on the radar screen of American journalism.

ONE IMPORTANT SOURCE DOCUMENT seems to have gotten lost - or at least has dipped below reporters’ radar again - among the rush of upbeat media verbiage greeting BP’s so-called "static kill" of its blown-out Deepwater Horizon oil-well. Reports have variously - and sometimes amazingly - referred to it as a “success” ... “fabulous” ... and evidence of “magical teamwork”.

The now-unrecalled evidence is a 582-page “Emergency Response Plan” that BP submitted to the feckless federal Minerals Management Service early last year, reassuring the agency how completely unlikely any spill would ever be, and - even if one happened - claiming that “no significant adverse impacts are expected". Why not? Well, because of “the response capabilities that would be implemented”.

And we’ve now had 15 weeks since the explosion to observe and assess those “response capabilities”. It’s only sub-par reporting that can call this week’s news a “success”.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -