Afghan news coverage

A few days ago, I heard a story on the news coverage in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that the Afghan war is now our longest-running conflict and that Afghanistan has become a much more dangerous place in the past three months, news coverage remains almost non-existent, accounting for only about 2 percent of the total news. One has a much better chance hearing about Michael Jackson's death than about events in Kabul. The biggest culprit is that news organizations are losing so much money that they can no longer afford to have a bureau on site as they once did. Typically, most news outlets either send someone for a few days to shoot some video and interview key players or they rely entirely on services like the AP or on blogs by local journalists. Given those realities, reporters cannot possibly understand the backstories which result from the 100 or so different factions which exist in Afghanistan and which provide tangled nuances to anything statements made or policies drafted. A Google search reveals a fair amount of cutting and pasting as the same stories get repeated on different news sites. We have come to believe that somehow the new media (internet, blogs, Twitter) will fill in the gaps for those who really want to know, but the brief search did not turn up a significant new media presence on this issue. Are we thus resigned to letting wars become the province of specialists? Does the American public (or any other public) no longer have the right to get information from relatively non-partisan sources as it seeks to undertand, argue, and ultimately vote on representatives who advocate particular policies? The state of newpapers and television news operations raises significant questions about our ability to be an educated electorate.

For some related material see a great, short lecture by Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, on TED. http://blog.ted.com/2008/05/alisa_miller.php Miller demonstrates the unbelievable distortion in Americans' views of world news based on the kind of coverage of the world we get. If democracy's survival depends on an educated electorate, we might have cause for worry.