Media Bias and the Afghan Girl
Read Time:2 Minute, 40 Second
When reviewing a news article, especially one that advocates a certain viewpoint that applies to national policy, it is always best to look at several news sources from entirely different mediums before forming an opinion. This way, any bias or interests that may be hindering the facts can be eliminated or at least minimized.
I will give an example. Time magazine recently published a lead story about the war in Afghanistan with the magazine cover showing a photograph of a horribly maimed young woman. The article presented the case for the US to stay in Afghanistan because of the plight of women who would suffer violence by the Taliban.
The woman on the cover, Aisha, was injured last year while U.S. forces were firmly in place in Afghanistan, supposedly by a Taliban commander. The Time article stressed potentially disastrous consequences if the U.S. pursues negotiations with the Taliban. A very compelling piece of reporting.
But after further investigation, it turns out that the reporter, Aryn Baker, failed to disclose a few issues that may have biased her reporting integrity.
Her husband, Tamim Samee, is an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur who is a board member of an Afghan government minister’s $100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won high dollar development contracts with the assistance of the US military, including private sector infrastructure projects favored by U.S.-backed leader Hamid Karzai.
In other words, the reporter had written a story bolstering the case for war while her husband stood to benefit materially by having several contracts requiring that the US military remained in the country.
When presented with these issues about the impartiality of the reporter, Time didn’t comment but they did reveal that the reporter has been reassigned to a different country.
And what about the girl that was featured on the cover of Time?
Quote from the Observer…
And what about Aisha, a new war emblem? While it’s long been evident that women have suffered unimaginable horrors under customs practiced in Afghanistan, Aisha’s brutal mutilation occurred in 2009, almost eight years into the American invasion.
Meanwhile, in a story light on specifics, there remains some question as to whether the unnamed Afghan judge who ordered Aisha’s mutilation qualifies as a “Taliban commander” in any formal sense. And if Aisha’s is the face of the notoriously cruel Taliban justice system, the Taliban aren’t taking credit. A Taliban press release on August 7 condemned the maiming as “unislamic” and denied that the case was handled by any of its roving judges — to whom many Afghans are now turning, distrustful of Karzai officials.
In the long run, the NATO-backed president, Hamid Karzai, may not be the friend Aisha and other persecuted Afghan women so desperately need. Last August he signed the Shia Personal Status Law, allowing men to starve wives who withhold sex and to punish those who walk outdoors without permission. Under this law — passed by a parliament that is 25 percent female as mandated by the new Afghan constitution — Aisha’s decision to leave home would have been considered a crime.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
I have never been 100% sure of anything I read, like you say drift from source to source, trying to find threads to tie everything together. It gets harder because media is so global and you really have to work to discover something that could be original and unbiased. One thing I am (almost) sure of is that women and kids, especially female kids in Islamic countries, get shafted big time not only by military power, but by their own people and sometimes by their own family.
Something interesting about the subject on HuffPo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-lopez/the-real-story-behind-emt_b_682284.html
What a superb article in the HuffPo. We can’t a keep our nose out of other peoples business because they might be socialists.
Time magazine did issue a rebuttal that they requested the Observer to print in full. I feel that it is only fair to put that with this post.
“These assertions are completely untrue; Aryn Baker’s husband has no connection to the U.S. military, has never solicited business from them and has no financial stake in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan whatsoever. TIME fully stands by our recent cover story, and as is made clear in the editor’s letter—and from the reading of the actual piece—the story is neither in support of, nor in opposition to, the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan; it is a straightforward reported piece about the women of that country.”
Time is batting OforO… This is the same pub that reported that the Gulf eco-disaster “wasn’t as bad as we thought” … and well, I guess you know how I feel about that.
Krell, great post. I don’t agree with us being in Afganistan… especially as You have noticed, the money to pay our teachers is absent and our children go without. And drop out of school. World’s largest for that.
Time is in great big error. The integrity of their reporting has faded to nothing. Geeze.
Why not showing some photos of afghan girls killed with explosives, napalm or some of the many wonderful creation of occidental “civilization”?
Good point Juan, very good point indeed.
Krell, nice job. I chose not to write anything about it for many of the reason MH suggested. This world Cop thing has got to stop. If truly you want to change a culture, you do it with lifting their standards. Certainly not by Bullets. Both China and Russia (God I Miss that Redhead) have changed because Money has been made available. Their making the things we want. Now we have to apply that lesson to Mexico. Hell we did wonders with Canada..LOL
God I miss that Redhead? Could you be meaning her..
Nice read head indeed.
First of all, let me say, I abhor violence against any person, here’s my but>>. BUT When this story came out, yours truly made a comment, that this isn’t the whole story and oh lookie, maybe this is an effort to get us all emotional and stay there to help these poor women. Of course, I then said something to the effect, couldn’t leave it well enough alone on a right wing blog could I now? Don’t you think this is all a little hinky, given we have just replaced McChrystal and this story is pulling on the heartstrings. I was brutally rebuffed at said website, and told to shut my piehole basically. I am now going back over there, armed with these new facts, to pull up my old comment and scream as loud as I can. How you like me now bitches and slap the cover girl off some of their faces.
It does indeed show that we shouldn’t believe what we read.
It also shows that other cultures are so far removed from ‘western ideals’ – and I use that term very loosley – that allowing them into western countries invariably creates tensions that could easily be avoided by not allowing them entry.
America is a different world to England – sadly for England in many ways – but the ‘culture differences’ are so bad over here right now that Asians hate African muslims and I had the bizarre conversation with a Somalian recently who said…quote…
“These Eastern Europeans are taking OUR jobs” – unquote.
There is every liklihood of something ‘kicking off’ over here but it won’t be the right wing National Front / BNP it’ll be some immigrant group against another which is, in my view, slightly weird.
Shame about the lady mind. She looks like she was well pretty before they chopped her nose off – why her nose anyway?
It really is another world out there in’t it?
Yes, I would hate to say just what culture is “ideal” but the world is certainly getting smaller. As manufacturing is shopped out and resources are searched for in every corner of the globe, cultures are being forced together perhaps at a rate that is faster than safely possible.
Your quote of “These Eastern Europeans are taking OUR jobs” seems funny in that that same sentence is being muttered all over the world, just change the name of Eastern Europeans to the country with cheaper labor du jour.
There are SO many places in the world where women get the shaft that it seems a bit disingenuous to choose only to highlight the plight of Afghan women, though their situation is dire (Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males).
Where is the spotlight and outcry for the women and children facing genital mutilations in Africa and Mali, the raped and powerless forced into sex slavery in Guatemala and Nepal?
Could it be that this story is a propaganda tool only? If it were really about the plight of women, wouldn’t all countries come under scrutiny?
Good point, MH. In fact, you have posted a couple of articles about the plight of the women you mentioned in some of your blogs.
Ah MH, MH. There is nothing to be gained in those countries doncha know. No oil they can fight over, no resources that anyone wants, so the good old boys network can make some money. It always appears to be the women and children get the brunt of all this warfare though, doesn’t it?
Wow Krell-great work. I hadn’t known this information. I did hear an interview on Democracy Now with Sonia Kalhatkar discussing this.
Time Magazine also had guarded praise for Malalai Joya, who has risked her life repeatedly as a political representative for Afghan women. The US pushed her, then we found to our dismay Ms Joya puts Afghanistan and Afghan women ahead of US interests ! What a bitch, huh? But we had already built her up too much to begin tearing her down. She’s said the women of Afghanistan are fighting three enemies-the Northern Alliance, the Taliban and the US military. When the US finally goes Afghanistan will be down to two enemies.
Time Magazine chided Ms Joya for not understanding the US role as well as the US overall concern for women.
Just one more example of a compliant media and a viewership/readership comprised of cretinous morons who have no opinion save what opinions the media gives them.
Thanks Osori. It sort of goes along the same lines as your excellent previous post about the “No Due Diligence Headline News”.
What seems to be a strange coincidence is that WikiLeaks had just published a CIA document that gave a plan of winning public support for the war by using the plight of the Afghan Women.
http://current.com/news/92598531_leaked-cia-doc-use-plight-of-afghan-women-to-win-public-support-for-war.htm
Good one. This goes to show that the unveiling of facts and truth requires heavy lifting and gumption. Lying and distorting is as lazy as it is unethical.