Media control in Pakistan

“Crunching Drone Death Numbers,” by Charli Carpenter, outlines a post by Christine Fair on the drone casualty debate and, more specifically, the corruption of the media in Pakistan. For my final comment paper, I’ve decided to dig into my own area of expertise as a journalism major at Maryland and speak on just how misleading the media could be in the country, and how this could persuade the Pakistani citizens to become more anti-American. To start, Fair shows prime examples of at least one third of the Pakistani media to be on the payroll of either the ISI (the intelligence agency for the country) or the Taliban. Planting stories or suggesting what to publish is clearly an ethical dilemma. In the United States, that would be a violation of our constitutional rights. Perhaps this ethical gray area could be solved if there were more structure in the nation’s government. As someone mentioned in a comment earlier, our partnership with Pakistan seems to be more and more convoluted. If the government is controlling the media in creating an anti-American stance, I don’t see how this partnership can continue. The second troubling detail of Fair’s post has to do with the skewing of innocent casualty numbers. The media’s control of the government means the casualty numbers for innocent victims of drone strikes are inflated. This, once again, creates an anti-American feeling amongst the country. Further, when the United States wishes to collect these same numbers, and they come from the same place, the discrepancy between the two country’s counts also could shed some doubt on the attacking nation. If there’s ever a difference in these counts, it seems natural to assume the attacking nation is under-counting. Overall, Christine Fair’s post does not change my opinion of drones. I’ve always been a supporter of drones, while also being a proponent of more regulations. What Fair’s comments have done for me is make me much more wary of Pakistan as a whole. Their harboring of terrorists, their skewing of casualty numbers, their control of the media and their overall intentions of creating anti-American thoughts for its citizens makes me uneasy about continuing a relationship with them.