Midwest Beer Belly Despair Blog

This piece is news, to me at least, because it’s dealing with Pakistan, which is arguably the scariest place in the world. Despite any personal feeling about the war in Afghanistan, America’s involvement there has caused a massive destabilization within Pakistan. The Taliban, being driven out of Afghanistan, has moved their base of operations over to Pakistan and has begun to fight against the Pakistani government, which was never very stable to begin with. This is so scary because Pakistan is one of the few confirmed nuclear powers in the world. If the Taliban causes the Pakistani government to fall and takes over,  it will also take over their nuclear weapons. That would mean a nuclear state that is extremely hostile to the U.S.Unfortunately due to our fiscal and social problems here in the U.S., and the fact that this problem has been brewing for a couple of years now, no one is really paying much attention to the situation over there. It’s nice to see someone reporting on attacks that are happening in an incredibly important and unstable part of the world.

Another reason I think this is news, is that the reporting seems rather objective. It gives the facts about the attacks and not much else. It’s more of a report over the wire than a piece giving a slant on the events. That being said there is an obvious pro-U.S. bias, but it is an American newspaper. The bias is evident in that the two likely suspects are al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the two most common scapegoats of the “War on Terror.” Also a point of bias is that the paper only quotes the U.S. embassy’s response to the attacks, while saying nothing of what the Pakistani government thinks of the attacks. Despite this bias, which is really unavoidable in a U.S. paper, the reporting seems to be just the facts. One other point about this piece is something Fuglsang also mentioned in class. “If it bleeds it leads” was the quote and I’ll direct your attention to the picture on the page.

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/world/asia/08pakistan.html?ref=world