International media, comparison - Essay Example

After all, what sells more than an unsolved mystery, an enigma, or a blatant lie? Do we watch, what we believe to be true in media, or what the media wants us to believe is true? But whatever the reason may be, we, as people tend to diligently follow the news that have the most deaths, the most warped up conspiracies with wronged parties; preferably an ambiguous wronged party. I chose an event that most of us are aware of because of the thorough coverage it has received in both countries: The Drone Attacks.

The drones or unmanned aerial vehicles are aircrafts either controlled by pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission (Chris and Wright).The drones to Pakistan are controlled by the C.I.A - Central Intelligence Agency. The American intelligence works with the Pakistani intelligence, the I.S.I – Inter-Services Intelligence, to attack and defeat Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants that have taken refuge in Pakistan. This is all part of America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ campaign of which Pakistan is an ally.

Pakistan provides its own research on the habitation of these terrorists and US attacks them. The days and times, and the numbers of these missiles are unknown to Pakistan. This is so as to catch the terrorists unawares. There have been several successes and civilian casualties in this mission. A war against terrorism is obviously an important campaign. According to statistics, in 2011 alone, there were 6303 deaths from terrorist attacks in Pakistan, of which only 2800 were actual terrorists (South Asia Terrorism Portal), the rest just innocent victims.

In the US, 30 deaths have been from terrorism since 9/11 2001 (Global Terrorism Database). The difference is magnificent; however, it is mainly the South Asian countries that suffer most from this epidemic. Yet loss of life anywhere is a situation that is to be rued. Therefore, as one of the superpowers of the world, US took upon itself to fight this growing epidemic. Pakistan allied herself with the US. Since the last two years, C.I.A has led its own covert operations giving them information to the refuge places of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

However, there are many conspiracies surrounding these attacks, just as it is with any Intelligence mission. It is claimed that while Pakistan officials are working with C.I.A privately, they publicly condemn the loss of civilian lives. Then the lack of information to the Pakistani public is causing them to see these attacks in a suspicious light, necessitating it for the US diplomats to come to Pakistan repeatedly for briefings and meetings. The operation has to be covert as well, because if the situation is made public, then the terrorists will be informed.

The two main problems here are that a) C.I.A is not including Pakistan enough in its operations, and Pakistani government not informing the general public of its involvement but in fact, antagonizing them further against America. These obvious conflicting stories in both countries need to be dealt with so that the masses can trust these operations, and the number of Drone attacks reduced as they have increased in a surprising number in the last two years causing several innocent people to die.

I decided to choose the high circulated newspapers of both the countries to get a perspective into each newspaper’s representation of this ongoing event. From US, I chose the New York Times. Scmitt describes the censure arising