Christine Fair claims the Pakistani media are distorting the picture while US media are giving the “correct” version.
ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Christine Fair’s article of February 24 titled “Raymond Davis: Getting to nowhere”. In it, the writer claims that the Pakistani media are distorting the picture in the case of Raymond Davis, while the US media are giving the “correct” version.
It appears that the justification for this claim is that “few Americans have heard of Raymond Davis” but that he has become a “national obsession in Pakistan’s print and television media”. This hardly qualifies as evidence for justification or validation of the said claim.
If an American is killed by a foreigner in the US, that would be news for them. That a foreigner comes and shoots a couple of people, while his colleagues crush another man to death, is obviously going to worry more Pakistanis than Americans.
While I do not doubt that the Pakistani media may be exaggerating some facets of the whole affair, I have no reason to believe that the American media are to taken at face value. The truth is likely somewhere in between. One would hope that a court case will shed light on the validity of the claims on either side. Hence, it would be fair to say that Ms Fair is not being that fair in her assessment.
Asghar Qadir
Published in The Express Tribune, February 25th, 2011.
