Making the best out of a bad rap

It is disappointing to see how even non-western media outlets continue to hold on to news myths surrounding country

For nearly a decade and a half, Pakistan has been getting a bad rap in the international press. Between the years 2007 and 2013, in particular, the country was labelled the most dangerous place on the planet by media outlets as diverse as Newsweek, The Economist and Fox News and many others.  The US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently didn’t register half as much news buzz as Pakistan did. All for the wrong reasons, of course.

The idea that the country hosted the most active terrorists in the world was popularized long before the 2011 Abbottabad raid led to the uncovering of the hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or the capture of the infamous Bali bomber Umar Patek. Never mind the terrorists who were roaming free in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen around the same time or in the years before that. The more scurrilous a story the better, the more gruesome the killing the bolder the display. That is pretty much how news coverage on Pakistan seems to be decided abroad. It is also disappointing to see how even non-western media outlets continue to hold on to the news myths surrounding the country. Some of those gladly help strengthen those myths, failing to see actual ground situation.

So preoccupied was the foreign news media with the country’s “badlands” that the 2014 Peshawar school massacre was covered by Scroll. In with the screaming headline “Pakistan: the most dangerous place on earth to go to school”. Finally, international correspondents and their editors were beginning to discover more words to add to their favourite honorific: “most dangerous place on earth”. Of late more worthy contenders such as Syria and Yemen have appeared on the news radar. It took exactly two years for the fighting in Syria to overshadow the brutalities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2013, the violence in the Syria civil war had reached unprecedented levels.

The narrative built by the Western media is much too narrow and negative for a country the size of Pakistan. Ask any citizen and they will point you in the direction of hundreds of compelling stories, of daily struggles to rekindle hope in humanity and heal the pain from terror and injustice.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2015.