US Embassy Launches Campaign to Correct Errors in Pakistani Media, The Washington Post, 27 June 2010
EXCERPT: "Some reports are deemed 'a paranoid fabrication,' such as the claim that all Pakistanis are stripped naked in U.S. airports. Others are 'false and malicious,' such as the one about the Americans moving Pakistani Taliban leaders to Afghanistan to prepare them for a battle against Pakistan's army. So says the U.S. Embassy here, which for nearly eight months has issued statements countering every major error about American foreign policy that it finds in Pakistan's boisterous media. It's a herculean task that embassy officials say has been undertaken by no other U.S. mission in the world - because nowhere else, those officials say, does U.S. policy face such disdain and misrepresentation. [...] So far the public has not been swayed: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 17 percent of Pakistanis view the United States favorably, and only 8 percent expressed faith in President Obama - his lowest rating in 22 countries surveyed. The corrections have challenged widely believed theories in a nation with a penchant for conspiracies: that Americans were behind deadly bombings ('absurd, baseless') or plotting a 'massive infiltration' by U.S. Marines of Pakistan's militant-riddled tribal areas ('entirely false')."
Read the full story.
Related articles:
Preserving the slender thread in Pakistan [op-ed], Open Democracy, 28 June 2010
What's on Pakistan TV talk shows? Extremists., The Christian Science Monitor, 23 June 2010
Related posts:
Media fuels conspiracy theories, 26 May 2010
Journalist accused of link to Taliban hostage's murder, 20 May 2010
Pakistanis engulfed by conspiracy theories, 16 February 2010
US-funded Pashto radio a new weapon in war against Taliban, 18 January 2010
