Narmada Sahabir

Explication of Differences between Newspapers

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was covered worldwide. She was known as the “daughter of Pakistan”. She was the country’s and the Muslim world’s first female leader. Her assassination was portrayed differently throughout the world. For this project my group collected articles from the New York Times, The New York Post, and an English language Pakistani newspaper. We read all of the articles and came up with our own analysis of the event which each newspaper was trying to project.
Benazir Bhutto returned from London as a candidate for President, an opponent to military dictator President Pervez Musharraf. Her assassination took place while she was campaigning in a rally. The election coverage in Pakistan was broadcasted worldwide because Ms. Bhutto made it clear that she was against Islamic extremism and a tribune of democracy. Even before her assassination she was all over CNN, BBC World News and MSNBC, she was the little glimmer of hope that the Pakistani people had left for a democracy.
After her assassination, she was the cover of the New York Times the next day. The New York Times gave extensive detail about her death and her legacy. It described the aftermath of her death on the Pakistani people and the possibility of a successor for the Populist Peoples Party which she represented. It provided details with the investigation of her death and everything that had to do with the Pakistani government corruption which led to her assassination. Overall the New York Times exceptionally covered all outlooks and facts of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
I concluded that the articles that were provided in the New York Times seemed to be directed toward high society, scholarly, professional, liberal and multiculturally sensitive people. This quote specifically contributes to my conclusion. “Despite numerous accusations of corruption and an evident predilection for luxury, Ms. Bhutto, the pale-skinned scion of a wealthy landowning family, successfully cast herself as a savior of Pakistan’s millions of poor and disenfranchised. She inspired devotion among her followers, even in exile, and the image of her floating through a frenzied crowd in her gauzy white scarf became iconic”. This quote does not contain vocabulary of the average middle class household.
The New York Post provided insufficient coverage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. The articles were smaller than a paragraph, I found one that was the length of a paragraph and it all seemed opinion based. There were no real facts and details about the assassination, but there were pages of coverage on Britney Spears and her escape from rehabilitation. I gathered that this being a more local newspaper had a lack of interest in international affairs. The articles didn’t contain vocabulary on a scholarly level because it is a newspaper that is written for the common middle class, conventional and more conservative people. This newspaper assumes that the middle class does not consist of intellectuals.
The articles in the Post consisted of mostly quotes by people who are responsible for the investigation of Bhutto’s assassination. This article consisted of only a quote by C.I.A Director Michael Hayden. “Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from Al-Qaeda’s terrorist network. The Post said Hayden described the killing as “part of an organized campaign” that has included suicide bombings and other attacks on Pakistani leaders. Hayden said the same network was behind a new wave of violence threatening the stability of president Musharraf’s government, a key ally in Washington’s war on terror”. These three sentences were the length of this article and the length of most articles.
The English language Pakistani Newspaper focused on the people affected by Bhutto’s assassination. The articles discussed the political issues in Pakistan and the concerns which the people have regarding their future government. This newspaper revealed information that the New York Times didn’t have, “Pakistan has requested help from the Scotland Yard to probe at the investigation because civilians in Pakistan do not trust there government. President Musharraf blames Al Qaeda, but he has also acknowledged reports stating the scene of Bhutto's death was quickly hosed down destroying any possible evidence. The Pakistani People's Party blames Musharaff. Musharraf, he also did not grant the Scotland Yard permission to question any important politicians that could have had inside information”. I gathered that this information wasn’t disclosed because the American government didn’t want to blame President Musharraf openly because he is still there ally. And the American Government is funding the Pakistani military in the war on terror but there were reports that the money is going toward new weapons which Pakistan plans to use on India which is also the American governments ally. If President Bush does not come up with a safe solution to this problem, it is likely that President Musharraf can use these “new weapons” on the United States.
Throughout substantial research I can conclude that all newspapers don’t completely produce adequate information on particular events. The New York Times gave ample information on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto because it is distributed throughout the country, but it still couldn’t disclose the information that the Pakistani English paper provided because of political uproar that it could have caused. The New York Post relatively neglected the news coverage on Benazir Bhutto because of the fact that it is a local newspaper. The Pakistani English newspaper provided information that none of the others had because after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto Pakistan was in a state of chaos and it wouldn’t have caused any further turmoil. This project has helped me to further understand how politics is manipulated in newspapers and how it surrounds us under daily basis but as New Yorkers we never have the time to notice.