Media divided over Mumbai attacks
How Indian and Pakistani news reports heightened tensions between the two countries.
On The Listening Post this week, the massacre in Mumbai and the difference in coverage by the Pakistani and Indian media. Plus, Turkmenistan and the poor state of its media.
In this week’s News Divide we look at the attacks on the Indian city that claimed almost 200 lives.
The event mesmerised an international TV audience who, with the help of modern technology, were updated on the three-day ordeal quickly but not always accurately.
With a massive demand for the facts the media could only speculate, leading to rumours and false allegations. Tensions between India and Pakistan grew as their respective news channels processed the information coming out of Mumbai.
We put these reports under the spotlight. Were they accurate or were they just toeing the line of their government’s agendas?
For part two The Listening Post’s Simon Ostrovsky went to Turkmenistan to find out what it is like to report from one of the worst regimes for press freedom in the world.
This year’s Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index rates Turkmenistan third from the bottom. After the death of ‘President-For-Life’ Sapurmurat Niyazov two years ago many hoped that his successor, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, would relax the restrictions placed on the media. But Turkmenistan remains a difficult and dangerous place to speak out.
In this week’s Newsbytes: A British coroner rules on a BBC journalist murdered in Somalia; two Somali translators are arrested over the kidnapping of two European journalists; a French editor is detained over a libel case in France and an Israeli journalist, Amira Hass, is arrested after trying to re-enter Israel from Gaza.
Finally, remember that catchy tune We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel? Well for our internet video of the week this week the guys at rebelvirals.com use the same tune to voice their boredom of popular social networking site, Facebook.
This episode of The Listening Post aired from Friday, December 05, 2008 at the following times GMT:
Friday: 1230, 2030; Saturday: 0430; Sunday: 0600; Monday: 0530; Tuesday: 0730, 2330; Wednesday: 0300, 1000; Thursday: 0630, 1430; Friday: 0130