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In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the Pakistani press faced the question of how to remember her. Was she a symbol of hope for Pakistan’s future or a corrupt figure from the past? The Christian Science Monitor’s Shahan Mufti describes coverage of Bhutto’s life and death in the Pakistani media.
A comment on this segment (and the Persistence of Memory); watch your Ps and, not Qs, but Bs.
In the latter segment, I detect Brooke alternating between the words “lifelog”, which is what was being discussed, and “lifeblog”, which I imagine to be different by an order of exponential magnitude.
One newscaster on NPR, who reports on and from Pakistan (forgive me, I forget her name, but she always pronounces it “Bakistan”), and Mr. Mufti, who pronounces Benazir as “Benazir” but Bhutto as “Putto” leads me to better understand that English speaking East Indians, and Pakistanis have a complicated relationship with that language. I can’t pretend to understand it, but I tend to trust these reporters’ cultural literacy.
What amazes me is Musharraf’s lack of it, despite his appropriate pronunciation.
Why ask for help from the former Colonial power’s premier detective agency when it will so obviously offend the public? He might as well as have asked the FBI. He is lucky that the public would accept a UN investigation, but perhaps he is less confident that he could influence the result.
As far as reporting on Bhutto’s and her family’s scandals, how offended would Americans have been if Cronkite had exposed either Kennedy brother’s dalliances while the citizenry mourned?
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