Patterns in the Chaos: News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan During ...

432 Pages·2013·1.88 MB·English

by  Katherine Brown

Patterns in the Chaos:
News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan
During Wartime,
2010-2012

Katherine Ann Brown

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2013
© 2013
Katherine Ann Brown
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT

Patterns in the Chaos:
News and Nationalism in Afghanistan, America and Pakistan
During Wartime,
2010-2012

Katherine Ann Brown

This dissertation examines the United States’s elite news media’s hegemony in a
global media landscape, and how it can come to stand for the entire American nation in
the imagination of outsiders. In this transnational, instantaneous digital media arena, what
is created for an American audience can fairly easily be accessed, interpreted and relayed
to another. How, then, is U.S. international news, which is traditionally ethnocentric and
security-focused, absorbed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries where the United
States has acute foreign policy interests?
This study draws from two bodies of scholarship that are analogous, yet rarely
linked together. The first is on hegemony and the U.S. news media’s relationship with
American society and the government. This includes scholarship on indexing and
cascading; agenda building and agenda setting; framing; and reporting during conflict.
The second is on the American news media’s relationship with the world, and
nationalism as a fixed phenomenon in international news. This includes examining the
different kinds of press systems that exist globally, and how they interact with each other.
Afghanistan and Pakistan’s media systems have expanded dramatically since being freed
in 2002 and they struggle daily with making sense of the volatility that comes with the
U.S.-led Afghanistan war. Through 64 qualitative, in-depth interviews with Afghan,
American and Pakistani journalists, this study explores the sociology of news inside
Afghanistan and Pakistan and how the American news narrative is received there.
There is a widespread, long-standing perception in Afghanistan and Pakistan that
American journalists stain the reputation of their nations as failed states. Just as the U.S.
exercises global hegemony in a material sense, the U.S. media is powerful in shaping
how American and international publics see the world. Yet, while American foreign
correspondents are U.S.-centric in their reportage on the Afghan, American and Pakistani
entanglement, so too are Afghan journalists Afghan-centric and Pakistani journalists
Pakistani-centric. Nationalism is how journalists organize chaos and complexity. While
their news stories can represent an entire nation, they are more likely to harden national
identities than to broker understanding between nations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Washington and Kabul v

Part I: The Background 1

1. The Afghan, American, Pakistani Entanglement: Introduction 2

2. Nationalism in America, Nationalism Everywhere: Literature Review 20

3. Twice the Forgotten War: American News on Afghanistan & Pakistan 60

Part II: The Pakistanis 80

4. From Quiet to Chaos: Pakistani News Media, Past and Present 81

5. ‘We Realized Our Power’: The Pakistani Journalist Experience 105

6. ‘So Much America in Pakistan, It’s Staggering’: Journalists and U.S. News 123

Part III: The Afghans 163

7. A Shaky Start: Afghan News Media, Past and Present 164

8. Optimistic, But Uncertain: The Afghan Journalist Experience 190

9. ‘We Can’t Do This Alone’: Afghan Journalists and U.S. News 219

Part IV: The Americans 249

10. ‘We Write for Us’: The American Journalists’ Experience 250

11. Dysfunction: U.S. Journalists View of Afghan, Pakistani Reporters & Officials 264

12. Clarity in Chaos: Nationalism to Manage Reportage 282

Endnotes 300

Bibliography 366

Appendix: Methodology 398

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The last six years at Columbia University have been extraordinary. There are too
many people to thank for getting me to Columbia, and then getting me through a doctoral
course. But here are some of them.
I feel extremely lucky to have the family I do. I am ever grateful to my
tremendous parents, Christine and John Brown, who let me start traveling abroad on my
own at age 16 and always emphasized the importance of education. I’m indebted to my
sister Judy and her family, Dan, Briana and Patrick McEntee, for their support – as I am
to my sister, Colleen and her new family, Padraig and Saoirse Swan. I owe much thanks
to my Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom Carson, and to the Carson kids and their families:
Maria, Pierre, Emma, Carson and Benjamin Breber; Chris, Elizabeth, Ryan and Eva
Carson; Tim, Kathleen and Levi Carson; and Tom, Emily, Garrett, Ellie and Genevieve
Carson. Thank you to my Pennsylvania cousins Mary Pat and Charlie Weidner – and Jim,
Maria, Bob, Chrissy, Greg and Kelly Cain. And to my New York cousins, RJ and Kristen
Bannister, who gave me food, drinks, shelter and sanity.
I’m indebted to the wonderful minds I met at Columbia who helped me with
coursework, teaching and the dissertation itself. To my fellow cohorts who have reached,
or soon will reach, staggering heights in academic and public service: Chris Anderson,
Kate Fink, Tom Glaisyer, Lucas Graves, Ri Pierce-Grove, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Annie
Rudd and Julia Sonnevend. And I’m grateful for the incredible faculty I got to work with
at the Journalism School and SIPA so closely, and who I aspire to be like: Todd Gitlin,
Michael Schudson, Andie Tucher, Richard John, David Klatell, Sam Freedman, Stephen
Sestanovich, Hishaam Aidi and Dan McIntyre. I’m grateful to Sean Aday and Hassan

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Abbas who joined my doctoral committee and made the trip to New York from
Washington. And a very special thank you to Ruthie Palmer. Without her, I most
certainly would have gone insane.
I received a series of lucky breaks in my career that got me to and through
Columbia. I am forever indebted to the people who engineered them. Thank you, Mike
Hammer, for taking a chance on a disgruntled intern in 1999 and bringing me to the
White House. Thanks to Kathy Magee, who let me follow her to seven countries on her
crusade to transform children’s lives with Operation Smile. I am grateful to Condoleezza
Rice and Stephen Hadley, who let me see up close and appreciate the vagaries of the
foreign policy decision-making process and showed me infinite grace under pressure.
And to the illustrious Jen Easterly who somehow made the West Wing the most fun place
to work ever. Odds are I never would have traveled to Afghanistan if it weren’t for
Zalmay Khalilzad, who challenged me to move forward in my career as no one had
before. And much, much thanks to the wonderful Jennifer Betti, who gave me an excuse
to move to San Francisco in 2005 to work for The Asia Foundation – and to Nancy Yuan
who kept me on staff via the Foundation’s Washington office when I moved to New
York. While I was at Columbia, I had two jobs that I’m still not sure I was deserving of.
Much thanks to Rick Kessler, who hired me to focus on public diplomacy issues at the
Committee on Foreign Affairs at the U.S. House of Representatives, albeit briefly. And
I’m grateful to Jamie Rubin who brought me to the original editorial staff team at
Bloomberg View. I loved my time with the editors at 78th and Madison who challenged
me to be a better writer and thinker, especially the talented and hysterically funny Lisa
Beyer.

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I am too fortunate to have my friends at home in California who always gave me a
haven to fly to when school, work and New York got to be too much. To my best friend
of nearly 30 years, Katy Moore, and my Lancer girls who prove that high school
friendships can stand the test of time: Lindsey Dazel, Erin Meyer Krupsaw, Robin
Remmel Henrich, Melissa Skrabo Munster and Adie Sletten (and their husbands, Dan
Munster, Seth Krupsaw and Karl Henrich). I’m also eternally grateful to my Southern
Californian best friend Dena Malea Lazarova, who has motivated me since we were
roommates in Scheveningen the summer of 1997 – and to Miro and (my beautiful and
brilliant Goddaughter) Gia Lazarova.
I am also obliged to the friends I made in Washington the past 15 years. They got
me through times of great uncertainty and inspired me by sheer example. So much thanks
to Camille Eiss, Rachel Hagen, Sarah and Izzy Klein, Amit Magdieli, Sidney Olinyk,
Farah Pandith and Erik Woodhouse. Also to my Operation Smile friends who helped me
navigate those awful post-college years: Melanie Bariso Agustin, Mona Rowghani (and
later, Ahmad), and Holly and Jim Clune. And to the incredible Chris Anderson, who told
me I should rewrite my Columbia application’s personal statement in a random
Connecticut hotel room that December night in 2006. He has been of consistent support
since 2001. And to my ‘big brothers,’ Jeremy Goldberg and Karl Rectanus, who I also
met in Scheveningen in 1997 and who convinced me to transfer schools and move to
Washington. I’m also grateful that they married up: Jenna Arnold and Victoria Wheeler,
thanks so much for your friendship.
I would have been lost without my New York friends who took me away from
Morningside Heights. Thank you, Kim Barker, Dan D’Lauro, Tanya Gallo, Nikki Ganz,

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Reah Johnson, Kathryn McGarr, Gabrielle Olivera, Alex Rossmiller, Jennifer White and
Meaghan Winter. And a special thanks to friends like Sabina Sheikh and Bill and Julie
Coleman, who consistently dropped into town and gave me an excuse to leave the library.
I’m grateful to those I met in Afghanistan the last decade whose courage and
intellect leave me in awe. A particular thank you to the remarkable Kay McGowan, who I
am profoundly lucky to have as a pseudo big sister, and to her incredible daughter Claire
Skye MacQueen, who keeps me laughing. Joan Ablett, Caroline Chung, Chris Del Corso,
Jayne Howell, Shirin Pakfar, Beth and Nick Sanzone, and Jeff Raleigh are forever
embedded in my life after they put up with me for a year on that tiny embassy compound.
And a particular line of gratitude to Marin Strmecki, who taught me how to shoot a
basketball on the embassy court and pushed me toward a Ph.D. I’m grateful to John
Dempsey and John Agoglia who got me through my 2010 fieldwork in Kabul; and to
Declan Walsh and Yousaf Rizvi for their support during my Islamabad and Lahore
fieldwork. I’m also ever grateful to those who got me through the final leg of Kabul
research in 2012: Golareh Kia, George Abi-Habib and Amandine Roche. And to the
American journalists I cannot name, who face insanely difficult work daily yet still found
time to support my work. I am also indebted to Scott Shadian for being an amazing boss
and friend, and for looking out for me in Kabul ever since my first trip back in 2006.
Last, I’m indebted to the dozens of unidentified Afghans and Pakistanis
interviewed for this study who struggle to make sense of the volatility and uncertainty in
their homelands everyday.

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DEDICATION

To my extraordinary parents, John and Christine Brown, who gave my everything.

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