Blog #4
Article: U.S. advisers secretly training Pakistani forces
This proved to be an interesting article in terms of how much and how little information it gave all at the same time. It makes interesting use of the word "secret", and that is the kind of word to raise all kinds of alarms in any viewer's heads. U.S. military specialists have been training Pakistani troops so that they can better combat the Taliban. The article reports this as secret training, but the source of this information is never mentioned. Also, the article mentions how the training had been previously acknowledged. How is this any kind of secret training exercise if it had been acknowledged in the past? After a little searching, I was able to find a news article from a year ago that talked about plans for this training to begin. So, what is the purpose of using this word "secret"? Was the reporter just lazy in terms of finding their sources, or was it a spin to try and get more readers? The sources themselves are also something to be wary about. None of the military officials mentioned are named and remain anonymous. One of the basic rules of Social Responsibility in the Media that Smith talks about is truth, and keeping these names anonymous and having contradictory information all in the same article does not lend itself well to truth. The original source of this information is unknown, and it implies that only military officials were spoken to. Do the soldiers directly involved, both American and Pakistani, have anything to say about these secret training exercises? Was there a reason why the media could not gather information from them? The article and the reporter who wrote it do not lend themselves very well to reporting truth that does not make you wonder of the validity of it all.
This proved to be an interesting article in terms of how much and how little information it gave all at the same time. It makes interesting use of the word "secret", and that is the kind of word to raise all kinds of alarms in any viewer's heads. U.S. military specialists have been training Pakistani troops so that they can better combat the Taliban. The article reports this as secret training, but the source of this information is never mentioned. Also, the article mentions how the training had been previously acknowledged. How is this any kind of secret training exercise if it had been acknowledged in the past? After a little searching, I was able to find a news article from a year ago that talked about plans for this training to begin. So, what is the purpose of using this word "secret"? Was the reporter just lazy in terms of finding their sources, or was it a spin to try and get more readers? The sources themselves are also something to be wary about. None of the military officials mentioned are named and remain anonymous. One of the basic rules of Social Responsibility in the Media that Smith talks about is truth, and keeping these names anonymous and having contradictory information all in the same article does not lend itself well to truth. The original source of this information is unknown, and it implies that only military officials were spoken to. Do the soldiers directly involved, both American and Pakistani, have anything to say about these secret training exercises? Was there a reason why the media could not gather information from them? The article and the reporter who wrote it do not lend themselves very well to reporting truth that does not make you wonder of the validity of it all.