blogger profile

Margaret Pilarski

editorial assistant

i'm a feminist, and if you're reading this then you are too, you just might not know it yet. i like to eat cheese and travel, but i'm usually broke and/or spending my money on shoes and cocktail rings. i love dogs, rain, and driving offensively (and putting the last comma in a listed series). i'm se...

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bhutto and the news

by now everyone’s heard about, and begun dealing with, the assassination of benazir bhutto. i can’t say that i have many words for this, but there are some brilliant photos here along with the voice of john moore, the photographer, retelling his version of the day’s events.

what i think is interesting about this horrific catastrophe is the fact that of all our television networks, only 2 had any full-time staff in pakistan. gretchen peters, of abc news and married to john moore, the getty images photographer who captured the last image of bhutto alive, was stationed in islamabad. the other reporter, mohsin naqvi, had been at the rally and interviewed ms bhutto hours before her death.

it just blows my mind that in a world that we’ve made so small by the use of technology, we are cavalier about covering the news of the world. the NEWS. we can get 138 photographers following around jamie lynn spears waiting for her water to break, but we can’t have a full time staffer in a country like pakistan. i mean, i don’t know, isn’t pakistan, um, important?! news-worthy?! RELEVANT?! though we’ve made this world so small, we forget that nothing can truly substitute for immediate information from a real person who is already located in the place that the news is breaking.

is this how we value international news? democracy in the middle east? benazir herself?