Rosslyn Jordan, who used to cover domestic topics for NBC (milk prices fluctuation, traffic lights not working etc), filed a report about Pakistan on Al Jazeera, and later followed up by vaguely answering couple of superficial questions from the anchor. Rosslyn Jordan, as for as I know, knows nothing about Pakistan. She has never traveled to Pakistan, never worked in Pakistan, never studied Pakistan as a subject, both as a student and as a scholar anywhere, and there she was, reporting about Pakistan from Washington, DC. Like anyone else living in the United States, she is free to do whatever she wants to do, but Al-Jazeera must do more, a lot more, to cover Pakistan properly.
Since Russians invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan has been the front line against Communism, and now Fascism, as propagated by right wing hate mongers using Islam as a tool to justify their primitive ideology. Therefore, common sense dictates that in order to accurately report about one of the most important countries in the world (as far as the war against terrorism goes), Al-Jazeera should try a little harder to understand the country, its people, its history and most importantly, its role in the future, especially if the world is serious about defeating the terrorists currently engaged in a battle against the West in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
I believe Al-Jazeera is morally bound to, at the very least, have someone as an expert about Pakistan who, at the very least, knows something about the country besides relying on second hand analysis by others. If Al-Jazeera must report about Pakistan, they must rely on someone within the country. If not, at the very least, they should ask someone who has been to Pakistan, has traveled the country, has reported about different subjects from Pakistan and can call couple of people to find out exactly what is going, before going on air to give his or her ‘expert’ opinion. As for as I know, Rosslyn Jordan is not qualified to comment about Pakistan as an expert, period.
Al-Jazeera English is widely viewed and admired by Pakistanis, but if this sloppy reporting continued, especially about Pakistan, I am afraid people will turn back to BBC and CNN. Therefore, I would strongly urge the decision makers at Al-Jazeera to immediately re-assess their ‘expert’ panel about Pakistan.
