"Parachuting" TV news was ill-prepared to cover the fall of Afghanistan after ignoring the war all these years

Los Angeles Times

"The shrinking of American newsrooms since their heyday in the 20th century and the country’s fatigue after two decades of war have created a media ecosystem whose bread and butter is domestic crisis and political rancor, presented by opinionated anchors and argued by divisive personalities," says Lorraine Ali of the TV news coverage the past few days as the Taliban took over Afghanistan, adding: "By contrast, covering U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and other locales around the globe has been a sporadic effort at best. The media parachute in when our troops invade countries overseas or leave them in defeat, while remaining largely absent for the slog in between. When a major story broke out in combat zones, it was commonplace in these interim years for outlets to use Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya reporting and camera footage from places where they weren’t — like Kandahar Province, Fallujah and other hotspots where our troops risked and lost their lives. Beyond the grim spectacle of 'shock and awe' and the killing of Osama bin Laden, if you watched the nightly news — or even 24-hour cable news — in the last two decades, you might be forgiven for believing America’s last major war took place in Vietnam. That’s how intermittent the attention has been. Watching this weekend as Afghanistan fell under Taliban rule, again, was horrifying — particularly the footage of victorious fighters pouring into Kabul unchallenged, and the humanitarian crisis unfolding around the airport, which may well indicate even greater terror and dread throughout the rest of the country. But for all the valiant efforts of those on the ground there relaying the news, much of American TV seemed ill-prepared to take on such a grave and complex series of events. CNN scrambled to dig up experts on foreign policy and conflict such as Fareed Zakaria, who looked like he was on vacation in a cabin in upstate New York. Viewers learned that MSNBC does in fact have an Iran bureau chief, Ali Arouzi, though you might not have known it as recently as last week. They patiently explained that this disaster has been building for more than a decade, over four different presidencies — something one might have expected to glean from, say, watching the news." Ali adds: "In Vietnam, at least, TV was instrumental in bringing U.S. viewers information about the war and, many have argued, turning them against it. TV coverage of Afghanistan has been so sparse since the war’s earliest days it’s been hard to know what message the networks were sending, except about its unimportance."