How We Know What We Know about Pakistan: New York Times news production, 1954–71

In: Modern Asian studies, Band 51, Heft 5, S. 1598-1625

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores public knowledge creation by examining how theNew York Timesproduced Pakistan news between 1954 and 1971, the formative period of United States of America (USA)–Pakistan relations. These years encapsulate not only the heyday of cooperation between the two governments, but also the American public's first major introduction to the South Asian country by the increasingly intrepid news media. A leader in shaping that introduction was theNew York Times. While most studies of the American media focus on measuring the effect of news exposure and content on public opinion, this article focuses on the theoretically underexplored aspect of news production: foreign news gathering. With a lens on South Asia, it shows that foreign news gathering involves the straddling of on-the-ground political and logistical constraints that generate an atmosphere of high uncertainty. By exploring the limitations on news gathering faced by America's leading newspaper's foreign correspondents in Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s, this article identifies an important historical source of the ambiguity characterizing USA–Pakistan relations. The findings are based on recently released archival material that offers rare insight into the news-production process.