Western media’s Afghan women coverage spiked twentyfold only when it served war aims

Evidence

To be sure, conditions for women in Afghanistan were harsh. However, until they proved to be useful for empire, Afghan women warranted little coverage in the media. As Carol Stabile and I wrote, in broadcast media only thirty-seven programs focused on Afghan women in 1999. From January 2000 to September 11, 2001, there were thirty-three programs. From September 12, 2001 to January 1, 2002, the number of broadcast programs spiked to 628.26 This sustained attention was due in no small part to the role that “primary definers” such as those quoted at the start of this section play in determining what is newsworthy and when. When the suffering of Afghan women proved useful to the war on terror and to US imperial aims in South and Central Asia, they became the subject of sustained media attention. In reality, Afghan women are no better off than they were before the war, particularly in the rural areas where things deteriorated after the US/NATO invasion. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 300

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels ch8 highlight ‘Media coverage of Afghan women spiked eighteenfold only once it served war aims’ — same data point, confirming the earlier claim at chapter level. — connects to: Media coverage of Afghan women spiked eighteenfold only once it served war aims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 288; Afghan women’s conditions did not improve and even worsened after invasion — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 288; Western media depicts Muslim women solely as passive victims stripped of agency — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 510 (+1 more)
• SEED: The measurable coverage spike (37 to 628 programs) is a clean, citable number for an essay on how suffering is selectively ‘discovered’ by empire.

Broader Connections

• Western media depicts Muslim women solely as passive victims stripped of agency #expands (0.85) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 510
• Western media coverage of Muslim militants rose sharply while coverage of ordinary Muslims stagnated #corroborates (0.80)