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Yegparian: The LA Times and Kurdish
Coverage
16.3.2010 |
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March
16, 2010
In this third of what started as
a three-part series on LA Times coverage of interest
to Armenians, I’ll address some Kurdish-topic
patterns I’ve noticed over the past two-plus years.
Arguably, the Kurds have fared best among the
peoples of Armenia’s neighbors. Certainly, they had
more coverage (at least in terms of number of
pieces) than anyone else, other than possibly Iran
(I have not tracked the latter). But, those pieces
overwhelmingly involved conflict.
Whether it was Turkey attacking the PKK, the PKK
responding, the ramifications of these in Iraq and
southern Kurdistan, or the political growth pains of
the federal structure in Iraq as it impacts the
Kurds, coverage stemmed from blood or fierce
politics. Even those stories not directly involving
Iraq-Kurd and Turkey-PKK issues were conflictual,
e.g. Kurdish protests or persecution in Turkey,
Kurds denying responsibility for a bombing, and
murders attributed to a “tribal vendetta” in
Kurdish-inhabited parts of Turkey.
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Garen Yegparian |
Plus,
the one editorial regarding Turkish-PKK interactions
favored Turkey. There is no coverage of Turkey’s
abuses of the Kurds’ human rights, and no “picture”
of daily life in Turkish-occupied Armenia and
Kurdistan. There is the occasional piece about or
reference to (in coverage not specifically about the
Kurds) “the progress in northern Iraq”. Basically,
the paper seems to be toeing the State Department’s
line. No one would call the LA Times pro-Kurdish.
These establishment-based and “if it bleeds, it
leads” biases do a disservice to readers. For
Armenians, it is, I suppose, better than nothing
that some trickle of information about our “cousins”
intrudes upon our awareness to supplement what the
Armenian media provides. But this pathetic coverage
of the largest stateless nation on the planet leads
to perpetual uninformed-ness of Kurdish reality
among U.S. citizens (as I have no doubt other major
newspapers are similarly deficient), in turn leading
to less than optimal Kurdish policy in the State
Department.
The “Kurdish Question,” like the Armenian, is key to
peace in the Middle East. Palestine-Israel may be
the hottest issue, but its resolution will not usher
in the hoped-for peace in the area. If anything,www.ekurd.netwith
that gone, the opportunities for mischief through
the abuse of the Kurds’ and Armenians’ fundamental
rights and manipulation by some powers of their
liberation movements will expand.
It behooves us, as we develop and implement a media
strategy, to include the Kurdish perspective on our
shared homeland.
The views expressed are the author's alone.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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