Bhutto assassinated-American news interviews Paris Hilton

This morning I was up uncharacteristically early. Much to do though it's a day off from work. The post-Christmas checklist isn't much shorter than it was, snow is in the forecast, and a furnace vendor was scheduled to replace our old hot air producer with a high efficiency furnace. So it was that I turned on National Public Radio as I do most mornings and staggered toward the kitchen in search of coffee (which Mary had kindly already brewed). Returning within earshot of the radio I heard the newscaster reporting that Benazir Bhutto had just been assassinated following a rally in Pakistan. In my estimation an event of significance to us here in the US since Pakistan is a an ally and, at least in form, a longstanding democracy with stable institutions. Bhutto's assassination would be akin to someone killing Barack Obama or another of our presidential candidates. NPR was quickly making connection with colleagues of Bhutto, former American diplomatic staff familiar with Pakistan and picking up BBC site reports on the attack. I listened for a few minutes and then switched on the television, not to get more coverage of the assassination but to find out about the present weather conditions. The forecasts during the night had projected between two and seven inches to the Valley floor here, and I thought the morning news shows would at least be streaming weather condition information on the screen even if they'd cut to the Bhutto story. We get four English and one Spanish stations with morning news shows. All four were reporting on various stories. None in the few minutes I watched made any mention of Bhutto and the assassination. Coverage included Paris Hilton and other celebrity New Year's resolutions, the weather across the country, the tiger who killed a young man in San Francisco earlier this week, and the rescue yesterday of a young girl from a plane crash in Central America. While some of these stories do qualify as news, none of them were, at the moment I was tuning in, much different than had been reported the night before. My sense was that none of the networks thought it important enough to cut to the Bhutto story or else didn't have the capacity to report on it quickly. A wide variety of commentaries and conclusions could be drawn from this situation, but what was clear to me was that National Public Radio was the only institution which saw international news of this import as a high priority and was ready to cover it. I also knew that the television news shows were "managing" the flow of news in a way that I find disturbing. Getting quick accurate reports on something of real significance at least as fast as they can provide instant helicopter footage of a car chase somewhere in the country isn't a technical problem. I am more convinced that the media generally don't think Americans know or care about Pakistan and its political struggles. The "war on terror" may only be reported on when the story's already over.