Your Country, Our War

Abstract

This chapter reviews how Afghan journalists perceive the “reality” journalists for U.S. news organizations have constructed about Afghanistan, and how Afghan journalists react to and make meaning from it. Afghan journalists and a majority of Afghan officials assume that U.S. journalists are advocates for the American government’s foreign policies and are sometimes chauvinistically nationalistic, even jingoistic. The U.S. journalists vehemently reject this notion and the suggestion that their coverage is blindly patriotic, yet they agree that they are largely aligned with U.S. officials in protecting and advancing America’s general interests abroad. Afghan journalists also are emotionally affected by the news stories they read that describe their country as being shattered and hopeless. Consuming U.S. news about Afghanistan can be an affront to their Afghan identity and can inspire intense feelings of nationalism and frustration within them.