TV

Parachute Journalism Redux

By TUNKU VARADARAJAN

It took a new war to confirm an old prejudice. Until she showed up in Pakistan to man the front line at the Islamabad Marriott, I'd forgotten how second-rate Christiane Amanpour could be. Tuned in to CNN the other day, I winced as the network's chief international correspondent stood inside the 17th-century Badshahi Mosque in Lahore -- devoid of people for no reason other than that it was not the time for prayer -- and said: "The mosque is deserted. That is because most Pakistanis are moderate." Then she proceeded to interview a number of ladies who lunch.

War is a time for instant expertise from the likes of Ms. Amanpour, who parachute into benighted places, kitted out in flak-jackets and other kinds of tough-girl raiment, and bring the whole sordid world of The Other into our living rooms. The process is understandable: After all, we can't all be experts on every subject, and there will always be conflagrations in places of which we've scarcely heard. But with the prevailing sense that our civilization is in genuine peril, we've hungered for thoughtful interpretations of The Other, as well as for good, precise information. But viewers didn't seem to get that from Ms. Amanpour, whose faint foreign accent is misinterpreted as erudition by Americans. Equally puzzlingly, her alluring dark looks are thought to convey an anti-Barbie seriousness of mind.

Ms. Amanpour is the diva of parachute journalism: In lieu of informing us better, she sells us a lifestyle. The genre owes more to dramatic or histrionic traditions than to old-fashioned news-gathering, and is ultimately about staging, not investigation. In this, she is perfectly suited to her role: The apotheosis of the middle-brow, she built her reputation, at least in her early days, on a foundation of pluck and self-belief, the latter of which she has in dazzling abundance. She plays herself, and looks dashing in danger zones, a fearless she-man who uses all things around her -- people, buildings, ancient enmities, modern weaponry -- as props.

BBC America's woman in Islamabad, Lyse Doucet, has emerged as a clear-headed, clever and self-effacing correspondent with a deep knowledge of the region.

As if by design, and perhaps as an act of mercy to the viewers, MSNBC has deployed a woman for this war who is the perfect anti-Amanpour. I write of Ashleigh Banfield, who anchored MSNBC's news program, "A Region in Conflict," at 9 p.m. EST every night from Islamabad since before the bombing began. (She has just returned to Washington to anchor her show from there.) Ms. Banfield, a fine-boned lady with large, titanium glasses -- rumored, the tabloids tell us, to have cost $400 -- has no expertise of this, or any other, war zone. Nor is she of a hectoring disposition. And after a brief flirtation with flak-wear, she now dresses in simple cotton shirts.

But most gratifying has been her unwillingness to pose as The Omniscient One. Hers has been a complex learning process, and viewers have climbed the curve with her, watching with satisfaction her growing ease with the material -- genuine, rather than feigned. And unlike Ms. Amanpour, she isn't playing herself: She even went to the extent of dying her blond hair brown, an event that made news in its own right. "Banfield's a Brunette for Pakistan Coverage," USA Today told us on Sept. 26, presumably the day after she had visited her colorist, in the first of numerous references to her self-proclaimed determination to "blend in" with the natives in Pakistan.

(And here, I cannot resist sharing with you an excerpt from an outraged posting on a South Asian Web forum. "The fact that Ashleigh Banfield thinks a white woman can dye her hair black and 'blend in' really is a loaded comment -- like she thinks there are no other features that make one appear south Asian [because] she's never looked closely at any of us. What's next? White reporters going to Africa in blackface?" Savor the hysteria!)

Ms. Banfield has tried hard not to be the story herself, and for that she should be praised. That she has become an "item" is, of course, proof of the essential shallowness of the style and gossip czars who anoint personalities and then package them. And when Ms. Banfield goes back to being blond -- as she must, surely, or the story runs out of steam -- we will no doubt have another headline in USA Today. Now that she's in D.C., look out for something like "Pakistan Coverage Over, Ashleigh Nixes Brown."

My personal favorite in this war, however, is not Ms. Banfield, but Lyse Doucet. A dulcet-voiced Canadian who presents the news from Islamabad on BBC America, she is the best thing to have emerged on television in these last few weeks. Clear-headed, clever and deeply unostentatious, she has neither Ms. Banfield's residual insecurity with the subject matter nor Ms. Amanpour's gaudy egotism. Besides -- as she told me over her satellite phone on Friday -- she abhors flak jackets. ("Listen, I'm in Islamabad. I'm here to clarify things. I'm not going to give a false impression of danger by wearing one. There isn't a war going on here on the roof of the Marriott.")

I am an unabashed admirer of the BBC's approach to news, and Ms. Doucet personifies the method. She is self-effacing, preferring to focus hard on the news and analysis that she's paid to relate to us. And unlike her competitors, she truly is expert in the region, having been stationed in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 1988 to 1993. So she's not a parachute artist and isn't supported by a para brigade, either. "We have a good, sturdy structure here," she told me. "The BBC World Service radio and its language services all have people here, and they were in place even before the war began. That's a tremendous strength that we have, that some of the others maybe don't."

Believe me, it shows.

***

Lyse Doucet can be seen five times a day on BBC America, at 3 a.m., 7 a.m., 9 a.m., 12 noon and 6 p.m. EST.