Hillary Clinton's Quick Wit

This comes with years of training and practice but I really liked this accidental video of Mrs. Clinton in Kabul hours before she flew in to Islamabad, the world's closest capital to Kabul [a lot of people don't know this].

For those in the television news business, the video here shows the AP crew preparing to tape and 'feed' the interview back to their reporting station via satellite. So the tape is running but the interview has not started.

The cameraman and the producer probably didn't expect to get this unusual scoop: America's foreign minister caught giving her raw reaction to hearing about Gaddafi's death.

For me, two things make this short video very interesting.

One is that you don't see government officials at her level giving their natural reactions to hardcore news. If not for this chance video, we would have read somewhere that US State Department released a carefully worded statement by Mrs. Clinton on Gaddafi's death.

Not here.

Here we have a senior government official humanized. Like the rest of us, she gets the news on her cell phone and then reacts naturally.

The other thing that really caught my attention, and is the reason why I am sharing the video, is Mrs. Clinton's professionalism that is on display here.

Here she is, the foreign minister of major world power, sitting with journalists. She gets a major breaking news. And how does she react? She's calm and reasoned. Someone tries to drag more out of her but she is very matter-of-factly, saying there have been false alarms before. She avoids any displays of bravado considering that her country was in armed conflict with the now dead Libyan.

That's what really attracted me.

Gotta go now. Reading many reports on the just concluded visit of Mrs. Clinton and her high-powered delegation. A lot of info in the public domain. I also have reports from a couple of our reporters and sources talking to PakNationalists.com.  Some really exclusive stuff. For example, there was a somewhat tense moment during Mrs. Clinton's closed-door meeting with senior Pakistani diplomats at the Foreign Office. And there are some very juicy details about how Mr. David Petraeus, CIA chief, known here as 'chief anti-Pakistan propagandist', was treated by Pakistani officials, and some details about how the Zardari government surrendered our state-run media to Mrs. Clinton's media handlers to use to dish out US propaganda without being countered in any way, and there are many polite ways of doing it, like ensuring some people representing your side are invited to TV events addressed by Mrs. Clinton. Didn't happen. More on this in a few hours as we finish sifting through the piles of info.

Why Pak Media Ignored Anti-CIA Sit-In?

While there are many hardworking journalists in the Pakistani media, this media is yet to develop a sense of perception, which means looking into the future beyond the immediate headlines of the day.

When PPP and PMLN were running for elections in March 2008, Pakistani media refused to ask these two parties any tough questions about their long record of failed politics. The media gave these two parties an easy time. Journalists were focused on only one thing: the exit of Musharraf. While that was a worthy story, the media failed in its duty to check the record of those whom it was promoting as alternatives.

The same thing happens in the case of PTI's sit-in in Peshawar. For the first time since 2002, ordinary Pakistanis come out of their homes and block NATO supply line. This was a major story. But our media generally ignored it. Why? Because PTI boycotted the 2008 elections and the party is not in the parliament and wields no power. Many of our media men and women depend on maintaining good relations with some politicians either because of bias or for indirect benefit or gain. So everyone in the media is focused on what the politicians in parliament are saying. No one is interested in PTI or the drones because, well, PTI can't offer journalists favors because it is not in power.

That's why most of the Pakistani media ignored the sit-in in Peshawar on the first day, on 23 April.

But everyone in our media sat up and noticed when elected politician and those parties that are considered to be well established, participated in the second day of the sit-in. The parties did this because of the tremendous response that PTI generated among ordinary Pakisanis, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie.

This is realistic and unfortunate aspect of our media. But I hope our media will drw some lessons from its coverage of the sit-in.