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ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan-from a reporter's notebook in
Islamabad:
Two types of reporters cover the story-television
and everyone else. Rarely do the twain meet,
and when they do, it is on TV's ground, thank
you. The ground is the Marriott hotel, the
headquarters, for the moment, of the TV folks.
Just
as high school students learn in basic logic,
that all "a" are not "b," it
could be said that not all television reporters,
producers and technicians are in the Marriott
Hotel, but all noses, eyes and laptops in the
Marriott hotel belong to TV people.
It is a matter of speed and money. Television
rushed into this city as soon as the story
broke-they are good at grabbing business and
first class seats, and money. A room at the
Marriott comes just shy of $300-a-night.
The TV people were more or less locked into
the Marriott when their technicians put their
$250,000 satellite dishes on the roof, and
ran cables down to the production rooms. Lately
however the networks are exploring private
villas as besides the room rates, the hotel
is charging $500-a night for the space on the
roof and the security they provide for it.
Scribblers stay elsewhere. Hotels like the
Margala and the Ambassador charge between $25
and $40 a-night.
And then there's the Internet. The business
center in the Marriott charges $10 an hour
for access. Out on the street, in the cubby-hole
Internet cafes, the going price is $0.50 (fifty
cents the hour.)
Nevertheless the mountain comes to Mohammed
and the story comes to CNN. The United Nations
holds all its briefings at the Marriott, as
do all the sub agencies and non-governmental
organizations. Cabinet members and generals
come to the building's roof to be interviewed
live and even the Taliban's representative
in Islamabad made the trip in his long white
robes, again to be interviewed by CNN.
Speaking of Internet cafes, several here come
with booths. You go into the booth to turn
on the computer, and you can close the door.
The door has a lock from the inside. You can
be as private as you like. Maybe you would
not like interruptions when you check your
e-mail or look at the new live picture from
Flowers.Com.
Here, like in other places where foreign journalists
parachute into the country without knowing
the language, the second-day effect pops up
in many of the sidebars.
The main events, the demonstrations, the scheduled
news conferences, the electronic media are
covered like Sherwin Williams covers the world,
sometimes live. Twenty to thirty cameras show
up. But the secondary stories, the ones that
take some thinking and some analyses, the reporters
pick up from the local newspapers. They'll
notice an angle, like the impact of this or
that n the local health systems and pursue
it. But if it appeared in today's newspaper,
then it happened yesterday. And by the time
it gets out....
Need a shoeshine? Go to the park where the
shoeshine man sits in the shade of a tree,
polishing people's empty shoes. Where are the
people? Walking around in shower tongs loaned
by the shoeshine man. Efficient. No time loss.
The
Muzak-like recording playing constantly in
the elevators
of the Marriott hotel here
has three tunes: the West Side Story version
of "America", (Everything free in
America: For a small fee in Amereeeeka) the
theme from Chariots of fire, then the theme
from the Late Movie; then America, then the
theme from Chariots of Fire then the theme
from the Late Movie, then America, then the
theme from Chariots of Fire then the theme
from The Late Show, then America, then the
theme Chariots of Fire then the theme from
The Late Movie...
There are no elevators in the Ambassador or
the Margala.
A good place to sit to get a feel of what
is going to be on television and what is to
be covered is near the fax machine in the Marriott
business center.
Head
offices fax reporters the news agency copy,
either
to suggest the story idea or to
say, "how come we don't have this?" Marriott-bound
producers fax stories to reporters in Peshawar
and Quetta, and reporters fax their headquarters
their proposed scripts, for approval at the
home office.
Why don't they use the e-mail? Islamabad's
modem speed is an excruciatingly slow 14k,
provoking tears of frustration from high tech
producers who would rather send the fax and
forget about it; telephone lines themselves
are in short supply and although they can use
satellite telephones to connect to the Internet,
many think that is a waste of an expensive
asset, and prefer to use it for direct voice
contact to their offices.
The
lot of the late arriving TV producer is not
a happy
one. He or she doesn't know what
is going on and is expected to make a live
report back home anyway. In a recent case a
newly arrived German reporter was ordered to
make a live report for an afternoon chat show,
minutes after he arrived. "What is he
going to say," asked a nosey-Parker technician
adjusting the dials on the satellite dish controls. "He
just got here."
"He's going to say exactly what I told
him to say," said a plugged-in producer
for the network who had been in Islamabad for
three weeks. "Word for word."
The
reporter stood in the live spot area, under
direct
high powered lights, for 45 minutes
- not being able to go out and do some reporting
-- before the talk show host in Germany said
something like "well, for that question
we go live to Islamabad, where our reporter
has been looking into just that subject...
In the same position, using the same microphone
and the same ear piece, an Italian reporter
a day later spent two hours waiting for a talk
show host in her country to call her. Her contribution
was two minutes long. The total: one hour and
58 minute of non-reporting. Two minutes of
speaking, $2,200 in satellite charges.
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