Pakistani Taliban attack U.S. Consulate

After an attack on the U.S. consulate today by the Pakistani Taliban most major news agencies released articles detailing the attack. Britain's Channel 4 News reported the story in the video displayed below.

After watching the video I read about the incident in The New York Times. The article can be found here.

In the video, the host starts by giving a brief overview of the situation, familiarizing the viewer with the event. After the introduction, the report makes a clear transition to Pakistan, where the attack took place. This clear transition allowed me turn my focus from my futon in Hanover, NH to the attack in Peshawar. The written article offered no such transition, shoving me into the event immediately. The abruptness of the article could be because the writers knew that the readers had to choose the article, and would consequently be ready for it, while video was part of a set newscast that was not dictated by the viewer.

The video goes to a map, which is absent in the article. The map helps us contextualize the situation. We can see Peshawar's proximity to Afghanistan as well as its location relative to Timurgara where another suicide bombing occurred on the same day. I'm generally pretty good with geography, but I had no idea where these places were. The New York Times does mention the other attack and indicates that the attack occurred in "another northern area" implying that Peshawar is northern, but still making it difficult to see the possible connection between the two events.

Later on in the video the reporter runs through a quick play-by-play of the attack, but he does some of this while we hear sirens, explosions and gunshots. It's impossible to pay attention to the details. All I remembered after watching this for the first time was that there were loads of explosions and gunshots. And maybe that's all that matters. Maybe we only need to know that there was an attack, rather than the tactics employed by the attackers. But for those interested in the details the written article provided a much more detailed summary of the fight and was also easier to comprehend.

Because reading is self-paced, while watching video is not, the writers of the article were able to fill it with many numbers detailing the events of the day. I was able to fully process the numbers mentioned in the article, and understand their significance, unlike the video, where, despite it having fewer numbers, I was unable to take the data in at my own pace. Consequently, I understood the material less thoroughly.

The Lede blog, published by the New York Times, comments on the video, and mentions that

The crawl at the bottom of the screen gave updates on a celebrity drama, the planned marriage of a Pakistani cricket star, Shoaib Malik, to an Indian tennis player, Sania Mirza

which gives us a feel for the Pakistani perspective of the events. The nonchalantness off the Pakistani report reveals the Pakistani perspective in a way that would be impossible to learn from the written article.

The written article just struggles to capture the feeling and intensity of the event like the video does. With images and sound we can more easily attach emotions to the event, which helps us contextualize the event. Even though the video lacks the detail of the article my understanding of the attack was much clearer after watching the video. Understanding material analytically and emotionally, and combining the two media helped me build a more complete picture of the event.