A panel moderated by a Sacramento State professor examined media coverage of the war in Afghanistan as part of the California Journalism Conference and Awards dinner at the Sheraton Grand Hotel.

Government professor William Dorman directed the Feb. 26 conversation with panelists assembled by the Center for California Studies as they discussed news coverage of the war in Afghanistan and the Gulf War.

Stan Atkinson, retired anchor for Sacramento?s KOVR 13, began the discussion by recalling his experiences in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

“If the west thinks we can establish a central government in Afghanistan, we?re smoking something,” he said.

The Afghan?s desire for a traditional way of life would make the introduction of western values a nearly impossible undertaking, Atkinson said.

“Tribal rule is the engine of the people?It goes deeper than the sand.”

Paul Hostley, the associate director for news and programming at San Francisco?s new radio station KCBS, discussed the importance of the Internet in modern war coverage.

The speed in which information becomes available made the Internet a valuable tool for covering the war in Afghanistan, Hostley said. The technology was in its infancy and largely unavailable to journalists during the Gulf War.

Dorman noted that now the challenge for journalists is sorting through the enormous amount of information available on the Internet.

“It?s like trying to get a drink of water out of a fire hydrant,” he said.

John Howard, the Sacramento bureau chief of the Orange County Register said that war reporting has improved since the Gulf War.

The media?s focus on the struggles faced by the Afghan people under the Taliban regime was an improvement on the strategic U.S. military perspective offered during the Gulf War, he said “Californians had an emotional connection to this war that they didn?t have in 1990,” he said.

The question of “why they hate us” became an important aspect of media coverage following Sept. 11, Howard said.

“To ask that question tells us what the problem is,” he said. “We don?t understand the politics of the Middle East.”

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