JOURNALISM AT GROUND ZERO: IMPERIAL WARS AND PRECARIOUS LABOR IN FRONTLINE NEWS PRODUCTION IN PAKISTAN

This study examines the severe conditions under which local media workers produce reports for global media outlets in conditions of war and the ways in which they cope with and respond to these challenges. I take as my case study, the diminution of the Pashtun journalist into a “fixer” for global media in the U.S.-led, so-called War on Terror (WoT). Based on my experience as a journalist as well as interviews with local Pashtun journalists, I disclose a situation in which the local journalist is compelled to risk his very life to gather news; news, which further exposes him to threats to life from the two warring sides. Precarity, in this scenario, is a fact of life, which carried serious consequences, not just for the journalist and his community, but also for what is passed off as news in global media