Dr. Singh - Obama State Visit Coverage

As I often cover South Asian media in this blog, I thought it would be interesting to sample a range of takes on the event from various media across the globe. i'll try to get to a few blogs that covered the event in alter post, but for now a quick survey of a few MSM spins:

The AP piece brought up some interesting nuances regarding China and greenhouse emissions , but glosses over Pakistan and did not mention the uncompleted work on nuclear agreements.

The Times Of India picks up the Pakistan issue thread in a bit more detail, including this interesting sound bite, something I haven't seen yet in Western coverage of Thursday's event:

Obama also acknowledged implicitly, probably for the first time by Washington, that the United States historically may have erred in its approach towards Pakistan.

"There were probably times when we were just focused on the (Pakistani) military...instead of (engaging its) civil society," he admitted, when asked about the US policy of arming Pakistan that had allowed it to become a heavily armed adversary of India.

TOI also offered a couple of interesting sidebar articles, including Dr. Singh's remarks on Afghanistan to the Center for Foreign Relations in D.C. on Monday (a separate piece also covered his views on China . TOI in fact has a whole special section on the visit.

Pakistan's English media group Dawn News, of course, focuses on the Pakistan angle more in depth.

The TOI article also covers progress on the nuclear agreement, and it's how IBN Live headlined their coverage: "Nuclear deal will go through, Obama assures PM", states the article. It's the focal point of the news coverage in the article (though you have to get through the narrative of the day's ambience beforehand).

On the lighter side, India's Rediff provided a comprehensive guest list 'who's who', an interesting read to get familiar with the top movers and shakers in the India - America sphere.

Most of the other major American MSM coverage (the networks, CNN, WaPo, NYT) focused their coverage more on the pageantry of the event itself rather than any in depth geopolitical analysis. That's not unexpected or gratuitous -- very deep in the American collective psyche, I think, there's still a yearning for occasional ceremony, symbolism, and ritual in the processes of its political leadership -- but it's interesting to see the harder news dimensions covered in greater detail at the outset of the event by non-American media.

I imagine some of the weekly MSM publications, or perhaps some blogs, will offer more in that realm in days to come. We'll check.

Incidentally, the news station I work for caught a few remarks from our own Gov. Richardson before he left for D.C. to attend the dinner.