CNN writes a sappy suicide bombing story and Pajhwok Afghan News writes news.

Pajhwok vs. CNN 

 Recently, there was a suicide bombing taken place outside of a mosque in Mainmana City and CNN made sure to report it. The title of the article read as follows, “Suicide bomber at Muslim mosque shatters holiday that celebrates peace.”  In the article, it immediately starts off by saying “It was supposed to be a day of happiness.” CNN goes on to state that “the people did not get that day.” To me, all of this sounds like a sappy story, when in reality, the suicide bombing was a horrifying thing that happened to many innocent people. I only got to realize this after reading a news source directly from Afghanistan. Pajhwok Afghan News is an independent news agency and although its main goal is to portray an Afghans perspective, as said by them, I did not get that feeling at all. They also explain that they have no political affiliations, this explains why the story does not seem one sided.

Pajhwok Afghan News tells news, while CNN gives news. 

Pajhwok Afghan News writes an article titled  “Faryab suicide bombing death tolls rises to 40” This news source comes directly from Afghanistan, the scene of the crime you could say. The article explains the number of victims in the shooting, totaling up to 40 killed and 50 injured. Among the victims were children, security personnel and civilians, allowing this report to really showcase what really happened, with cold hard facts. Although CNN does also say that there were 40 killed and 50 injured it also explains immediately that “There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Seddiqi laid the blame for the attack squarely at the feet of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.” Pajhowk does not include any blame in its article; instead it states that “no group has claimed responsibility.” Perhaps, CNN knew their article could not stand on its own, so they added a video, in which they do go into further detail about who may have accomplished the suicide bombing.

CNN explains WHY the suicide bombing was so repulsive, while Pajhwok, explains HOW it happened.

There are always two sides to a story. But CNN makes sure to include four sides. They use four outside sources, to voice their opinion on what happened and why it happened. For example, one of the sources was Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force. He says in the article “This violence undertaken at a place of worship, and during Eid, once again shows the insurgency's callous hypocrisy and disregard for religion and faith.” Now I know that it is important to use other people’s opinion to make a story more credible, but all four sources say almost the exact same thing. I find hard for this news source to be credible mainly because of this. Although the sources are major important people, like the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Minister of the Interior, and commander of the International Security Assistance Force, I frankly don’t care about what they think. I read the news to learn new information, if I wanted someones opinion, I would ask my friends and family, they would probably say the same thing. Every news paper should know to make sure they have credible sources to prove their point.CNN is clearly missing hard facts like maybe a description of the mosque and the atmosphere after the bombing. Those are the things I want to hear about.

In Pajhwok I trust.

It is definitely hard to pick which news source to trust more, but to me it just makes sense to pick the source in the country in which the event happened. Sure a U.S. news source can send a journalist right away to the scene of the spot, but no one understands the culture, the society, the land, more than their own people.  Pajhwok understands Afghanistan more than the U.S. making the story less biased, in my opinion. The U.S. has many preconceptions of Afghanistan, and I think it is unfair to include them in a news article. People like us rely on CNN and other US American news sources to tell us what is going on in the world. But what we need is cold hard facts, not cold opinions. Reading CNNs article, I felt like there was only one side to the story. While Pajhwok really gave me no sides, they only gave the truth. But know I know, if I need an opinion on the world news, CNN is the place to go.