Still no nearer the truth

Anyone who's been there will tell you that the number of western journalists covering the Afghan war front until very recently has far exceeded the number of Allied troops. The American TV network NBC alone had around 60 people in the region. CBS had more, and CNN even more, with well over 100.

According to AA Gill's caustic essay in the February issue of GQ, CNN took over 30 rooms in the Islamabad Marriott Hotel immediately after 11 September. Over the holidays however, it seemed that the bubble had burst and news organisations were finally depleting their numbers in situ. Inevitably enough, so it seemed.

The tidal influx of journos and aidworkers had raised the cost of doing business hundreds fold while back home their employers, advertising dependent media organisations, suffered sharp recessionary pains. One Chicago Tribune correspondent told me last month that she'd spent over $30,000 in two weeks. A Japanese television producer coming out through Uzbekistan spoke of paying $1,500 per week for a room to house an entire crew. And that was in northern Afghanistan early in November. So a contraction seemed inevitable.

But along with everything else we journos had predicted as inevitable in this war, we were wrong about this too: the contraction has not occurred. Our numbers have not diminished, and neither has the amount of coverage. According to the Tyndall Report, a website and newsletter that monitors American network newscasts, the proportion of time devoted to the war in its various aspects remained little changed from the year's end to last week. According to the report's author, Andrew Tyndall, "the networks are caught in a bind; they can't afford it but they can't afford not to do it, journal-ists always trump accountants in a war".

Nor have the bureaus cut back on their personnel. Kate Peters, BBC bureau chief in Kabul, confirmed this week that their focus had changed somewhat, but not their staffing levels.

Now this will, at first, seem like a total vindication for us foreign news hounds who spent the last decade vainly tapping on the windows of American media offices warning of the storms brewing without. No, thank you, we were told, the folks at home cared little about anything beyond Monica and OJ. But finally, some of us have begun to conclude that news is once again about questing the unknown and telling people what they don't know or wish to know about complexities beyond their comfort zone.

Alas that would be premature.

If the myriad media armies had pushed into the great unknown, if a Rambo knock-off like Geraldo Rivera had earned his $2 million, multiple-bodyguard expenses, we might have the merest notion of Bin Laden's whereabouts. We might have predicted the Taliban's collapse. Instead, the media's juggernaut offensive has had the opposite effect - it has obliterated tracks and blunted the penetrating skills of veteran Afghan hands.

Three weeks ago I got an inkling of this in Mazar-i-Sharif while attempting to meet up with General Dostum, a man whose family I knew personally and whose language I speak. Rituals of access, customary procedures, had been so altered by the herd-like demands of journalists and their bribes that a familiar situation became suddenly inscrutable. In that environment, it was impossible to get anyone to say anything revealing - indeed the locals would say anything for the right sum. They have learned that the media, as ever, prefers familiar images and ideas.