Editing Soviet–Afghan War (section)

==== Media reaction ====
{{quote box |align=right|width=30%|quote = Those hopelessly brave warriors I walked with, and their families, who suffered so much for faith and freedom and who are still not free, they were truly the people of God. – Journalist [[Rob Schultheis]], 1992<ref>Schultheis, Rob. "Night Letters Inside Wartime Afghanistan", 1992. p. 155</ref><ref name="pete">[[Peter Bergen|Bergen, Peter]], ''[[Holy War, Inc.]]'', 2001</ref>}}

International journalistic perception of the war varied. Major American television journalists were sympathetic to the Mujahideen. Most visible was CBS News correspondent Dan Rather, who in 1982 accused the Soviet Union of genocide, comparing them to Hitler.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0403/040360.html|title=Dan Rather: more Soviet killing looms in Afghanistan|date=3 April 1980|access-date=3 March 2019|journal=Christian Science Monitor}}</ref> Rather was [[Embedded journalism|embedded]] with the Mujahideen for a ''[[60 Minutes]]'' report.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/04/07/gunga-dan/88e47b5f-49cd-4934-ae0d-aedda4a9d282/|title=Gunga Dan|first=Tom|last=Shales|date=7 April 1980|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> In 1987, CBS produced a full documentary special on the war.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-05-mn-926-story.html|title=Cameraman, CBS Deny Afghanistan Scenes Were Faked|first=JANE|last=HALL|date=5 October 1989|access-date=3 March 2019|newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}</ref><ref name="TAYLOR-2014">{{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Alan |date=4 August 2014 |title=The Soviet War in Afghanistan, 1979–1989 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/ |journal=The Atlantic |access-date=3 October 2015}}</ref><ref name="nyt-14-8-1988">{{cite news |last1=Pear |first1=Robert |date=14 August 1988 |title=Mines Put Afghans in Peril on Return |work=The New York Times |agency=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/14/world/mines-put-afghans-in-peril-on-return.html |access-date=15 July 2015}}</ref>

''[[Reader's Digest]]'' took a highly positive view of the Mujahideen, a reversal of their usual view of Islamic fighters. The publication praised their martyrdom and their role in entrapping the Soviets in a Vietnam War-style disaster.<ref>{{cite book|first=Joanne P.|last=Sharp|title=Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6ZIJgZ_Li4AC&pg=PA124|year=2001|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|isbn=978-1-4529-0446-7|pages=124–126}}</ref>

Leftist journalist [[Alexander Cockburn]] was unsympathetic, criticizing Afghanistan as "an unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan."<ref name=Robin-2012>{{cite news|last1=Robin|first1=Corey|title=Radical writer Alexander Cockburn dead at 71|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201272310391240304.html|access-date=16 July 2015|agency=Al jazeera|date=23 July 2012}}</ref> [[Robert D. Kaplan]] on the other hand, thought any perception of Mujahideen as "barbaric" was unfair: "Documented accounts of mujahidin savagery were relatively rare and involved enemy troops only. Their cruelty toward civilians was unheard of during the war, while Soviet cruelty toward civilians was common."{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|p=120}} Lack of interest in the Mujahideen cause, Kaplan believed, was not the lack of intrinsic interest to be found in a war between a small, poor country and a superpower where a million civilians were killed, but the result of the great difficulty and unprofitability of media coverage. Kaplan noted that "none of the American TV networks had a bureau for a war",{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|p=10}} and television cameramen venturing to follow the Mujahideen "trekked for weeks on little food, only to return ill and half starved".{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|p=14}} In October 1984, the Soviet ambassador to Pakistan, Vitaly Smirnov, told [[Agence France Presse]] "that journalists traveling with the mujahidin 'will be killed. And our units in Afghanistan will help the Afghan forces to do it.{{'"}}{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|p=10}} Unlike Vietnam and Lebanon, Afghanistan had "absolutely no clash between the strange and the familiar", no "rock-video quality" of "zonked-out GIs in headbands" or "rifle-wielding Shiite terrorists wearing Michael Jackson T-shirts" that provided interesting "visual materials" for newscasts.{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|p=15}}