Benazir Bhutto, the late twice prime minister of Pakistan, has been killed at a political rally while campaigning for a post she was constitutionally barred from holding.
With her killing, and its prominent coverage across mainstream Western media, interest in and rumors surrounding the twice-dismissed-from government politician has ratcheted up across the web.
But while the big media companies are focusing their attentions around the who and the how of Benazir’s death – whether it was an assassin’s bullet that did her in, or a blow to the head – YouTube and the blogosphere have begun clambering around an entirely different rumor, namely that of the late opposition leader fingering “the man who murdered bin Laden”.
Within an hour of her confirmed death on Thursday, my editor at the Al Jazeera English website had asked me to compile interviews the channel had carried out with her.
Bhutto spoke to Sir David Frost on his program in November, and at the time of her demise, before we’d gotten a fresh clip online, that interview was one of the most-prominently placed on YouTube when searching for her name.
Judging by the fresh comments on the video, marked “1 minute ago”, “2 minutes ago” etc., the spreading word of her death had triggered an influx of traffic to YouTube, or at least to the fateful interview. And with that increased viewership was increased scrutiny.
An anomaly in the interview, as various articles – such as at Blogcritics magazine, Center for Research on Globalization, and Citizens for Legitimate Government – were quick to point out (almost two months later), is when about six minutes into the interview, Bhutto casually mentions [Ahmed] Omar [Saeed] Sheikh as the man who murdered bin Laden.
She was speaking about people who could be out to kill her after she survived an attack at her homecoming rally in October.
More links: News Hounds claims the story was “broken” by a progressive talk show host, and joins an ever-growing number of other blogs such as Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air alleging either conspiracy or journalistic failure for not following-up Bhutto’s matter-of-fact statement.
I admit, when I first heard her say it in early November, I did a double-take. I remember asking someone else in the newsroom if she just said “the man who killed bin Laden”. As if by coincidence, a transcript of the interview was sitting next to my desk.
While she did say what I (and now lots of others) thought she said, and which at first got me wondering what memo I had missed, what seemed evident, both from reading the transcript and re-watching the clip, was that she simply misspoke, meaning to say “the man who killed [WSJ reporter] Daniel Pearl” – which Omar Sheikh is accused of – in such a matter of fact tone, because it is well known.
It appears she didn’t realize what she said. Even Frost, that ever-cunning interviewer, seems to have missed it.
Speaking not for the Al Jazeera network, but for myself – as a journalist – I can say that the question should have been cleared up in the interview. But why I chose not to pursue the story: Not because of a conspiracy or a cover-up, but because it was an apparent slip of the tongue.
But for the rest of the internets, Digg if you love a good conspiracy!
Addendum: Also worth noting is this theory’s appearance on the Osama bin Laden Wikipedia entry.