After a US military raid in Afghanistan left an infant orphaned, injured, and with an uncertain future several people emerged with an interest in caring for the infant. Soon after the infant recovered from immediate injuries the red cross and afghan government was able to identify the cousins of the infant, young highly educated newlyweds able to care for the baby. At the same time a marine lawyer in Afghanistan, Joshua Mast heard of the child and used his influence to legally adopt the child in Virginia unknown to the parents. In February of 2020 the US pulled out of the region and the couple was able to emigrate to the US. When they arrived in the US they found out that the Masts had US custody of their child. It has now been nearly 3 years of litigation from the Afghan couple attempting to reclaim custody of the child. The Taliban, US justice department, US defense department, and US state department have all demanded that the child be returned but the judicial system in Virginia has held out saying that it was legal.
The central message from CBS news is a shocking one, Catherine Herridge paints a picture of two parents trying their best to do right by their faith, which to them means taking and keeping custody of a child that is not theirs. Catherine seems to take a slant on this as if it is a feel good story of two parents saving a child that now has an uncertain fate due to meddling forces from the Afghan cousins. The CBS story was presented on air with the title “marine responds to child ‘abduction’ Allegations from Afghan couple,” based on the situation as read from both sources this is a wild misrepresentation and is worded in a way to play off of peoples preconceived biases about Immigrants and seems to take a side in putting abduction in quotation marks. This anti-immigrant tone is further evident in what the journalist has omitted. In the associated press article that came out more that three months before the Afghan couple were identified as highly educated newlyweds, with the young man “[working] in a medical office and [running] a co-ed school”(associated press). The title of the story uses the term marine to, from the get go, bias people to what the marine has to say. This is further evidenced as they interview the marine and challenge none of his points with the common knowledge shared by the AP instead taking a standpoint of defense against the idea that the marine did anything unethical.
There was no quantitative data used by either article as the story focused on an individual case study of immigration. With that said, something that can expand the understanding and insight into a story is to add statistics that show how this case study can be expanded to understand more of the world.
The author of the CBS news article focuses on the qualitative evidence of first hand accounts of US soldiers that asserted that the Afghan forces wanted to leave the baby to die and also covers the story of the marine. Finally CBS news looked at court documents that were public and statements from government officials in the US and Afghanistan. The contribution of this evidence mostly supports the marine and the times when the evidence is against him CBS news appears to lightly acknowledge the existence of the evidence but not the validity of it as that would push them to take a much different stance on the story. One thing that the reporter does is focus on the lack of one piece of evidence, not having a DNA test from the guardians to confirm the relationship, the problem with this focus is that the red cross and pre-taliban afghan government agreed that this baby was related to the couple.
The journalist’s use of evidence in my opinion was subpar. The journalist left out key details from the associated press instead opting to focus more on a highly invested party’s position, the marine. The associated press article specifically says that the marine, “used his status in the U.S. Armed Forces, appealed to high-ranking Trump administration officials and turned to small-town courts to adopt the baby”, Omitting this piece of evidence is massive as it changes the narrative of a marine just caught in a bad place after doing what he thought was right to a marine that went out of his way to obtain custody of a child that was already spoken for. This is a story that screams of US media attempting to frame white saviorism and the belief that immigrants are untrustworthy as positive by backing a person who went out of their way to act similarly to a colonist in the US by creating documents in one country to “legally” take a child from their guardians.
Source
“Exclusive: U.S. Marine couple at center of custody battle over Afghanistan war orphan tells their story” CBS news Catherine Herridge, Hilary Cook, Rachel Bailey January 25, 2023
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