Problems Of Analyzing International Politics

One of the most important sources of data for successful political risk analysts are the utterances of public officials, whether they are in a government, the political opposition, or even (in some cases) rebels. But it's sometimes the case that analyzing those public utterances can drive one crazy, because of translation problems or bad reporting or numerous other reason. To illustrate the occasional difficulty, here are a couple of reports on Ariel Sharon's recent trip to the United States. The NY Times reports the following:

American and Israeli officials said that even though Mr. Sharon had told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot last week that he planned to ask Mr. Bush to cut ties with Mr. Arafat, he did not follow through on the plan.

But the Washington Post reports the meeting slightly differently, with the headline "Bush Balks At Isolating Arafat" giving the impression that Sharon had asked, and been refused, on the matter (which apparently did not take place during this meeting, as the author of the piece seems to concede indirectly).

The contradictory coverage of this meeting from this nation's two newspapers of record illustrates one of the problems of using public sources for political risk analysis, although the problems are amplified many times when one must also take into account different languages and the openness of regimes (i.e. in some regimes, the papers are organs of either the government or other groups).

[Posted at 21:18 CST on 02/09/02] [Link]