Oodles of Afghan Media


June 1, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: Citizens of Afghanistan have gotten used to ignoring their local media. Afghans had good reason to be wary of a press forced to report what the government wanted it to report during 5 years of Taliban rule. But now that an interim government under Hamid Karzai has re-introduced press freedom, the country has been flooded with newspapers and magazines reporting on just about anything they want to. Still for the Afghan public, old habits die hard. There's been no rush to take a look at these new publications. Joining us now is Indira Lakshmanan who's been in Afghanistan reporting for the Boston Globe. Indira, welcome to On the Media.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Thank you very much for having me.

BOB GARFIELD: Just how much new media has popped up in Afghanistan recently?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well the change is really dramatic. There are more than 80 publications that have applied to the government for permission to operate.

BOB GARFIELD:Now when you say 80 publications, are you talking about daily and weekly newspapers, are you talking about specialty publications? You know, are we talking about Kabul Outlaw Biker? What kind of publications are these?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: [LAUGHS] I don't think the Harley-Davidson magazine has quite made it yet. The only daily publication available is a government-sponsored publication, because basically nobody else can afford to put out a daily newspaper. So the independent publications we're talking about are publications like Kabul Weekly -- it's a pretty spunky publication that under the mujahedeen had been censured twice. So they've been reborn. So has Malalai [sp?], a brand new publication, which is a women's monthly magazine. There's also a satirical magazine Zombegulam [sp?] -you know, satirical cartoons and comical depictions of themselves. So there's a huge variety of publications.

BOB GARFIELD:Well let me ask you maybe an obvious question. We're talking about a country where the illiteracy rate is estimated at 80 percent. Who's going to read this stuff?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: [LAUGHS] Oh, you make a very good point. I mean to some extent I suppose it's journalists publishing it for government ministers who read it, NGO's - non-government organizations, UN agencies -- I mean those are the kinds of people who have subscriptions. But it's also important to remember that almost in any village or community there is at least one person who can read, whether it's the local teacher or the local mailman-- there is at least someone who can read the paper, and what they do is every morning they'll sit down and read the newspaper aloud, and other people will crowd around them and listen to the news. So in that sense, it is a community activity, and the news does get distributed, even if there's only one person who can read it.

BOB GARFIELD:Well how about ordinary Afghans, and especially illiterate Afghans -- where do they turn for news? I would say radio and television but I guess that there aren't a whole lot of televisions in Afghanistan either, so-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Exactly. You're, you're quite right. They absolutely turn to the radio. That is the major source of news. Now people are getting a very innovative program called Good Morning Afghanistan. The way that this program has really gained an audience is by focusing on sort of bread and butter, everyday issues --like why are the roads not paved? Why is there not good electricity source? And of all of the new media, they're the ones who've probably made the most difference because they've been able to get government ministers on to their program and really interrogate them. And actually after the minister for public works was interviewed, there was suddenly a great increase in the number of potholes and roads that were being fixed in Kabul at least, so it seemed to have had some effect.

BOB GARFIELD:After such a dramatic change in government and culture in such a short period of time, one of the things that has changed is that the censorship that characterized the Taliban regime has been almost entirely lifted. But governments by their nature are nervous about the media, and journalists by their nature don't like any kind of obstacles in the way of reporting the news. Are journalists complaining yet about having to deal with a heavy-handed Karzai government?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: There was a rather high profile incident in March when there was a joint press conference held between President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and there was only one Afghan journalist who was called upon during the conference. It was someone from Kabul TV, and he tried to ask a question about the border dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and before he could even finish saying the question, Hamid Karzai said this is not the right time for that question. Sit down. And afterwards, there was a huge gripe session going on among the members of the Afghan media who were there who said first they weren't even going to let us into the press conference; then we finally got in; and they weren't going to let us ask a question; and then one of us finally got to ask a question, and we didn't even get to finish asking it! So they were quite bitter about it.

BOB GARFIELD:So is there a double standard where there's window dressing for the western media and a different, more repressive standard for the domestic media?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well I'm not sure whether it's fair to say that. I mean I interviewed the minister of information about this very incident, and he said well you don't understand. This was a reporter from Kabul TV which is state-owned television and how would you like it if a state department employee got up and asked a really embarrassing question when President Bush was having a press conference with some other nation? I said to him well I don't think it's exactly a parallel situation. His response to me was: well, we can't have all the change in the world overnight.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well thank you very much.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Indira Lakshmanan is the Asian bureau chief for the Boston Globe. She's based in Hong Kong.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, the way the media can manhandle an image. We consider the FBI and the New York Mets.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from National Public Radio.