Why Afghans Love Foreign Journalists?

By Kanishka Nawabi

 It was very embracing to come a cross a well-known paper last month, reporting on Donald Rumsfeld Afghan visit, with a photo caption calling Zalmai Khalilzad as ‘unidentified translator’, or other paper calling Hamid Karzai ‘incumbent Prime Minister’. What is happening in the media reports about Afghanistan is a shallow analysis of the ground realities caused by an acute absence of Afghan reporters and writers. 

The absence of free-speech-culture in Afghanistan over decades should not be dismissed as an integral part of the problem resulting in absence of Afghan bilingual political analysts and writers. The other reasons that contribute to absence of Afghan media men in the local, national and international scene is the unavoidable culture of intimidation introduced by warlords, political and military organizations.

 Flipping through many major papers you find bits and pieces of reporting on Afghanistan, every day. It is suppose to be a positive development but the problem lies on sheer number of duplications and shallow reporting on insignificant matters. Today, readers, editors and executives in the news industry judge the chances of publishing articles on Afghanistan only by writers with a Christian name rather than the depth, quality and accuracy of the report.

The fact that media and reporting is a major industry in the west, it is inventible to attract many not because of intellectual but rather financial reasons. It is a fact that many foreign correspondents and writers reporting on Afghanistan are without any doubt attracted by money rather than their pure interest on Afghanistan reconstruction. Unfortunately some of them have no conscience about the lives that are being lost, the hatred being fomented and the misery being caused as a direct result of their cynicism.

Sadly foreign news media and journalists only depend on Afghan journalists as their guides and translators, not a reliable source of information and reporting. When foreign journalists interview Afghans many translators often mistranslate or even reprimand Afghan interviewees critical of this or that warlord or ethnic groups. Thus foreign journalists' ability to accurately gather facts and project it to the world is severely hampered.        

There are some in the international news media who knowingly hire consultants or journalists who are really political activists and rely heavily on them for their reporting. These ‘consultants’ include activists affiliated with a particular ethno-political or religious organization who are hired, especially by Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries media. Despite the bias of their consultants which inevitably affects their reporting, the media organizations keep quiet about the consultants' backgrounds.

Another problem with the Afghan media is the sad fact that some very talented Afghan journalists and writers see themselves as foot soldiers serving a particular ethnic group, an alliance or a warlord. These journalists are often politically affiliated with one group or another.

As a result what is dished up in international newspapers and TV bulletins as an objective account of what is going on in Afghanistan is actually a shallow and childish reporting or a farrago of propaganda lies and omissions transmitted at the wrong end of a gun barrel by a couple of Johns and Peters.