The Modern Afghan Journalist

This chapter describes the sociological constraints that modern Afghan journalists face, not the least of which is a highly volatile security environment and a high degree of economic instability that jeopardizes their organizations’ sustainability. Based on interviews with these journalists, the chapter explores the ways they think of themselves, their relationships with Afghan government officials, and their roles in Afghan society. It also surveys the dense networks that Afghan reporters have created with Western journalists to report news stories. Afghan journalists have an inherent national bias and are proud that U.S. elite news professionals find Afghanistan newsworthy, as this confers legitimacy on Afghanistan’s importance in the world. Yet given their nascent state, they acknowledge that they depend on Western journalists’ reportage to hold Afghanistan’s powerful accountable.

Hamid Karzai vs. the New York Times

This chapter acquaints the reader with the impact of the U.S. and Western news media in Afghanistan by telling the story of how President Hamid Karzai banished New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg in August 2014, during the final weeks of his presidency. The chapter uses this story to illustrate the perceived hegemony that U.S. news has in international affairs by foreign actors. A country’s news media create and maintain a nation, employing common symbols and language and constructing narratives that resonate with the country’s citizens. Journalists intend to be observers of international politics, but unintentionally they are its participants. The chapter explains how news and nationalism intersect with international politics and introduces the reader to the groundbreaking yet nascent community of Afghan journalists who saw American and other Western journalists as their professional guides.

Your Country, Our War

This chapter reviews how Afghan journalists perceive the “reality” journalists for U.S. news organizations have constructed about Afghanistan, and how Afghan journalists react to and make meaning from it. Afghan journalists and a majority of Afghan officials assume that U.S. journalists are advocates for the American government’s foreign policies and are sometimes chauvinistically nationalistic, even jingoistic. The U.S. journalists vehemently reject this notion and the suggestion that their coverage is blindly patriotic, yet they agree that they are largely aligned with U.S. officials in protecting and advancing America’s general interests abroad. Afghan journalists also are emotionally affected by the news stories they read that describe their country as being shattered and hopeless. Consuming U.S. news about Afghanistan can be an affront to their Afghan identity and can inspire intense feelings of nationalism and frustration within them.

Afghanistan’s Press

This chapter discusses the history of the Afghan news media, which was under either authoritarian or hyperpartisan control throughout the 20th century. This chapter explores the political and sociocultural factors that have contributed to the state of modern Afghan journalism, and how Afghan government officials have treated their press since 2001. It also examines the habits and norms local journalists have created, in addition to the impact of Western aid money and the presence of Western journalists in the country. Independent news media organizations have helped to drive dramatic change in Afghan politics and society, often at a seemingly breakneck speed. The patchwork media landscape of present-day Afghanistan reflects the various power struggles between the country’s politicians, extremists, strongmen, progressives, and foreign actors.

U.S. Correspondents in Afghanistan

This chapter focuses on the correspondents in Afghanistan who report for U.S. news agencies, most of whom are Americans. It reflects the views of more than a dozen news professionals who reported for elite news organizations on Afghanistan on how they perceived their roles. It discusses their agenda-setting power and their hegemonic role as purveyors of information to their primary and intended audience, Americans, and to the secondary audiences, such as Afghan journalists. The chapter explores these journalists’ relationship with Afghan officials and explores what they believe the future of Afghan journalism will be. The differences between the Western press and the Afghan press are explored by analyzing their coverage of the Kabul Bank corruption scandal and the mob murder of Farkhunda Malikzada.

The Diplomatic Dimension of News

The news media have a special role in creating and maintaining a nation. Journalists have astounding power to construct a sense of reality for people, but despite the transnational reach of news today, the bulk of editors, producers, and reporters select and construct media messages and images to cater to their targeted audiences. Much of the U.S. news about Afghanistan has been constructed for Americans and therefore is colored by the U.S.-led war and abides by a norm that explains the contours of American power and its impact abroad. To Afghan consumers, what frustrates them about U.S. news of their country is what frustrates them about America: It should consider their perspective more, be more empathetic, give them hope, and stop serving itself. News, therefore, does not bridge understanding or broker goodwill between the United States and Afghanistan, or any other country, and it can create tension in international affairs.

Afghanistan in Americans’ Imagination

This chapter examines how the American public was reintroduced to Afghanistan after the events of 9/11 and how the U.S. broadcast and print media began to frame this “good war” in October 2001. It analyzes the American news media’s relationship with Afghanistan beginning in the 1980s and the reality it has constructed since 2001 about Afghanistan and the conflict. It also reviews U.S. officials’ perceptions about their responsibilities to the press. During these 15 years, the news coverage, especially that of the broadcast news media, was tightly indexed to the degree of White House attention to the war and the intensity of conflict for American soldiers. Yet some American print news agencies, especially the Associated Press, New York Times, and Washington Post, have stayed committed to covering Afghanistan despite decreased American presidential attention.

9/11 and the American Press

This chapter discusses U.S. news reportage in the wake of 9/11 and how certain habits and norms in American national security journalism drove the coverage. It reviews scholarship on the U.S. news media’s relationship with U.S. government and society, especially in the context of international issues and events. The foreign policy narrative in Washington is set by a small cohort of U.S. government officials, in addition to international news reporters and editors for elite news agencies like the New York Times and Washington Post. Through interviews with U.S. officials and reporters, the chapter also examines the roles the American government and news outlets play in setting the agenda and framing events for the American public and how the U.S. press maintains an ethnocentric bias in its foreign reportage.