Afghan media struggle after initial success

Radio Quyaash hit the airwaves in 2005, giving the northern Afghanistan city of Maimana its first taste of independent media. But as the local radio station’s popularity soared, international support dried up, prompting the fledgling media outlet to sell its generator’s electricity to stay in business.

Radio Quyaash was one of 16 local radio stations the Canadian International Development Agency planned to build in this war-shattered country. The Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society set out to build the stations from the ground up in early 2003, using $2.7 million Canadian dollars (US$2.7 million) in CIDA funds.

Afghanistan had never had a free and democratic local media.

IMPACS only managed to open four of the 16 stations it set out to create, and a 2007 external evaluation found a lack of managerial oversight and proper financial reporting.

In 2002, after the Taliban regime was ousted, several international organizations and countries poured money into creating hundreds of independent media outlets. Afghanistan’s local media provided a common forum for some of the country’s 32 million residents, many of whom have been divided along social and ethnic lines for decades.

But plans to build Afghanistan’s media were shortsighted. Today, the country lacks media training centers and a public service broadcaster.

“There was no clear media strategy amongst donors. It was very shortsighted,” said Adrian Edwards, who served as the spokesperson for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan until 2007. “They threw money at the media and said, ‘Let see how they’ll do, and hopefully the economy will grow and the advertising market will be sufficient to support it.’”

Like several local media outlets throughout Afghanistan, Radio Quyaash could not survive on advertising revenue alone. The station was one of the lucky few to gain support from UNESCO; it opened an Internet café in early 2007. In a country where few can afford Internet service in the home, the café’s popularity helped the station stay afloat.

Other stations created with the help of international donors have faced similar difficulty and have either shut down or taken money from local warlords or political parties.

The battle over RTA

Since the formation of the parliament in 2005, Afghan officials have been at odds over the freedom of the country’s media. Media outlets backed by political parties have increased exponentially in recent years.

In 2002, Hamid Karzai, then the country’s interim president, pledged to turn state-owned Radio Television Afghanistan into a public service broadcaster so it would no longer be controlled by the Ministry of Culture and Information. But Karzai has since reversed his stance, siding instead with conservative leaders who were reluctant to cut RTA’s ties to government. In 2007, Karzai vetoed a media law to establish an independent commission, led by political and judicial representatives, to oversee RTA.

Several local media groups, including the International Federation of Journalists’s Afghanistan chapter, criticize Karzai’s lack of support for a public broadcasting service they believe is needed to help support local stations and educational programming. They want state-run RTA transformed into a public broadcasting service similar to the British Broadcasting Corp., the world’s largest broadcaster, which is run by the BBC Trust and supported by the U.K. government. In its charter, BBC pledges to remain free from political and commercial influences and answer only to its viewers and listeners.

Activists have found it challenging to win Afghan politicians’ support of independent media.

“The mentality from communist times still exists among many Afghan officials that the government must have its own voice through a state broadcaster,” said Dominic Medley, an expert on Afghan media who has worked in the country since 2002.

The European Commission, the BBC World Service Trust and other partners have pledged financial support for turning RTA into a public broadcasting service. Now, the Afghan government’s unwillingness to support media reform keeps donors away.

“Donors are not prepared to fund something that’s not a public voice,” said Medley.

With political media on the rise, independent media is struggling in Afghanistan.

“Independent media has played a great role in parliamentary and presidential elections. But now several outlets say they are independent, but in reality, they are linked with political parties,” said Danish Karokhel, director of Pajhwok Afghan News. “Oftentimes, journalists cannot express their own ideas without threats from influential warlords who have their own armed groups and can create lots of problems for people.”

A strong public service broadcaster could help support independent local stations, Karokhel added.

Spreading advertising revenue

When news outlets opened in the Balkans in the 1990s, many local stations struggled financially and in response, formed a network to bargain potential advertisers. Afghanistan faces a similar problem as advertising revenue is confined to larger urban stations.

Cetenagroup, an Afghan media company, is trying to divert advertising money from the country’s capital Kabul and into the rural provinces.

“Out in the provinces, oftentimes there are no other voices but the Taliban and insurgents,” said Mina Sharif, media director of the Cetenagroup. “People have no choice but to trust that what’s in front of them is representative of who is in power.”

The need for more training

While money supported basic training and equipment, international donors have placed less emphasis on how to develop business models and mentoring programs needed to develop high journalistic standards.

“It’s really hard to find professional journalists because it’s such a new thing in Afghanistan,” said Khaleeq Ahmed, former spokesman on international affairs for Karzai’s administration.

Considerable amounts have been spent on teaching Afghans basic journalism skills over the past six years, but the country still lacks longer-term training programs.

“Afghan journalists are very eager and brave, but like in a lot of post-conflict countries, there are very low levels of professionalism and many problems with lack of training and educational resources,” Edwards said. “It is partly symptomatic of the socialist style of media in the past; opinion-driven journalism is hot here, and there isn’t great emphasis placed on hard facts.”

Afghanistan needs institutions that train investigative reporters, said Medley.

The tension between democratically elected Afghan officials and the independent media continues to grow. In April, the Ministry of Culture and Information prohibited Afghan TV stations to broadcast Indian soap operas because they were deemed against Islamic culture. Afghanistan’s popular television station Tolo TV refused to take the popular soaps off the air, claiming the ban was unconstitutional. Enforcing such a ban would not only disappoint the station’s 12 million viewers, but is reminiscent of the Taliban days for many Afghans.

With next year’s presidential elections looming, Karzai does not want to risk losing support from the Afghanistan’s clerical council and members of parliament.