What is it like being a journalist in Afghanistan’s new media landscape?

For those in search of entertainment in Afghanistan right now they won’t find much of it on state television.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in August of last year, the crackdown on many of the country’s main broadcasting outlets has been swift; female staff have been reduced drastically, on-air music is forbidden, and fictional programming is gone.

In the words of one young journalist living in Kabul; “It’s just so boring… it’s like zero multiplied by nothing… in my house, we don’t even watch TV anymore."

"Across Afghanistan, the media landscape is in flux. The provinces remain the worst affected with violence and intimidation being facts of life for most journalists working there. Urban centres however hold out more hope"

A report by Humans Rights Watch this month found that in addition to the banning of entertainment programmes, many provincial journalists have been subject to violence or threats in the course of their work.

The result now, across much of the country, is a media gutted of any real factual programming beyond what the government considers appropriate. 

Edris (not his real name) is a 26-year-old former reporter who spoke to us about his decision to exit the profession altogether: “I started receiving threatening calls and threatening papers and stuff so I was forced to leave.” He is also aware of more fatal consequences that could have awaited him; a close friend of his, also a journalist, was murdered by gunmen while working on a story. 

“He was in Bamyan, he got like six headshots… so that’s why I had to leave,” Edris explains. “I didn’t have a choice, I just moved on to something else. He was a really young guy, he was a really good friend of mine, I was in shock for a month, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything…”

A long term TV personality and editor at RTA, the country’s main state channel, is more indifferent when asked if his job has changed under the Taliban. “Not really, I am doing my job personally for me, nothing special has changed, there was a different regime and now there is another, I am doing my job.”

He won’t elaborate on the culture of journalism but much of the output he commissions now involves poetry readings instead of music and is done with the participation of “government high ranking officials”. On women in the workplace, he is vague: “They are rarely coming into the offices, we are paying them as we did previously and for the time being they are included in our payroll.”

Bashira, one of the few female editors left in the country, gives us her own analysis: “Most of national TV is only men, on other TV stations they kept some women but not so many as before, they have to show a very quiet and serious face. Tola TV (another state channel) used to be very fancy and very modern, the journalists and the presenters used to be very fashionable and trendy but now it’s almost like Iran.”

For her, sending reporters out to work has become a logistical nightmare; for any stories that involve speaking with the government, a female reporter is out of the question. Her colleagues in provinces have to put up with daily threats and veiled warnings from officials to stay at home. 

“The danger is huge, people are scared, journalists don’t have so much information to access from the government. It’s becoming very painful to work as a journalist,” she says.

The outlook is not entirely bleak though. Radio is not stifled to the same extent as TV. Bashira’s production offices in Kabul are still able to function as long as men and women are segregated. Even the Taliban’s insistence that the media conforms to “Islamic values” is not as novel as some in the West would imagine

Indeed, as Bashira explains, some of her outlet’s best audience engagement in the past has resulted from shows that combined a phone-in format with questions of faith: “Before the arrival of the Taliban religious programmes were very popular… we saw an increase in audience and calls, there was an appetite as people had a lot of questions to ask. We were very surprised to have so many women call in.”

Across Afghanistan, the media landscape is in flux. The provinces remain the worst affected with violence and intimidation being facts of life for most journalists working there. Urban centres however hold out more hope, Kabul even has an all-female radio station Radio Begum that uses comedy bits and discussion segments to fill the void left by the ban on music. 

For many like Edris, the risks of trying to do independent journalism will be too high to continue. Bashira is hoping that a strategy of “adapting to survive” may not be impossible though. Her editorial role remains as important as ever to her and she is clear in the mission of her outlet and others like it: “We have permission to work. The radio station is still on,” she says.

“They (the government) are fine for women to come back to the office as long as we separate men and women. It’s up to us to propose to the public what they want to hear. We know there are restrictions and we need to cope and find ways to provide interesting programming for our audience.” 

Michael Maitland-Jones is a Freelance Journalist at the BBC World Service and Newsnight.

Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelMaitlan5

Mohammad Baloch is a freelance journalist based in Kabul.