Election coverage shows growth of new Afghan media

Media outlets in Afghanistan have proliferated after the Taliban were driven from power 2001. There are dozens of TV channels, more than 100 radio stations, and hundreds of nwspapers.

Afghan women attend a presidential election campaign event for candidate Zalmai Rasool, in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, February 3, 2014. Campaigning has officially opened in Afghanistan's presidential election with eleven candidates vying to succeed President Hamid Karzai in the April 5 voting. Massoud Hossaini/AP PhotoShow less

KABUL // In a crowded room overlooking a gleaming television studio, Tolo TV’s election team is strategising for Afghanistan’s presidential debate when the room suddenly goes dark. The staff do not miss a beat.

The 13 men and three women just keep on talking about soundboards, cameras and the taking of questions via Twitter until the station’s generator kicks in and the overhead lights flicker back on.

“It’s just technical difficulties,” explains Mujahid Kakar, the Tolo anchor and moderator of the upcoming debate among six of the main contenders vying to succeed Hamid Karzai in the April 5 election.

The moment is a reminder of the difficulties of reporting in an impoverished country torn by war. Yet, in many ways, Afghan media coverage of the crucial campaign that kicked off this week resembles what you would see in any other modern democracy, with newspaper candidate profiles and political talk shows on numerous TV and radio stations.

And this week, for the first time, major contenders for the presidency will introduce themselves to the nation in a televised debate.

The proliferation of Afghan media in the past 12 years is one of the most visible bright spots of the fraught project to foster a stable democracy, even as the Nato military mission in Afghanistan nears its end with the country still riven by a war with Taliban insurgents and mired in corruption and poverty.

Given that the Taliban banned television as sinful and allowed only one religious radio station before they were driven from power in 2001, the sheer number of media outlets – dozens of TV channels, more than 100 radio stations and hundreds of newspapers – is stunning. That they are mostly free to set their own agenda is even more so.

“It goes against some of that common wisdom that it’s all doomed,” says Nader Nadery, chairman of the Free and Fair Election Foundation, an Afghan pro-democracy group.

Where the Taliban banned sports, Afghans can now watch football on television. Where music aside from religious hymns was forbidden, there are singing competitions based on American Idol. Women were once erased from public life; now some host television shows.

What is less clear is what the future holds for all these media outlets after this year, when most foreign troops will go home and much of the billions in aid dollars is expected to be reduced.

For now, though, Afghan news outlets are enjoying a moment in the sun. Newspapers in Dari and Pashto, the country’s main languages, are full of campaign coverage. Radio and TV stations from all over the spectrum – private for-profit ventures, aid-supported democracy boosters and stations supported by political parties or religious groups – compete to offer their views of the race.

Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s most popular channel, is touting the debate as the first in the country to pit all the major presidential candidates against one another. State television hosted a debate between Mr Karzai and two challengers during the last election, in 2009, but it excluded Mr Karzai’s main challenger Abdullah Abdullah, who is running again this year. Tolo TV held its own debate in 2009, but Mr Karzai declined to attend.

“It’s a historic debate for the country and for the people,” says Kakar, 42, a former refugee who studied journalism in Pakistan and returned home after the US-led military intervention. “This is a process of democracy. We prove to the people that these candidates, they have the responsibility toward the people.”

It may be a first but probably will not be the last. With Mr Karzai ineligible to serve another term and a wide field of candidates looking to distinguish themselves, debates are expected to be a fixture of the two-month campaign period.

With Afghanistan’s low literacy levels, radio and television dominate the media landscape, with 63 per cent of all Afghans listening to radio regularly and 48 per cent watching television, according to research conducted in 2010 for the US Agency for International Development.

Tolo TV – which is part of the privately held Moby Group founded by Afghan-Australian brothers in part with US aid money and is now earning revenue of about $20 million (Dh73m) – is by far the most popular channel, with an estimated 10 million viewers tuning in to its mixture of news, sports and light entertainment.

* Associated Press