I spent Sunday morning in Kabul catching up with Danish Karokhel, at left, director
of Pajhwok Afghan News and (along with
deputy Farida Nekzad) a 2008 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee. Pajhwok moved since
the last time I was here, and with income from subscribers to its news
service and grant money from NGOs, it seems stronger than ever. More than 120
staff members are now spread around the country, with new online efforts and an
expanded photo service in the works. With a presidential election scheduled for
August, Karokhel is in the middle of planning a training seminar on campaign coverage
for his teams in Kabul
and the provinces.
We covered a lot of ground, but one of the topics I found
really interesting was how Pajhwok handled the
kidnapping of Tahir Ludin and David Rohde, The New York Times
reporting team that was taken in November last year outside of Kabul and held
for more than seven months before they escaped.
News of the kidnapping was suppressed worldwide at the
request of The Times (which cited
safety concerns), a decision that spawned much debate in the U.S. media. (Here
is CPJ's statement on the issue.) Karokhel said it's the sort of decision he
has to make several times a week: Disappearances of NGO officials, workers who
sweep the countryside for undetonated mines, wealthy business people, and journalists
make it seem like kidnapping is a growth industry in Afghanistan.
Karokhel said he has to sit on a lot of stories for fear of angering
powerful figures and, thus, endangering his reporters. But then, he said, has
to deal with complaints from local people who want their story told and want to
know why it's not being reported. "As a reporter in this country what are we
supposed to cover? Every story has to anger someone; that's what makes it
news."
Case in point: The managing director of Ariana TV,
Ehsanullah Arianzai, was grabbed in July by a local Taliban group from his
hometown of Syedabad in the central Maidan Wardak province. Karokhel said the
family (many of them live in the Netherlands) asked that the story
not be reported, so Karokhel had Pajhwok sit on the information.
A few days into the kidnapping, he received a call from
Arianzai saying his captors were angry that the story wasn't being reported. They
wanted their grievances (unfair aid distribution, among other things) made
public. So Karokhel ran the story of the kidnapping. Then came a phone call
from senior Taliban leaders in Quetta, the
rear-guard headquarters in Pakistan
for Taliban operating in Afghanistan
and Pakistan,
angry that Pajhwok was reporting the story because the kidnapping had been
carried out without their approval.
"How are we supposed to weigh a situation like that," he
asked me. "Editors shouldn't have to face questions like that, but what can I
do?"
Arianzai was freed a few days later, unharmed. I checked
with him this morning in his office at Ariana. He is a wealthy businessman with
broadcast and publishing interests, and Ariana TV is a sprawling, bustling
place. He confirmed the story and showed me the scars on his wrists from the
handcuffs that had been used to keep his hands behind his back. In the end, he
said, it wasn't the media coverage or lack of it that resulted in his release.
It was the local leaders working for his release, with calls to Taliban in Quetta and Saudi
Arabia that finally did the trick.
(Reporting from Kabul)
Twitter
Facebook
Email Lists
Donate
Print
Share
Delicious
Digg
Google
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Subscribe
