Journalism plays a central role in democracy, providing independent information to the public and checking those in power. In Afghanistan, decades of conflict restricted freedom of the press and the way citizens obtain information. As Afghanistan’s young democracy grows, its fledgling press corps must also be brought up to international standards.
To aid the development of local Afghan media, IFES is working closely with journalists on basic reporting skills and enhancing the quality of their political coverage.
Shikiba Mowahhed, a training participant from Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh province, has seen improvements in her own work. “We were unable to write good stories before attending the IFES journalism training program,” she said. “We learned about international standards of journalism in the training program, and this helped us to cover the elections process impartially and to write reports neither in favor nor against candidates.”
Since 2009, IFES has worked with over 500 journalists in five cities: Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar and Bamyian. The six-month course is designed to provide a thorough overview of Afghanistan’s political and electoral systems. The journalists are then taught the importance of unbiased reporting, elements of good story writing and how to work with sources. Participants are asked to write at least one story per month on which they receive feedback. During editorial meetings, IFES journalism facilitators provide one-on-one guidance and writing support.
“Three decades of ongoing war in Afghanistan has limited learning opportunities, but we have certainly learned many new things in [the] field of journalism from these trainings,” participant Ismail Temor said. “IFES journalism training program has helped us to cover election-related and political events from different angles and in various reporting formats such as features, news, interviews, etc.”
This past year, IFES’ training facilitators — who are seasoned print journalists — have smaller class sizes, resulting in more one-on-one sessions with the students. Through these sessions, the facilitators are able to explain the nuanced and complicated implications of reporting on conflict situations.
“Conflict sensitive journalism was [a] very important part of the training program,” Temor said. “We now better understand a reporter’s responsibilities in conflict zones. We also learned about the impact of unbalanced and unprofessional reports in deteriorating war situations.”
Additionally, a website (bamdad.af) has been created to provide Afghans and international visitors direct access to news coming out of the country in three languages: Dari, Pashto and English. Since 2009, website editors and training participants have written and transcribed more than 320 articles. Since 2009 the site has received 44,900 visitors from over 100 countries.
“I believe, in order to build a democratic and free nation, nothing is more important than free and unbiased information, provided through an independent media press, on the political and electoral events of a country,” website editor Qayoom Suroush said. “Bamdad is doing this in Afghanistan. We provide free and fair sources of information for building a more democratic nation.
“However, Afghanistan is still a country of conflict and crisis. Most of the media reports in this country are one-sided and strongly in favor of certain people. Bamdad plays an important role in defining what a free press should look like in Afghanistan.”