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The fall of Kabul could have meant the fall of the media.
When armed fighters walked into a news studio in Afghanistan, it was clear there would be a new approach to the national media.
News channels like TOLO News are still broadcasting under strict regime restrictions. Hundreds of other media outlets have been forced to close.
Hasht e Suhb – meaning 8am media – is one of a handful of news services still operating in exile – with journalists risking their lives to publish reports critical of the Taliban.
“Right now still, we have human journalists working for us. The only difference is they don’t use their own name, because they will be followed. They will be persecuted. They will be arrested by the Taliban.”
Executive director Parwiz Kawa now lives in Canada – with journalists from Afghanistan.
“It’s a little tricky, we know, and we’re grateful to our staff on the ground. We know they submit each report at great risk and then send it to our editors. We have a group of editors who are abroad, and they process that, then it is translated into different languages and published.
The Taliban still block access to information.
“We know that the Taliban have banned our websites so people can’t access them easily. They either have to use a VPN or just access the content through social media platforms.”
With Hasht e Suhb journalists using pseudonyms – publicly and within the organization.
“They don’t come into the system, our communication system, our internal communication system, through their real names, their names have been coded. In some cases we have two journalists in the same place, just to verify the information . But they “
Provide some protection against the Taliban.
“Well, we have cases where once a journalist is arrested and just because he works for a media outlet that operates from exile, from the outside, he is tortured. In some cases, he is put in prison, and we also have cases of missing journalists.”
