He came. He got his way. Then he relented, somewhat. And then he left.

I am referring to the events surrounding the recent visit of Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the current Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, to India. It will be remembered above all for a press briefing he held at the Afghan Embassy, which is still not officially under the control of his government, where women journalists were excluded.  

For general consumers of the media, perhaps this was not of much interest.  Although there was some mention in mainstream media, it was not considered a big deal. But social media, and statements of protests by journalists’ organisations (read here and here) made it clear that this was unacceptable. And that the government should have objected.

Our government claimed it had nothing to do with the decision. And Muttaqi insisted it was a “technical” issue.  Neither, of course, is true.

We are expected to put this controversy behind us because, finally, after the objections raised by several opposition leaders and others, the Taliban minister relented and held a press briefing where women journalists were prominently placed in the front row. And several of them asked relevant questions, such as why his government had banned women from accessing education. Predictably, Muttaqi obfuscated, claiming that women were getting educated in Afghanistan and everything was fine.

When such a press conference is reported, do you leave it at quoting what the minister said, even if it is untrue? Hardly any media outlet considered it necessary to provide a fact check in the report of the press briefing. That, in fact, since the Taliban took over Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, through a series of edicts – more than 100 – women have been barred from all educational institutions except primary schools, banned from working in several professions, and severely restricted in their ability to move around without a male escort.  

Given that there is little in our media about Afghanistan, except for a conflict such as the one with Pakistan in recent days, people would not know whether to take the word of the minister or not. That’s why it is incumbent that the media, in a country that swears by press freedom, takes the trouble to fact-check and inform readers and viewers of the harsh reality facing women in Afghanistan.  

Of course, perhaps it is asking too much of our mainstream media today to do this kind of fact-checking. After all, politicians, including the prime minister and home minister, routinely get away with stating their version of “facts” that are simply not true, such as the danger of “demographic change” facing India.  (The Quint published a much-needed factual piece on this recently.)

The second aspect of this controversy concerns women journalists. Today, they are prominent in Indian media as presenters, reporters, and analysts covering beats that an older generation of women journalists could not access. Foreign affairs, defence and even business and finance were beats where you rarely saw a woman journalist. Now that has changed, not necessarily because of the generosity of the men (and they are still mostly men) who run media houses, but because these women journalists have proven their worth.

As Aishwarya Khosla wrote in The Indian Express about the exclusion of women journalists from Muttaqi’s press briefing: “For women in journalism, the moment struck deeper than diplomacy. It touched a familiar bruise. We have covered wars, elections, and insurgencies. We have been silenced, sidelined, and still stayed in the room. But to be kept out by decree, in the national capital of all places, felt like a definitive punctuation – a full stop in a narrative that has been forward-looking.”

While the shock that the women journalists who routinely cover such briefings felt on October 8 is understandable, what is worse, in my view, is that not even one of the men who were invited to the briefing thought they should object. These women are their colleagues. Surely, excluding anyone based on gender, or anything else, ought to be unacceptable. Neither did the media houses, where these women work, officially raise an objection that their representative was left out. This tells you a lot about the state of our media.

By way of contrast, almost the entire mainstream media in the US has surrendered press badges to access the Pentagon because they were asked to sign an undertaking that went against their right to report freely and fairly. This kind of restriction by a government in a country where, under the First Amendment, the press is guaranteed its freedom is unprecedented.

The third aspect that this controversy throws up is the lack of coverage of events in Afghanistan that affect ordinary people. Of course, it is not just Afghanistan. We know little about the lives of ordinary people in our immediate neighbourhood because coverage centres around foreign relations and tensions. Only when there is a crisis, such as the one in Nepal recently or before that in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, do we get a glimpse of the perennial challenges facing people caused by government policies. This is the result of the fixation of the media with events, rather than the process. 

The takeover by the Taliban in 2021 was covered extensively, even by our media. It was dramatic, traumatic for those trying to escape and violent. But since that August four years ago, we know next to nothing about the condition of women under a government that makes excluding them part of its policy. 

As for women journalists in Afghanistan, according to this report by Reporters Without Borders, at the time the Taliban took over, around 700 women journalists were working in various capacities in the media. Today, there are fewer than 100.  And of these, only around 7 per cent can function, according to a more recent survey. Most of them have been compelled to seek asylum outside the country or stay at home and under the radar to escape punishment if they try to report for platforms located outside the country.

Given this reality in Afghanistan, all journalists, not just women, should be outraged that our government permitted, in a country that guarantees women equal rights, a press briefing that specifically excluded women. This was not a “technical” issue; it was a deliberate choice.  

Zahra Nader, the editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a media platform based in Canada that focuses on human rights in Afghanistan, argues this very point in this important article in The Indian Express. Under the headline: “Taliban leader in India: It’s complicity, not diplomacy”, she asserts, “As an Afghan woman journalist, I want to warn you what this message means. When the Indian government receives the Taliban without publicly challenging their record on women’s rights, it crosses the line from diplomacy into complicity. It lends legitimacy to a regime built on the exclusion of women and becomes a partner in the normalisation of their misogyny.”

Festivals remind us that light wins over darkness, truth over deceit, and hope over fear. This Deepavali, Newslaundry and The News Minute are adding one more reason to celebrate: the spirit of independent journalism. Avail our limited festive offer here.