Taliban’s male-only presser: How media failed to fact-check Afghan minister’s pro-woman claims

Broken News

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/10/16/talibans-male-only-presser-how-media-failed-to-fact-check-afghan-ministers-pro-woman-claims

Published in Newslaundry on October 16, 2025

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.”

What happens when a journalist’s press card becomes a tool to target them?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on April 14, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/04/14/what-happens-when-a-journalists-press-card-becomes-a-tool-to-target-them

In the “new India” being manufactured, where men with swords dance menacingly in front of mosques during a religious festival, being a journalist has become increasingly hazardous.

Not for all journalists, of course. If you choose to stay in your offices or studios, or remain strictly within the boundaries of “acceptable journalism” set out by the owners of your media organisation or the current dispensation, there is no danger. You are safe. You might even prosper.

But if you, as a journalist, believe you are tasked to step out, record and report what is going on in this country, then you have to watch your back. Your press card – once considered adequate to give you access and keep you safe – does not add up to much in certain situations. In fact, it is that very press card that can make you a target. Your name, the marker of your identity, is on that card.

This is what seven journalists, who had set out to cover a Hindu Mahapanchayat in Delhi’s Burari on April 3, realised. The mob that attacked them selectively targeted the Muslims amongst them.

Given all else happening in the country right now – with daily reports of poor Muslim vendors being attacked in different states, and of the bulldozer replacing any notion of justice in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh – this particular incident might be relegated to a footnote in history. But it should not be forgotten. And it should be recognised for what it represents – a serious denting of the already beleaguered state of a free and independent media in India.

This particular incident might be relegated to a footnote in history. But it should not be forgotten. And it should be recognised for what it represents.

To recount briefly, Meer Faisal from Hindustan Gazette, freelancer Mohammad Meherbaan,Arbab Ali reporting for Article14, Meghnad Bose from Quint, Shivangi Saxena and Rounak Bhat from Newslaundry, and a journalist who did not want to be identified, went to report on the Mahapanchayat. Instead of being allowed to do their jobs, the crowd at the meeting turned on them and assaulted some of them. For more details, read this, this and this. In this last report, Arbab Ali from Article14 says that despite the police finally intervening, “the mob started hitting us in front of them. They were saying that ‘don’t give these two to the policemen, just kill them. These are jihadis, they are mullahs’.”

Shivangi Saxena, the only woman journalist present, had also reported on a hate speech incident at Jantar Mantar last August that led to some arrests. In a series of tweets, she writes about how one of the Mahapanchayat organisers mentioned her name from the stage, while the prime accused in the Jantar Mantar incident recognised her and came up to her.

More worryingly, she states in this tweet:

As Saxena emphasises, the police did nothing to stop the attack and intervened only much later. While some of these journalists filed FIRs, the police have ironically also filed complaints, including one against Meer Faisal who shared his experiences on social media and in a report for Article14.

So, why should this worry us, not just journalists, but anyone who believes that integral to press freedom is the ability of journalists to step out and report without fearing for their lives?

It should be noted that the attack on April 3 was unprovoked. It was aimed at sending a message. Given the events of the last two weeks in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP, it is evident that Muslim journalists are going to be as much of a target as the ordinary Muslims who have been attacked in these states by fanatical mobs. A press card will not be enough to spare them.

This is not the first time journalists have been attacked by right-wing mobs. Some might remember the way those covering the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, including some women journalists, were attacked by the frenzied mob of kar sevaks.

This article in Mint, which reminds us of that day, states: “Reporters and cameramen with experience of covering riots say it was the first time that the media was at the receiving end of the right-wing frenzy. Upendra Pandey who was covering Ayodhya for Dainik Jagran newspaper, remembers that the photographer for Hindi daily Rashtriya Sahara was so badly hurt that he had to undergo multiple surgeries and was bedridden for eight months.”

Even at that time, Muslim journalists were especially afraid. Sajeda Momin was the UP correspondent for the Telegraph. In this report in Newslaundry, she recounts how she had to hide her Muslim identity by asking her colleagues to refer to her as Sujata Menon. To quote from the article:

“Momin says reporting on the demolition was tremendously difficult. In a bid to avoid documentation, journalists’ cameras were taken away. ‘Our cameras and reels were taken away. We were not allowed to take out our pens and papers to even take notes. They didn’t want any documentation. In fact, they searched through our bags.’”

Remember that this was a time when there were no 24x7 news channels or mobile phones. The principal coverage was by photographers and reporters working with the print media and journalists from two video magazines, Newstrack and Eyewitness. Mritunjay Kumar Jha, who was a reporter with Newstrack, told Mint: “In Ayodhya, I am confident that they wanted to be sure that no one had any photographic evidence.”

In 1992, although Muslim journalists like Momin were afraid, any journalist with a camera, or even a notebook was targeted. This time, it is evident that Muslim journalists are being specifically targeted.

Fortunately, the video footage by Newstrack was successfully hidden and saved from the mob. As a result, today it remains an important and vivid testimony of the frenzy and destruction that took place in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 and those responsible for it.

In 1992, although Muslim journalists like Momin were afraid, any journalist with a camera, or even a notebook was targeted. This time, it is evident that Muslim journalists are being specifically targeted.

Despite April 3, it is commendable that journalists like Meer Faisal and others continue to document and report the atrocities taking place. Although some sections of mainstream media are also reporting these developments, it is not enough. One has to note that the Mahapanchayat of April 3, where these journalists were attacked, was not covered by any prominent news organisation.

If we need a record in future about the slippery slope of sectarian violence down which this country is rapidly sliding, it will be because of the determined reporting by these young reporters, despite the risks they face.

The greater worry is the state's silence and the abdication of its duty to protect journalists and allow them to function. There has been absolutely no word from anyone senior in government condemning what happened on April 3. Would journalists be wrong then to conclude that the message from the mob, to silence independent media, has the implicit support of the governing dispensation?