Afghan Daily Accuses Some Media of Ignoring Baghlan Blast Mourning

Text of editorial in Dari, “Three days of national mourning and media”, published by state-owned Afghan newspaper Anis on 10 November

The tragic terrorist incident on 15 Aqrab [6 November] took the lives of many of our fellow countrymen. In this incident, besides six MPs in the lower house, a large number of school students, men, women and children, were martyred or wounded. This issue saddened all the people of Afghanistan. The president of Afghanistan declared three days of national mourning and said that the country’s flag should flown be at half-mast.

The Ministry of Information and Culture condemned the martyrdom of MPs, some school students and all innocent compatriots who lost their precious lives in the blast. The ministry not only denounced and condemned this cowardly act of professional killers, it also put out a statement asking all the visual and audio media to taking into consideration the big national tragedy and organize their broadcasts in a way that would let the souls of the martyrs rest in peace and not hurt the national unity and the survivors of the shocking incident. The ministry also asked the media to discharge their national obligation during those three days.

Fortunately, the majority of the visual and audio media outlets, taking into consideration the gravity of the 6 November incident in Baghlan, have reflected the national feelings of all entire fellow countrymen in their broadcasts. They also showed the enemies of the people of Afghanistan that the media come from the people of Afghanistan and will always stand beside them during days of national tragedies.

The opinion programmes of the media outlets, in which analysts and MPs were giving their views, proved that the martyrdom of members of the lower house was an irreparable loss to parliament and the nation. This cruel terrorist act in Baghlan was, in fact, an act against the Afghan nation.

However, there were a number of media outlets such as Radio Watandar, Radio Voice of Liberty of ISAF and the Pashto section of the Voice of America that acted against the three days of mourning declared by the president, parliament and ministry of information and culture. These media outlets acted against journalistic norms and principles by paying no attention to the national tragedy. The mentioned media outlets really deserve serious condemnation.

The compliance of most audio and visual media outlets with the demand of senior officials, the government and parliament, proved that the country’s media, by behaving logically and based on the norms and standards of this noble profession have not only shown their solidarity with the people and mourners but also shown that journalists and media activists have emerged from among the people. but a small number of the media outlets that did not abide by the order, painted a black picture of their performance with regard to the martyrs and mourners of the Afghan nation.

Originally published by Anis, Kabul, in Dari 10 Nov 07.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring South Asia. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.