A2 · Elementary
8 min
press freedomculture in exilejournalismafghanistan
The Exile Paper: Afghan Journalists in France
El periódico del exilio: Periodistas afganos en Francia
On World Press Freedom Day, Afghan journalists launched a new newspaper from exile in France. Fletcher and Octavio explore what it means for a culture when its free press is forced to leave home.
El Día Mundial de la Libertad de Prensa, periodistas afganos lanzan un nuevo periódico desde Francia. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre el periodismo en el exilio y lo que significa para una cultura perder su prensa libre.
7 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| libre | free (adjective) | La prensa es libre en Francia. |
| libertad | freedom (noun) | La libertad de prensa es muy importante. |
| exilio | exile | Muchos periodistas viven en el exilio. |
| periodista | journalist | El periodista escribe sobre política. |
| verdad | truth | La gente siempre busca la verdad. |
| controlar | to control | El gobierno controla los medios de comunicación. |
| extranjero | foreign / abroad | Vivo en el extranjero porque no puedo volver a casa. |
There's a newspaper that launched yesterday, and almost nobody noticed.
It's called Kabul Times News, it's run by Afghan journalists, and it's published from Paris.
Sí, lo leí ayer.
Yes, I read about it yesterday.
Es una noticia importante.
It's an important story.
It launched on World Press Freedom Day.
Whether that was intentional or just good timing, it lands differently when you know that.
No es una coincidencia.
It's not a coincidence.
Los periodistas saben el calendario.
Journalists know the calendar.
Right.
And the backdrop here is that inside Afghanistan, independent journalism is basically gone.
The Taliban took power in 2021 and within a year, most of the free press had either shut down or fled.
Antes de 2021, Afganistán tenía muchos periódicos.
Before 2021, Afghanistan had many newspapers.
Y radios.
And radio stations.
Y televisión.
And television.
That's the part that gets lost in the headline version of events.
After 2001, Afghanistan actually developed a real press ecosystem, imperfect and dangerous but real.
There were hundreds of outlets at the peak.
Muchas personas trabajan en los medios.
Many people worked in the media.
Mujeres también.
Women too.
Women especially.
There were female anchors, reporters, editors.
And that's almost entirely gone now.
The Taliban has specific rules about women working in public-facing roles.
Para los talibanes, una mujer en televisión es un problema.
For the Taliban, a woman on television is a problem.
Octavio, the first time I went to Afghanistan was in 2003.
I remember this one radio station in Kabul, women's voices coming through the speakers.
The person driving me said he couldn't listen to it for years.
Just wasn't possible.
And now we're back.
Eso es muy triste.
That's very sad.
La radio es muy importante para la cultura.
Radio is very important for culture.
Particularly in a country where literacy rates were never high and where so much of the population lives in rural areas without reliable electricity.
Radio carried things that newspapers couldn't.
Sí.
Yes.
Con la radio, no necesitas leer.
With radio, you don't need to read.
Escuchas y entiendes.
You listen and you understand.
So when we talk about a free press, it's not just an abstract principle.
In Afghanistan it was a lifeline.
Local news, health information, weather, politics.
All of it moving through radio frequencies.
Ahora, muchos periodistas viven en otros países.
Now, many journalists live in other countries.
No en Afganistán.
Not in Afghanistan.
The estimates vary, but somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of Afghan journalists who were working in 2021 are now outside the country.
That's an extraordinary brain drain, but it's also a survival story.
El exilio no es fácil.
Exile is not easy.
Pero es mejor que la cárcel.
But it's better than prison.
Or worse.
Some journalists who stayed were killed.
Several were detained and tortured.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented dozens of cases since the Taliban returned.
Conozco este problema.
I know this problem.
En España, en los años del franquismo, muchos escritores viven en el exilio también.
In Spain, during the Franco years, many writers also lived in exile.
There it is.
I was hoping you'd go there.
Because Spain has a very specific memory of what it means to have your culture pushed out of the country by an authoritarian government.
Sí.
Yes.
Los poetas, los escritores, los pintores.
The poets, the writers, the painters.
Todos fuera de España.
All outside Spain.
People like León Felipe, María Zambrano, Luis Buñuel.
The cream of Spanish intellectual and artistic life, scattered across Mexico and France and the Americas.
Spain spent forty years trying to recover that.
Y algunos no regresan nunca.
And some never come back.
Mueren en el exilio.
They die in exile.
That's the darker edge of this story.
The Kabul Times News launching from Paris is hopeful, but there's a real question about whether the journalists who build this outlet abroad will ever be able to go home.
Volver a casa es el sueño de todos los exiliados.
Returning home is every exile's dream.
Pero a veces es solo un sueño.
But sometimes it is only a dream.
And in the meantime, what they're doing from Paris is actually remarkable.
They're publishing in Dari and Pashto, and they're reaching Afghans both inside the country and in the diaspora.
The internet is still accessible inside Afghanistan, in theory.
Los talibanes controlan muchas cosas.
The Taliban control many things.
Pero el internet es difícil de controlar.
But the internet is difficult to control.
Although they've tried.
There are VPN crackdowns, blocking of certain sites, periodic shutdowns.
But Afghans are resourceful and the demand for information that isn't state-filtered is obviously huge.
La gente siempre busca la verdad.
People always look for the truth.
Siempre.
Always.
That belief has sustained journalists in every country I've ever covered.
Including places far more repressive than Afghanistan at its worst.
You cannot fully seal a population off from information, even if you try very hard.
En Francia, los periodistas afganos tienen libertad.
In France, the Afghan journalists have freedom.
Pero es una libertad triste, ¿no?
But it's a sad freedom, isn't it?
That's a precise way to put it.
You can write anything you want, but your audience is cut off from you.
Your sources are at risk.
Your family may still be there.
The freedom is real and it's also hollow in ways that someone working in Austin doesn't fully feel.
Un buen periodista necesita estar cerca de su historia.
A good journalist needs to be close to their story.
En París, Afganistán está muy lejos.
In Paris, Afghanistan is very far away.
And yet, exile journalism has a long tradition of punching above its weight.
Radio Free Europe broadcasting into the Soviet bloc.
Cuban exile papers in Miami.
The Paris-based outlets that covered Francoist Spain.
Sometimes distance sharpens the eye.
Sí, es verdad.
Yes, it's true.
Pero el exilio también cuesta mucho.
But exile also costs a great deal.
A las personas y a la cultura.
For the people and for the culture.
The cultural cost is what I keep coming back to.
Language, storytelling, the way a society talks about itself, all of that suffers when the people doing the talking are separated from the place they're talking about.
La cultura necesita tiempo para cambiar.
Culture needs time to change.
Y necesita personas dentro del país.
And it needs people inside the country.
On which note, there are still a few Afghan journalists working inside the country, under enormous constraints.
No criticism of the Taliban, no coverage of security operations, no interviewing women without permission.
Within those rules, a small press survives.
Eso no es prensa libre.
That is not a free press.
Es prensa permitida.
It is a permitted press.
No es lo mismo.
It is not the same thing.
Permitted press.
I'm writing that down.
That's a useful distinction and I don't think we talk about it enough when we grade countries on press freedom.
There's free, there's restricted, and then there's permitted, which is almost worse than nothing because it creates a simulacrum of journalism.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
La prensa permite ve los problemas pero no puede hablar.
The permitted press sees the problems but cannot speak.
Octavio, there was something you said a few minutes ago, the phrase "prensa libre." I feel like I hear "libre" and "libertad" all over Spanish and I've never fully understood when to use which.
What's the rule?
"Libre" es un adjetivo.
"Libre" is an adjective.
Describe una cosa.
It describes a thing.
La prensa es libre.
The press is free.
El hombre es libre.
The man is free.
So "libre" is the quality, the description.
And "libertad" is the thing itself, the noun, freedom as a concept.
Sí.
Yes.
"Libertad" es el concepto.
"Libertad" is the concept.
La libertad de prensa.
Freedom of the press.
La libertad de expresión.
Freedom of expression.
Son nombres.
They are nouns.
It's the same in English really, free and freedom, but somehow I never made that connection in Spanish.
I kept wanting to say "la libre de prensa" which I assume is wrong.
Sí, eso está mal.
Yes, that's wrong.
Pero entiendo.
But I understand.
Es un error muy común.
It is a very common mistake.
Filed alongside the time I told a waiter I was very pregnant.
Anyway.
The Kabul Times News, launched in exile, on World Press Freedom Day.
Worth noticing.
Worth remembering.