Do Afghanistan's Women Really Need their MTV?

Stephen Lovekin, Getty Images for TIME

This is the longer version of a response I wrote in response to David Carr's article published in the NY Times today,  In Kabul, It's Not MTV, It's a Mission.  What a load of crap. 


It appears that Mr. Freston as former grand pubah of the American pop-media giant MTV, has decided that because over 50% of Afghans have TVs, and the majority of the population is under 25, is justification enough for bringing them their MTV.  Sure, it’s justification for making money, and satisfying his nostalgia-infused greed for what he thinks is good for the Afghan people. 

I'll start off with the fact that in responding to this I’m not going to present myself as an  "objective journalist" like Mr. Carr. Not at all, rather, I’m a pissed-off filmmaker and social marketing consultant who left commercial television because nobody would pay me to make anything of real value.  Having made an independent film about a very courageous woman who ran for President of Afghanistan, called Frontrunner, and keeping in contact with this remarkable leader, named Dr. Massouda Jalal-- I have a pretty good idea of how much women are really benefiting from the media and Tolo TV in Afghanistan.  

Mosheni and his fellow executives declined to air Frontrunner and blamed it on government censorship, claiming that it was too 'dangerous' for them to take the chance. HUH?!! A film portraying a woman making history is more dangerous than airing misogynistic rap songs and scantily clad women who represent the farthest thing from Afghan culture?

Carr’s article cites one program, “The Secrets of this House,” as bravely conquering topics like: “…gender inequality, domestic abuse and government corruption.”  Merely creating programming covering these issues does not amount to using media for social change.  A little more investigation into the program reveals that the outcomes of the stories are not often positive lessons learned but rather more of the same – i.e. women are punished or shamed for speaking up and acting “empowered.”  This kind of  storytelling can lead to strengthening, rather than weakening dysfunctional social norms related to gender and human rights.  


Elizabeth Rubin, whose October 21, 2010 article in the New York Times profiled the program and its actors, revealed startling truths about the female actors’ reality at home vs. their television life.  One actor, Abada, was quoted as saying: There’s no need for the Taliban to come back. Even now my brother-in-law tells my husband that he’s not a man anymore because I appear on television….I still think of suicide…but then who will take care of the children?  Mr. Mosheni, one of only two sources quoted in the article, praised Mr. Freston for having “introduced him to Rupert Murdoch, among others.” Have we all been sleeping?!!  Again, for someone who has also worked in commercial television, and for Murdoch’s FOX and National Geographic Channels, (yes, he now  owns Nat Geo too!) I worry that the more thoughtful programming Mr. Mosheni is producing will be soon washed away by more trash TV. 

I would like to challenge Mr. Mosheni to create more entertaining programming, as he has in the past, but to consider its message and whether it truly empowers women or inadvertently strengthens unhealthy attitudes that keep women down.  Furthermore, I challenge him to hire more Afghan women executives, producers, and writers within his conglomerate.  We tried it the other way here in America, and it didn’t work.  We’re still cleaning up the mess.