During a joint press conference held by NAI institution in the bureau of this organization, which is one of Afghanistan’s National Journalists Union (ANJU) and Afghanistan’s free journalists’ supporter and ANJU itself and attended by representatives of both institutions shared their concerns on unprecedented broadcast of the terrorists attacks of victims images.
During the recent weeks, with the increase of suicide attacks and terroristic activities, these attacks have been broadcasted and covered unprecedentedly and a number of visual, print and countless users of social networking such as facebook have been broadcasting inconvenient and distressing images of these events. During this conference, one of the NAI representatives Sediqullah Tawhidi said: “Broadcast of such kind of images and pictures is apparently against the law and rules of Afghanistan as well as ethical standards of journalism.” According to Tawhidi, broadcast of such pictures would severely harm the public moral and in fact is directly benefiting the terrorists.
The Executive Director of ANJU who also was one of the speakers in this press conference emphasized on what Tawhidi said and included: “The government and especially Ministry of Culture and Information which is the canal of media law should seriously prevent broadcast of such images.”
He also requested media outlets and the reporters to act under laws of the country and ethical standerds of journalism and abstain broadcast of such pictures and images.
Representatives of NAI and ANJU answering to the questions of those reporters attended the press conference said, the experience of boycotting terrorists’ news during the Presidential Elections was a successful strategy and was as per the public interest and now too, without harming the free flow of information, our media shouldn’t be changed to the tribune of terrorists.
A joint press release which has been broadcasted by both institutions says: “ We request all the media outlets and especially the social networking users to strictly prevent the broadcast of images of the terrorist attacks victims which causes concern and depression among the public.
Another part of this press release, considering the vague political image of terrorists to the government and that President Ghani has called them the political oppositions says: “We request the government of Afghanistan to give our people a clear definition of the terrorists who cause such anti humanity crimes so that the media varies the friends and enemies of Afghanistan accordingly.
