the relationship between the taliban and journalists. i also want to understand whether this has revealed structural problems in how news works. has there been enough space given to context and history as many of us watching what's been playing out have been asking, why is this happening? well, we've a number of guests to help us, including cnn's chief international correspondent, clarissa ward, who, with this clip, became one of the faces of the story as the taliban took over. we decide to leave and head for our car. the fighter takes the safety off his ak—lfl and pushes through the crowd. stay behind him, stay behind him! you can see that some of the taliban fighters arejust... hopped up on adrenaline. i don't know why. it's a very dicey situation. suddenly, two other taliban charge towards us. you can see their rifle butt, raised to strike producer brent swales. when the fighters are told we have permission to report, they lower their weapons and let us pass. clarissa ward from cnn, thanks forjoining us on the media show. thanks so much for having me on. now, this is an extraordinary report, an extraordinary moment. many of our listeners will know it very well. just tell us about how you came to be in that position, close to kabul airport. well, we wanted to get a sense of what it was like for afghans who were desperately trying to get into the airport. and so, we arrived outside, there were large crowds and we started trying to push closer to get a better idea of what it looked like. the taliban fighters there were carrying whips and truncheons. they were very, very aggressive, as i think you can see from that clip, which had not been my experience with other taliban fighters in other parts of the city. and they were not particularly receptive to our desire to talk to them and our desire to talk to other people around the airport. one thing that you can't see in that clip is that we were immediately swarmed by afghans desperate to show us their papers — "look, i worked at this us military base, look, i was a translator for the us embassy, here's my paperwork, help me get out, help me get into the airport" — which is always a really tough position to be in as a journalist. clarissa, you've covered many, many stories on the trial and execution of saddam hussein in iraq, the conflict in syria to the situation now in afghanistan. i wonder, given all of those experiences, if you anticipated the degree to which that particular report would reverberate around the world. no, i don't think i possibly could have predicted how our reporting during that week that the taliban took over would resonate with people. and it's always difficult when you're in the field to have a real sense of how your reporting is being received elsewhere because you're working 19 hours a day. any bandwidth you have left is being used to think about things like what will i eat, how are we going to put this piece together, etc. so, i only really had a sense when i looked at my instagram account some weeks later and realised that i had 200,000 new followers. and you're talking to us from london now, so i wonder if you think you could do the kind of reporting you did a few weeks ago now. no, there's no substitute for being on the ground. i mean, you have to be there, you have to smell things in the air, you have to talk to people on the streets, you have to see it for yourself to really get that visceral feel of what a conflict feels like and what people are going through. so, i don't think there's any substitute for being there on the ground. well, we're delighted you're with us on the media show. let's bring in sana safi, a presenter with bbc pashto. sana, you've got a new documentary called afghanistan and me on the bbc world service this weekend. for people who haven't listened to you before, just explain where you grew up and how you came to move to the uk. thank you, ros. so, i was born in afghanistan in kabul in 1989, and then i was 18 months old when my parents moved to the southern city of kandahar. it was the time of the mujahideen, the western—backed freedom fighters, as they were called back then, who were fighting against the soviet regime. my parents were threatened when they had to take refuge with my aunt in the province of helmand, which is also in the south of the country. i was seven when the taliban took over afghanistan, and it was then that i wasn't allowed to go to school, i had to go to three different underground schools in the five years that the taliban were in charge. then 9/11 happened. after 9/11, the international involvement happened. i went to my first official school in 2002, and i got a job with a local tv station in 2006. in 2007, ijoined the bbc and came to the uk. i was 18. you're bsed here with the bbc team that also has an operation in afghanistan. how do you go about covering what's happening in your country from afar? in the last 20 years, it has been very difficult to cover afghanistan because we've had instances of staff who were having to relocate to different parts of the country in order to tell the stories, the sort of qualityjournalism that our audiences demand. but also to keep them safe. i remember different cases in the last 20 years that we had. some colleagues that didn't want to use their own names. we gave them that option if they didn't want their names used. they could use a different name or they could not use a name. in some extreme cases, we had to re—voice a report in order to protect their identity. so, we had to make constant on the day decisions, so to speak. this situation is still so fluid. as you both know, in order to report in afghanistan now, you have to deal with the taliban. to understand how that works, i got in touch with a man called saad mohseni. he's the ceo of mobi group, which owns tolonews. to understand asking a client, you have to look at tolonews. it began in 2003. it's grown into a formidable operation. it has millions of viewers and listeners across afghanistan i want to understand how saad mohseni manages that relationship. it has always been professional. - we had an incident- where they attacked one of our buses in 2016, i resulting in the killing of seven of our employees. the haqqani network took responsibility. i the relationship has i been fairly professional other than that. they're always l available online. in areas they control, they i provide us with safe passage. we were embedded| with the taliban unit when they took on isis. which was an extraordinary documentary we prepared. | i think they've always been more media savvy than - the former president. they wouldn't get back to us. whereas, the taliban were professional. i so we had a better relationship towards the taliban _ than the previous team. despite the haqqani network had killed some of your staff? yes, absolutely. _ it's a different neighbourhood. we have different benchmarks and standards in terms - of dealing with people. but for us, we were always committed editorially- to a peace deal — we felt every conflict has ended| with a negotiation. if you look at afghanistan's recent history, we had 40. odd years of fighting. given the taliban's know—how, is there a risk it's using you? absolutely. just like you wouldl be using us as well. as a sort of a benchmark in terms of how the - taliban are behaving. we are a bit like the canaryl in the coal mine, and i think a lot of western audiences are looking at us in termsi of how we survive, and that would be a clear indicationl as to how others would survive, civil society and so forth. - but when you run those stories which could be seen as being negative to the taliban, are they on the phone saying to drop this? not yet. i think they still don'tl have the bandwidth to deal with everything, every single day. - i think right now, - they are scrambling to deal with the airport, security, with food, with this - new cabinet appointments. but with time, they'll become a lot more savvy, they'll havej monitoring teams and they will be calling the media. _ this is when the real challenge for us, how much capacity - will they have for criticism? saad mohseni, the ceo of the company that owns tolonews. he has a striking turn of phrase. he describes afghanistan as a different neighbourhood. sana, clarissa, you will both have what have working relationships with the taliban. clarissa, help me understand how you engage with them. we've been engaging with them for a couple of years now. i did a story in the north of the country in january of 2019, which entailed spending time in their territory, getting permission from them, and one thing i will give the taliban credit for, which i think saad touches on there, is there was a process. you did have protection from the taliban and you could be reasonably secure knowing that you weren't at risk of being kidnapped on a trip, and you would be given access to what you had been promised. so, there was a mechanism for dealing with them, and from what we're seeing on the ground now, that mechanism still exists. there is a department that you go to, there's paperwork that's signed off on. the problem becomes now particularly that you're dealing with the rank and file on the street are not necessarily the same as of the dealing of the upper echelons of the taliban. it can be difficult to persuade them that you do have a legitimate right to be there and do yourjob as a reporter. sana, does this echo your experience with the taliban? i agree with what saad and clarissa said, they are more professional than the people we used to deal with, but i would say they have a double standard. for international media, for people like clarissa with a huge platform, there is a much more polished interaction, that for local staff like the people who don't have international platforms behind them, they do have some help, but the treatment has been horrendous. we saw four of their journalists were badly beaten, and the same with news owned by an afghan businessman. some of theirjournalists were treated in some of the most inhumane ways. i think the taliban are clever in knowing that we need to polish our message to the international media and give them what they want, but crack down on local people who have no other way of protecting and escaping from it. as such, is there a risk that foreign journalists such as yourself are being played by the taliban? look, there's always... it's not so much there is a risk of being played, you have to go into it with your eyes open and know the way i'm treated is not the way another journalist, particularly a local journalist, might be treated. when you look at the professionalism or the savvy of the taliban, you have to understand it in its proper context, and it is largely transactional. they hope to get something out of that. the veneer from what we see is pretty thin. people to carry out their jobs as journalists. on the other hand, they are firing at protesters, they're beating journalists, so just because you talk the talk, if you don't walk the walk, we will cover that. help me understand your calculations on these issues. you were part of the first international team in myanmar in february after the military coup there. that would've only been possible with the military�*s acquiescence. what are your calculations when deciding to work to some degree with people like the military in myanmar or the taliban? my calculation is that we are put in this position all the time, whether it's north korea, syria or you're given access to a country by a repressive regime. yourjob when you accept that access is to make sure that you tell the story to the absolute best of your ability and you go even further in ensuring you hold people's feet to the fire, because that privilege that sana talked about can occasionally be used for good as well, because in myanmar, for example, where local journalists were doing extraordinary work, from a security point of view, it wasn't possible for them to look a top general in the eye and confront him with evidence of children being killed by his own forces. that's a privilege that i enjoy as a foreigner because i'm allowed to leave the country at the end of it and i don't run the risk of being sent in prison. i would still say that based on our experience in the airport with the taliban, it's much more of a fluent situation. even as a foreigner, if you get the wrong person on the wrong day, that situation can very quickly become very dangerous. you're dealing how the cnn deals with the taliban. let's hear from another person who deals with them, bbc news correspondent secunder kermani. he's currently in the city of mazar—e—sharif northern afghanistan. i told him we discuss these issues, and he kindly recorded this. there is definitely a sense of privilege that comes . from being an international journalists _ we've seen at times some of our afghan colleagues i being badly beaten, tortured even, by the taliban. - it hasn't happened - with the foreign media, at least lot yet. i think the taliban know there i will be more pr consequences. it's not to say there are noj challengesm, they've tried to prevent us filming at demonstrations. or at the airport. overall, their attitude has been very cooperative - and really very friendly. i think that's partly because, on an individual level, - we are still thought - of something of a novelty. they want to portray- a particular, positive image to the rest of the world. that itself presents its owni challenges, because there's a lot of misinformation around, and both the taliban and their. critics have a narrative - they want to push forward. the truth isn't always easy to decipher. - one of the key things i bear in mind in my. reporting is an - importance of nuance. whilst we can and should talk about the gains being made l over the past 20 years — - women's rights for example — it's also important - to remember the crises. if we could pick up on his final point there, do you think there's a risk that the western media and afghan media inaccurately portray afghanistan by focusing too much on the capital? it's absolutely a risk, and we have seen it in the last years as well as days since the taliban have taken over the capital. the focus has been on the airport, and then it went to the rest of kabul and the banks. actually, at that time, some executions did take place. i am getting horrific videos of men being shot on the spot. none of that has been reported from the international media. i don't know why. maybe because they talked about the privilege and the responsibilities. some international media have the privilege to hold power to account. they could've used this time and reported on the horrible crimes happening in the rest of the country, and i can mention kandahar and others. the videos are so horrific. i watched one, and couldn't sleep. they are presented very inaccurately about the history of the war, who is involved, who is now in charge and everything else. one challenge is to make sure the coverage is accurate, comprehensive for the whole country. the other is to make sure the coverage is being carried. on that subject, let's bring in another person. alex sheppard is with new republic magazine. alex, is it reasonable to say that us media is already starting to move away from this story? that's certainly correct. i think there's a systemic myopia in us media that focuses intently on partisan and electoral politics. the story of afghanistan almost instantaneously fed into this meat grinder in which it became a story about republicans and democrats disagreeing. you almost immediately had the sense that 20 years of context was set to the side. everyone was focusing on the chaos at the airport. the problem with that framing is we have the story of bipartisan failure. the press loves to cover bipartisan success. they love it when republicans and democrats come together and sing kumbaya, but they really struggle to cover bipartisan failure. i think what you saw was the story of that particular problem, but also that showed a larger bias. there is i think a tremendous humanitarian story that american foreign policy in afghanistan... we weren't covering that. but we were covering instead is a story that quickly became about joe biden's approval rating. clarissa, do you agree with that critique? i think alex raises some really important points, and i know from my personal experience covering the story that it felt like everything i would say when i was reporting was then kind of shoehorned into someone�*s political narrative or appropriated by one side or the other. it was like clarissa ward is a warmonger, or whatever, and none of it had any bearing on reality. all of it, frankly, was a distraction from the real story in my mind, which is what the afghan people were going through, and what they were experiencing and what america's role is and what america's responsibly was in that. so it is frustrating as a journalist when you see both sides politically trying to weaponize these issues that ultimately subvert attention from the real focus. but isn't it notjust about politics about both sides and decisions taken by editors that think it's easier to make content that's popular if it's seen through domestic politics, rather through experiences of afghans? i think it depends where you work. obviously, if you work at one of the big three networks in the us and you have a half—hour evening news show, you're a lot more limited in how much debt you can get into. depth you can get into. we're lucky at cnn we have 2a hours a day, and i was doing live shots for our morning show that would sometimes go 18 minutes. you are able to have a more expansive conversation. but there's no question that there is a trickle down. of course there is, and there are certain areas there are more interesting to americans, and those areas obviously get the most attention. alex, it's a stark analysis that you offer us. do you draw that conclusion because there are structural problems within how american news works, or is it particular to this story? i think there are structural problems. this is probably the most glaring example of it. i think because the assumption that americans either don't care about afghanistan or assume the war is not going well to begin with. two things i've written about i think are related — one is there is a bias to what i call new news. the story is much bigger than the chaos at the airport. that is directly related to years of corruption in the afghan government. we didn't get much of that because we had all these images of the airport. the other is i think the distinction between episodic and thematic coverage. people like clarissa do an exceptionaljob showing us what's happening on the ground, but what doesn't always happen is that becomes thematic coverage. we get a too narrow focus on what is happening. if those are some of the challenges for us media, sana, let's look at it from the other side. when you tell the story of afghanistan to afghans, how do they see this story, in domestic terms or in terms of a failed western intervention over 20 years? it's very hard to judge, but we get all sorts of criticism. some see us as completely, it showsm _ and there is another side to see it as an afghan failure. there is no one way in this, and we probably have the hardestjob because our own audiences are our harshest critics. these times are very difficult to operate for anybody, but especially somebody like public broadcast like bbc to operate in afghanistan and tell those stories. if you look at what's happening in panjshir, we are getting accusations of being against the panshiris. there are ethnic issues as well. it's very hard for us. sana, those comments will have to be the final ones because we're out of time. many thanks to all three of you. clarissa ward, sana safi and alex sheppard. thank you for watching here on bbc news. the media show will be back at the usual time next week. till then, bye from me and the team. hello there. for central and southern parts of the uk this week, it's not looking that bad at all. with high pressure always nearby, it'll be dry, quite warm with plenty of sunshine. but we'll start to see some changes from wednesday onwards across the north of the uk, more especially for scotland, where it will turn windier with some rain at times and it will feel cooler. so, a bit more of an autumnal feel there. high pressure, though, dominates the scene into tuesday, many places starting dry. there will be some mist and fog around, some dense patches across east anglia and the southeast which will tend to dissipate through the day. bit of mist and fog to start the day for scotland and northern ireland, and then it'll turn cloudier and windier for western scotland, perhaps western northern ireland, with some light and patchy rain here. but eastern scotland, eastern northern ireland, most of england and wales, fine and dry with some sunshine. and again, quite warm, into the low 20s celsius. into tuesday night, it starts to turn cloudier, windier and wetter across the northwest of the uk. further south, closer to high pressure, winds will be lighter, some clear spells again, one or two chilly spots, but a bit milder further north and west. this is where we start to see the changes, then, around the middle part of the week. indeed, it's on cue during the autumn equinox, with some rain and strong winds pushing in to scotland, northern and western areas, and then this band of rain will move southwards into northern ireland, southern scotland later in the day. behind it, sunshine, blustery showers, gales here. to the south of this rain band, though, for the majority of england and wales, another fine day to come. quite warm, top temperatures of 22 or 23 degrees. as we move into thursday, another area of low pressure skirts the north of the uk. that'll bring another swathe of wet and windy weather across scotland, maybe some gales later in the day. a bit more cloud further south, but again, for much of england and wales, the midlands southwards, it'll be dry with some lengthy spells of sunshine, top temperatures 20 or 21 degrees. but cooler in the north, 10 to 16 degrees here — particularly chilly when you factor in the wind. through friday and into the weekend, we start to see the winds change direction. low pressure develops to the west of the uk. that draws up some mild south—westerly winds across the uk, but we'll start to see some wet weather pushing into western areas as we reach part two of the weekend. but again, across the south, it could stay dry with plenty of sunshine. welcome to bbc news — i'm david eades. our top stories. opening its doors — after more than 550 days the us announces it'll end its ban on international air travel for fully—vaccinated foreign nationals. voting is about to end in canada — as the country elects a new government for the second time in less than two years. we have a special report from afghanistan — on the dire conditions the un says are leading to a humanitarian disaster. and — hailed as a hero for saving lives in the rwanda genocide — paul rusesabagina faces years in prison for terror—related crimes. welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe.

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