Tolo News (

Dari Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...

and

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

: ), stylized TOLOnews, is an

Afghan Afghan or Afgan may refer to: Related to Afghanistan *Afghans, historically refers to the Pashtun people. It is both an ethnicity and nationality. Ethnicity wise, it refers to the Pashtuns. In modern terms, it means both the citizens of Afghanist ...

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the te ...

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Australia in Queensland and pa ...

and

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broadcasting from

Kabul Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...

. Owned by the

Moby Media Group Moby Media Group (Pashto: د موبي ډله/Dari: گروه موبی) is the largest media company in Afghanistan. Moby Group is privately owned, with headquarters in Kabul and 15 bureaus throughout Afghanistan. The company also has an office in D ...

, it was launched in August 2010 as Afghanistan's first twenty-four hour news channel. TOLOnews is available on terrestrial television across Afghanistan, as well as internationally via satellite and the internet. Its news bulletins are also published online, and are available in Dari, Pashto, and English. Its main studio is in Kabul, and its sister TV channels are TOLO and

Lemar Lemar Obika (born 4 April 1978), known mononymously as Lemar, is an English singer, songwriter and record producer. Initially rising to fame after finishing third on the Fame Academy (series 1), first series of British talent show ''Fame Acade ...

History

TOLOnews was launched in August 2010 as a sister channel to TOLO TV, dedicated solely to local, national, and international news. As of August 2021, its owner is Afghan Australian businessman Saad Mohseni, while Lotfullah Najafizada served as director news from 2010 until 2021. For his work on the channel, Najafizada was named a Press Freedom Hero by

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...

in 2016. Following the fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021 and the establishment of what the Taliban regime calls the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, TOLOnews received international attention after a

Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...

spokesman was interviewed on the channel by a female journalist. Mohseni stated he intended to continue broadcasting TOLOnews, and that he would do so from the

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if the Taliban were to shut down the channel's operations in Afghanistan. The Taliban has allowed TOLOnews to continue broadcasting, though not without incidents. In August 2021, a TOLOnews cameraman was beaten by five Taliban soldiers while reporting on the fall of Kabul. On 16 March 2022, TOLOnews' studio in Kabul was stormed by fifteen Taliban gunman who arrested three employees, including reporter Bahram Aman, chief of news Khapalwak Safi, and the channel's legal advisor Nafi Khaliq. This was believed to have been in response to a story broadcast by TOLOnews about the Taliban's decision to ban the airing of foreign television shows; the Taliban said such comments offended the "religious sentiments" of the country. All three men were subsequently released. TOLOnews continues to employ female reporters and journalists, under conditions such as the Taliban-approved wearing of hijab, and curtains set up in their studios to separate men and women. According to Saad Mohseni, CEO of the

MOBY Group Moby Media Group (Pashto: د موبي ډله/Dari: گروه موبی) is the largest media company in Afghanistan. Moby Group is privately owned, with headquarters in Kabul and 15 bureaus throughout Afghanistan. The company also has an office in D ...

, which owns the channel, "From a news perspective, at least, it’s almost the same as it was before. There’s no story that we cannot cover. Perhaps with not as much fanfare as we used to and we sometimes have to be careful in the way we criticise the authorities". On the importance of continuing to employ women, Mohseni noted "I think we are the canary in the coalmine. When people talk about women getting silenced, as long as they’re on television, we know that they haven’t been fully silenced".

Presenters (current and former)

;Dari *Wahid Ahmadi *Bahram Aman *Tahmina Usmani *Sebghat Sepehr *Shuja Zaki *Zarmina Mohammadi *Yama Siawash († 2020) *Naimat Rawan († 2021) *Sonia Niazi ;Pashto *Faridullah Mohammadi *Beheshta Arghand (until 2021)

References

External links

* * *
Live Streaming Link
Television in Afghanistan Mass media in Afghanistan Mass media in Kabul Pashto-language websites 2010 establishments in Afghanistan {{Afghanistan-media-stub

History

Presenters (current and former)

See also

References

External links