Tom Freston on entertainment
From Conversations with Marianne | RADIO KABUL: Tom Freston's Memories of Afghan Culture · · MarianneWilliamson
“We did Afghan Star which was sort of a knock off of American Idol — it would get more votes than the national election for president; it was a huge event like it would be the Super Bowl playing in Afghanistan.”
On , Tom Freston, Board member at Independent, spoke about entertainment during Conversations with Marianne | RADIO KABUL: Tom Freston's Memories of Afghan Culture on MarianneWilliamson.
About Tom Freston
In a September 2021 interview, Tom Freston discussed his long involvement with Afghanistan, where he lived in the 1970s and later helped establish the country's first television and radio stations after the fall of the Taliban. Freston described the independent media environment he helped build, including the popular show "Afghan Star," which he said attracted more votes than the national presidential election. He stated that the Taliban visited the station on their first day in Kabul, requesting to remove weapons and allowing one of their men to be interviewed by a female journalist. Freston offered several critical assessments of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. He said the U.S. "formed a government there that was unlike any government they'd had in the past" and "aligned with the wrong people, set up the wrong kind of constitution and that made things ripe for corruption." He called the U.S. withdrawal "unconscionable" and suggested taking soldiers out first. Freston also stated that Pakistan "is the winner of this war" and that they "did it while accepting American money all these years and playing us." He expressed concern that the independent media in Afghanistan "could be gone in the blink of an eye and it's fading fast."