NPR has taken a firm stance against forced masking in the name of women’s rights, after the Taliban government in Afghanistan issued a legal order requiring that female television anchors wear Muslim face covering masks while on air.
The liberal news outlet declared that the Taliban’s latest decree had “dealt a powerful blow to a visible, symbolic mark of progress Afghans had made in two decades of Western-backed rule: women on television, authoritatively presenting information.”
Anisa Shaheed (Edited)
According to NPR, the move from the Taliban that mandated forced masking for women has “raised a host of concerns, not only about women’s freedom of expression but about whether they would be able to continue doing their jobs.”
Since the order took effect just days ago, most female anchors on Afghanistan television have been seen with masks on their faces.
Some male colleagues have also decided to wear the masks “in solidarity” with their female counterparts.
This is not a corona virus mask.
This is the mask of the Taliban virus.
This is a mask is worn as a result of threats and coercion. @SR_Afghanistan @TOLOnews @amanpour pic.twitter.com/E2NxCYXfUC— Anisa.Shaheed (@AnisaShaheed1) May 22, 2022
Afghan TV women will be required by the Taliban to wear a veil and mask – in response: the men joined the protest, and also wore a mask pic.twitter.com/gIorID0ku0
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) May 22, 2022
It is unclear why NPR has decided to take issue with the idea of the Taliban forcefully mandating masking in Afghanistan, when in August 2021, the organization wrote that the forced masking of American schoolchildren was “a key safety measure” for “all kids, especially for children too young to be eligible for any COVID-19 vaccine.”
During this time, NPR had told their readers that the “most important thing is to choose [a mask] that a child will actually wear properly all day long,” even while at home, because experts said so. The organization had also recommended that parents should consider “adding a filter or double masking” their children.
In September 2021, the news outlet stated that forcing American children to wear masks could be “cute” and “cool.” Back then, NPR appears to have supported forced masking for children in the America, and was not concerned about their freedom of expression at all.
In fact, the outlet even went so far as to note that forced masking could give children the ability to express themselves with their creatively designed masks, and had even coined a term that they called “mask expression.”
“For kids, masks can be a disturbing visual reminder every day that they’re living in a global pandemic,” LA Johnson wrote in a mask-obsessive report for NPR entitled Show And Tell: How Are Your Kids Getting Creative With Masks?
“It can be hard enough trying to get your little kids to wear a mask properly, but then what happens when they want to wear THIS mask, but not THAT mask,” Johnson wrote, applauding the efforts of the “design world” who had stepped forward with a “slew of cute and cool masks for kids.”
The report highlighted masks that turn “your face into your favorite character, or ones like this that allow you to say what you want, or like these that turn into wristlets your kids can wear to school.”
It even instructed their readers to ask their children to “draw, paint, sketch us a postcard about masks — their masks, their friends’ masks, masks in schools, whatever,” and send them in to NPR, accompanied with a note from the kids about their favorite masks.
