Separating Reality from Myth: SmartHer News' Jenna Lee Babin Catches Up with Hollie McKay in Afghanistan
Two months after Jenna interviewed Hollie in Mazar-i-Sharif, which had just fallen to the Taliban, two veteran journalists discuss covering a country rapidly evolving past its American era.
Please check out my IG interview with the lovely Jenna Lee, founder of @SmarterNews. Jenna also worked at Fox News while I was there, a kickass anchor for the business channel and later helming her own show. Our paths never directly crossed, but Jenna was always known not only as a wonderful journalist with a deep passion for story-telling, as well as a kind and courteous human being who always went out of her way to acknowledge writers when possible and treat everyone with so much respect.
Jenna left her very coveted position to start SmartHerNews a few years ago, bringing news to the masses in easily digestible nuggets and helping us all understand the world better. It is a true honor to occasionally catch up over a LIVE Chat; her audience asks insightful questions and propel me to understand Afghanistan a little better each time.
In this interview, Hollie talks about how she is personally dealing with be a Western female foreign journalist in Afghanistan interacting with a male dominated culture.
She discusses the educational system for girls and how it has been politicized by delicate imbalances in the stability of the Taliban regime and outside pressures regarding money frozen by other nations demanding concessions from Afghanistan; in some cases, concessions that threatened to plunge the country back into chaos.
McKay goes on to discuss the myths vs. realities between the news narrative of the West and what she is witnessing firsthand on the ground. Hollie and Jenna discuss how reporting truth that does not align with narrative can generate backlash and how both believe that journalisms true mission is to report the truth.
Hollie also discusses the economy and future of Afghanistan. She points out the copper and lithium deposits of the country and how valuable they are to industrialized nations increasingly dependent on technologies that depend on these chemicals.
Check out Jenna Lee Babbin’s SmartHer News.