“McLuhan’s theory regained significant popularity following the introduction of the internet, which effectively realized his ‘global village’ prediction roughly 30 years later”
IF YOU were a journalism student in the 1960s, flirting with Olivetti and Olympia 30 years before the birth of internet, chances are great your professors who darted straight to the classrooms from their air-conditioned advertising offices told you to “beware of Aghanistanism.”
The old journalism school admonition, endorsed by American editors, to “beware of Afghanistanism” – the practice of focusing on remote, foreign issues to avoid tackling challenging, controversial local problems – remains highly applicable in 2026, though the digital age has fundamentally altered how this phenomenon operates.
While the digital age has increased access to global information, making “distant” stories more relevant, it has also introduced new forms of “digital Afghanistanism” where local news is neglected for viral international content or algorithmic trends.
“Afghanistanism” – mouthed by mentors who were reading US-published textbooks without subsequent printings and editions – is an old journalism school adage and newsroom term used to describe the practice of concentrating on foreign or distant news stories while ignoring significant, controversial, or “hard” news in one’s own backyard.
Without much thought against what the professors read from old books, the term “fascinated” unquestioning students who accepted the same as filled with truth, a warning to journalists to focus on local accountability rather than prioritizing safe, exotic, or far-flung reporting.
The term refers to writing about issues in remote, obscure places – traditionally Afghanistan – where reporters can seem knowledgeable without risk of being contradicted or challenging local power structures.
Coined in the late 1940s, popular origin stories attribute the term to Jenkin Lloyd Jones of the Tulsa Tribune at a 1947/1948 American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, where he was quoted as saying : “The tragic fact is that many an editorial writer can’t hit a short-range target.
“He’s hell on distance. He can pontificate about the situation in Afghanistan with perfect safety. It takes more guts to dig up the dirt on the sheriff.”
It was a critique of laziness or fear in journalism and suggested that while it was easy to discuss global events, it took more courage to tackle the local city council, school board, or corruption in one’s own community.
Newsroom gatekeepers and senior editors said it was believed that no one in the local audience cared enough, or knew enough, about a place like Afghanistan to know if the reporter was wrong.
The concept has been described as “ignoring the uncollected local garbage to take a stand on foreign issues” and while used to prioritize local news, some media historians noted it was also used to dismiss legitimate, important foreign coverage as simply being “irrelevant” to local readers.
News honchos say following 9/11 and the rise of interconnected global politics, many observers argued that “Afghanistanism” became obsolete, as distant local events (like in Kabul) immediately impact local communities worldwide.
9/11, a definitive, universally recognized shorthand for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, is used as a neutral, concise abbreviation for complex events involving four hijacked planes, the destruction of the World Trade Center, and damage to the Pentagon.
“Afghanistanism” remains a poignant reminder that a journalist’s first duty is to report on the immediate, tangible realities affecting their local communities.
Not so, when you consider what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz – 11,000 kms from Washington, DC, a, massive, transcontinental span, stretching from the Middle East across the Atlantic Ocean to the US East Coast,.and 8,000 kms from journalism schools in Manila.
But there are those who say that “Afghanistanism” is an obsolete idea, after the world has become, in the words of Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, a “global village” which concept introduced how new electronic media, like radio and television, were connecting people worldwide so quickly the world was being transformed into a single, interconnected village.
McLuhan predicted as early as 1962 that “new electronic interdependence” would shrink the world, allowing people in one part of the world to experience events in real-time with those in other parts.
While often used today to describe a positive, interconnected world, McLuhan did not necessarily see this as inherently positive.
But he warned of potential information overload and “re-tribalization,” where people turn toward smaller social groups, causing tension.
The theory regained significant popularity following the introduction of the internet, which effectively realized his “global village” prediction roughly 30 years later.
