The Networker - Essay Example

The Networker The Networker is an article in the New Yorker describing the talents and entrepreneurial spirit of Saad Mohensi. Saad Mohensi is an Afghan-Australian that set up a media company under the name ‘MOBY group’ with his siblings. This media company is an umbrella for many ventures, such as television, radio, and print, with the most famous and ambitious being considered Tolo TV and Arman FM. The article suggests that Tolo TV accounts for more than half of all television viewing in Afghanistan, and Arman FM accounts for 37% of all viewing.

The article considers the success of the company to be due to the networking skills of Saad Mohensi, who is anecdotally described as having contacted several influential people in the course of one interview to ensure that he got the facts straight. This ability to immediately retrieve information from such people as the Vice-President of Afghanistan is one of the major contributing factors to Mohensi being considered a brilliant networker and amazing entrepreneur. The article covers in detail the story of Mohensi’s childhood, which mainly consisted of moving around between major Western cities such as Tokyo, London, and Sydney, which is where he got many of his ideas.

It then goes on to state how important and influential the MOBY group is, particularly in a country like Afghanistan which is known for being particularly illiterate and religious. 40% of employees in the MOBY group are female, which is unusual and radical in Afghanistan, a largely Muslim country. Tolo TV in particular has been slated and abused for not only allowing females to appear on shows but allowing them to converse with men freely on these shows. Some of the soap operas that are shown on Tolo TV are from India, which means that the women featured are not veiled and sometimes show their waists as is traditional in Hindu culture.

It has been noted that a lot of younger female residents in Afghanistan are now refusing to wear the burkha and agree to an arranged marriage, and a lot of this has been attributed to the liberalism of Mohensi’s venture. Although Mohensi is continuously applauded for his ability to network and charm the most important people, the article does note that his appeal is not universal. Saad Mohensi has an ongoing feud with Hamid Karzai, the current president of Afghanistan, and it is noted that there is some animosity between the two when they are asked to speak at the same event.

This is not because Karzai does not appreciate the entrepreneurial genius of Mohensi, but because it is felt amongst some of the elder demographic that he is destroying traditional values for some of the reasons mentioned above. One of the notable things about the MOBY group is that a lot of the funding it receives comes from the United States. This is another reason why the media group is sometimes seen as problematic by residents of Afghanistan because the United States is commonly seen as an enemy and another destroyer of Muslim values.

However, Mohensi himself states that they do not receive much funding from America, and a minimal amount of programming relies on American values. In conclusion, the article in question describes Mohensi as an enigmatic networker with a penchant for Western values. It also states that he may be instigating social change, but this is more due to his love of makeover shows than to his need to be political.