The calls come through nearly every two hours, always from a satellite phone and usually with some new claim of an attack that the reporter must check with the US-led coalition force in Afghanistan.
Sometimes they turn out to be false. Many times, they are true but exaggerated.
"I get between six to 10 calls a day from one or the other of the two Taliban spokesmen," said a journalist based in the southern city of Kandahar, a focus of the movement's insurgency launched after it was ousted in 2001.
"It is mainly them who tell us first of incidents," he said.
This more sophisticated propaganda strategy now used by the Taliban marks a remarkable departure from one of the pillars of the movement when it ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001.
Under the Pakistan-backed regime, movies, videos, TV or photographs of any living creature, even animals, were taboo, as they were seen as idolatrous.
But today the religious students not only watch such material, they produce and distribute it for free -- usually high-quality video CDs of rousing speeches and Taliban attacks and what they call sacrifice for a "holy cause."
More than a dozen VCDs obtained by reporters during the past 10 months all carry the logos of one of three film studios -- Omat [Nation] productions, Manbaul-Jihad [Source of Jihad] or Abdullah videos.
These shadowy outfits produce videos for the Taliban -- and probably also for al-Qaeda -- in the Arabic, Urdu and Pashto languages that are aimed at Arab extremists and potential sympathizers in southern Afghanistan and the adjoining Pakistan tribal belt.
The emotionally charged videos play on deep ethnic and religious pride to win recruits, showing horrific images of Muslims killed in war or of alleged spies "confessing" before their throats are slit.
One kind preaches the religious rhetoric of the anti-foreigner jihad [holy war] that brought the Soviet army to its knees in Afghanistan in the 1980s and is now being used against the US-led coalition and NATO forces.
Another plays to Arab extremists who despise the US and the West for their attitude towards the Islamic world, including Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Iran and Iraq.
There are images of sophisticated US military planes and armored vehicles juxtaposed with others of the Taliban's low-tech small arms and homemade bombs stuffed with nails, nuts and bolts.
New Taliban recruits are shown training in difficult terrain and under harsh conditions, while messages from al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri boom out promising success and, for "martyrs," paradise.
Every film includes interviews with purported Taliban commanders who claim to have shot down US helicopters or to have killed US or Afghan soldiers.
Some films show gruesome documentary footage of what are called civilian casualties of US bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, or of Christians chopping off the heads and arms of Muslims in Indonesia's religiously tense Poso district.
"Their targeted audience is a less-educated section of people with little power of political analysis who react religiously and emotionally," said member of parliament and journalist Shukria Barikzai.
The images often work well to arouse passions, firing up feeling for the militants' cause, she said, noting the Afghan government itself should be making better use of such an obvious strategy.
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