Interviews with journalists here have borne that out. Many expressed a shared sense of national responsibility at a critical moment in Afghanistan’s history. And though some were skeptical about the candidates themselves, they also said that championing the election was an expression of hope for the country’s future.

There is also a quiet recognition that the future of their own industry, which was significantly bolstered by the influx of Western aid in recent years, is at risk.

“The survival of the local media depends on the survival of this transition,” said Mujib Mashal, an Afghan journalist who writes for the American magazines Time and Harper’s. “There is patriotism and nationalism, but there is also a realization that if this transition does not happen peacefully, then the media has no hope for the sort of freedom” it is enjoying now.

The stakes were made clear a week and a half before the election, when Taliban gunmen killed nine people at the Serena Hotel, among them a member of the Kabul press corps, Sardar Ahmad, along with his wife and two of their young children.

The attack shocked journalists here, and they issued a collective statement saying they would boycott coverage of all Taliban statements and news releases for 15 days. In that light, the election, which the Taliban had vowed to disrupt, represented a direct repudiation of the militants’ goals and methods — as did the way the news media decided to cover it.