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Journalism with strings attached

By Timothy Kenny Posted Mar 31 2009

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Spend time reporting in Central Asia and two things quickly become apparent: fact-based journalism is languishing badly in the region, and much of the blame can be placed at the feet of an insufficient press.

This was not what the West had hoped for following the demise of the Soviet Union 18 years ago. It once seemed possible that journalism in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan might be headed toward a Western-style system that if not unfettered was at least fair. But initial optimism that reporters might provide information untainted by “hidden advertising” or the practice of under-the-table payments called envelope journalism has largely failed to materialize in Central Asia.

Central Asian journalism has not been ignored by Western efforts, however. United States and European governments, as well as non-profit journalism foundations, have lavished generous attention on Central Asia since 1989. American funds for media assistance around the globe total more than $760 million and, according to my research, a great deal of it is spent in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. European governments have done even more. A one-year financial snapshot shows European governments spent approximately $421 million worldwide, according to figures compiled from a 2007 media report written by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. Over the last 19 years, European funds for media development and training have run to an estimated $7 billion.

While there has been modest success in developing a fact-based and even-handed journalism in Central and Eastern Europe, similar efforts have flagged badly in Central Asia. The reasons are complicated and many, based on strictures of regional clan and culture, governmental control, financial security and a powerful self-censorship that urges reporters and editors to avoid the critical, nosy behavior of a journalism grounded in public accountability.

Of those listed reasons, it seems to me that self-censorship— the fear of overturning the cultural apple cart and upsetting the status quo—is the driving force behind a Central Asian journalism that remains lifeless, limited and woefully inadequate.

None of Central Asia’s five countries has a free press, according to the 2008 Freedom House assessment of press practices around the world. Kazakhstan, adds the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, is the only one in the region that is not a “failed nation.” It is also Central Asia’s largest and wealthiest country, with an economy growing at 9.5 percent in 2007 and a per-capita GDP of $11,000. Despite its economic progress, however, journalism in Kazakhstan “is worse than in the first five years after the revolution,” said Kairat Zhantikin, the Almaty-based executive director of Internews, an international media development non-profit based in California. “It was more free (earlier) and independent and the government control was not as strict as it is now.”

Mariya Rasner, the Almaty-based Internews deputy regional director for Central Asia, was just as forthright in her assessment of journalism in Kazakhstan.

“Money is the ruling king here,” she said flatly. “A lot of people are doing it [journalism] for money. They don’t care what they do. I’m not even sure if they stop and ask, ‘Is this the right way or the wrong way?’ They’re making money. Everyone is still following orders. It’s still puppet theater here.

“The media,” added Rasner, “has bought into the state agenda.”

Similar complaints about journalism are heard in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, a secular Muslim nation like the whole of Central Asia and a place once considered a regional bastion of free speech. Such heady optimism has largely disappeared following parliamentary elections in December 2007. That vote, widely believed to be rigged by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his Ak Zhol Party, brought an end to Kyrgyz media reform. Long-running efforts to carve a public broadcasting agency from the state-run national system—a critical ingredient of Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution—have disappeared.

A journalism free from the obligation of outside interests, which once seemed possible in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, is gone. Today it is clear that the profession has been mugged by government repression, stymied by unprofessional behavior and paralyzed by self-censorship. Conditions in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are worse, with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan listed among Freedom House’s “10 most repressive media environments” in the world.

“We try to be critical of government policies but in a diplomatic way, not in a sharp or hard way,” said Umed Babakhanov, one of a handful of media owners in Tajikistan. Babakhanov, interviewed in Dushanbe by my colleague Peter Gross of the University of Tennessee, called self-censorship the “biggest problem in Tajik journalism.” Akbarali Sattorov, president of the Tajik Journalism Union, agreed: “Everyone practices self-censorship —media owners, editors and journalists. A phone call will draw your attention to what you can and cannot write about.”

Taboo subjects for journalists are remarkably similar throughout Central Asia and provide any working newsman or woman with a template for what is possible and what is best ignored. “The forbidden ground is internal and foreign policy, oil profits, local politics and bribery in government,” Alyona Alyoshina, a journalist from the western Kazakh city of Aktobe, told me in 2005. “Every journalist should know what he can do and what he can’t. Sometimes reporters are able to tell the truth, sometimes they aren’t. It usually depends on what kind of information you’re going to write.” Her comments remain as relevant as ever.

Unlike many of their regional colleagues, however, journalists in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have had the benefit of seeing how the profession functions elsewhere in the world. “Our journalists are well trained by Western experts now,” said Gulnar Assanbayeva, a lecturer at KIMEP, the highly regarded Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research in Almaty. “People know how to cover things objectively,” she added. “A lot of Kazakh journalists have trained in the U.S. and in Europe.”

The problem, as she and others noted, is the profession itself. “Media was a tool for propaganda (during the Soviet era); now it is a tool for business,” Assanbayeva said. “The best journalists are moving into advertising or public relations because there are no headaches” from the government or big business. “As one former journalist told me, it’s better to sell beer than newspapers in this country.”

In Central Asia today, it is public relations—not journalism—that is held in high esteem. PR pays better and is far safer to practice. Often, however, it is confabulated with journalism, intertwining the two professions into one new occupation that mixes both.

“There is no strong distinction between public relations and journalism here,” said Assel Karaulova, president of the Kazakhstan Press Club in Almaty, in reality a public relations firm with government connections. “Ordinary people do not understand—and I think many professional players do not understand—the differences between PR and journalism.”

Public perception of journalism in Central Asia—what ordinary citizens of the region believe journalism to be—remains at odds with established Western practices.

Kyias S. Moldokasymov, the president of the National Broadcasting Corp of Kyrgyzstan, said, when interviewed in 2007, about the role of the media in Kyrgyzstan, “Media has a huge effect on people and can be positive or negative, depending on how the media does its job. If they report negatively on things, there won’t be stability in society. That is vital. We follow the state policies. And for the state the most important thing is for people to live in stability.”