Freedom equals responsibility, especially in the media
24.04.2002Says Dariga Nazarbayeva, chairperson of Khabar News Agency and organizer of the Eurasian Media Forum in Kazakhstan: ''My position is that freedom equals responsibility, especially in the media. Where there is freedom without responsibility and when money is always the first consideration, there will never be responsible, objective journalism.''
She admits there has been a problem in the relationship between Kazakhstan's media and government. ''But I am sure that the greatest difficulty for journalists and the media arises because they don't want to get together and resolve their common problems with the law,'' Nazarbayeva says.
Kazakhstan has a law on the media, she points out, and the constitution guarantees freedom of speech. ''In the law,'' she says, ''there is a special statement that forbids the censorship of information - and another statement that says the government and ministries should supply the media with information.''
Nazarbayeva says that the problem with the law is that the mechanism for implementing it has not been properly established.
''The Ministry of Justice and the courts of law have a problem defining the law,'' she says. ''A judge might find, for example, that the media should be blamed because there is no exact definition of what they can or can't do. The problem is that government officials are not deeply involved in the profession. We, as the professionals, are only interested in the existence of a law that will have a mechanism [for implementing it]. That's why I have suggested that local media people should forget their differences and sit down together and help create a law that will develop the media here in Kazakhstan.''
Local press congress
Nazarbayeva organized a congress of local journalists in Astana in March this year. She says that one interesting result of the local press congress was that most of the blame for poor journalism was focused on the owners of the media, the so-called oligarchs.
''The media market in Kazakhstan is flooded,'' Nazarbayeva says. ''We have 60 to 70 television channels in Kazakhstan and over 1,000 magazines and newspapers. The media is a business, and owners have to make money. The advertising market is not large enough to sustain all the magazines, newspapers and electronic media. This means that not one newspaper, television channel or radio station can exist independently, [supported] only by advertising revenues. The result is that the owners take money from people who want to control what is written or broadcast. They don't understand their responsibility. They solve their own financial and political problems and say only what someone wants to hear.''
Close to home
Nazarbayeva says that she has been a target of criticism. ''Because Khabar is a state-owned television and news agency, people think that the government interferes in a big way, with heavy-handed direction and money,'' she says.
At the journalism congress in March, a delegate said that the state media were telling lies and only broadcasting ''happy news'' about the government and the head of state. In response, Nazarbayeva says: ''What I tell opponents is to put the television on for a whole day and monitor the information we are giving.''
Nazarbayeva adds: ''Thousands of people work in the state media. Would you have me believe that they lie from morning to night? Let's look at our ratings. Which channel do people prefer to view? Or what newspaper do they read? Khabar has a 15 percent to 20 percent rating, and others have about 3 percent to 8 percent. I cannot push anyone to watch my channel. I cannot push advertisers to bring in money.
''The policy of the channel is to be fair,'' she continues, ''to supply real information and to give the people knowledge and understanding. People should know what is going on in the country and abroad, and they have the right to be entertained by world-famous, classic movies.''
Nazarbayeva says that 50 percent of Khabar's budget comes from the state; the remaining 50 percent is raised from advertising revenues and sales. ''The 50 percent from the state is only so we don't die from hunger,'' she says. ''But the 50 percent that we are bringing in ourselves allows the channel to develop. We are buying programs, producing our own local programs - for example, a soap opera called Locust - and trying to create animated programs. None of the other television companies spends its own money doing this.''
She adds: ''Most of the opposition leaders have taken part in our talk-show program called 'City of the Future.' It is a live debate between young people who talk about problems in the economy, policy, society and things like that. If this were not a democratic country, the opposition would not be allowed to talk freely on television.''
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev spoke at the Kazakhstan journalism congress in March. The result was a proposal to establish an independent council to regulate issues connected with the media, to work on creating a code of professional ethics, to work with parliament on creating new laws and to unite all the journalists into one organization. ''We want it to be a very democratic institution with a new [chairperson] each year from a different region of the country,'' says Nazarbayeva.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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