Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter
Issue 48-49
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law September 15,
1998
Structural Reconstruction of Uzbek Press
During the Soviet period in 1990 in Uzbekistan, there
were 162 newspapers, all of which were financed entirely by the government.
After the Declaration of Independence, resources for mass media started
to grow, and in January 1998, 495 newspapers were issued in Uzbekistan.
Among them, 377 were issued by the government, seventy-four by public and
other organizations, and forty-four were commercial, religious, and other
newspapers. (Source: Information from the State Register of Committee
of the Press of Republic of Uzbekistan).
Of course, the growing number of mass media evidences
new relations in society, and the vacuum left by the Russian newspapers
starts to disappear. But in 1993 a crisis of mass media appeared
in Uzbekistan, reaching its apogee by 1995. (During 1992-95 publication
of newspapers decreased by ten times.) For example, in 1997 only
two issues of “New day” newspaper were published. Almost half of
regional newspapers are issued weekly or once in ten days. There
is no confidence that all the newspapers that are registered in the State
registry keep on publishing.
Officially, this crisis was caused by economical problems
with paper distribution, desktop publishing equipment, and a rise of transportation
expenses. However, the research I conducted in the Creative Centre
“Ilkhom” in 1995 shows other reasons for this crisis.
First, seventy percent of Uzbek newspaper belong to
local administrative authority—regional, city, and local city halls (76
national; 149 regional; 37 municipal; 175 local; and 58 others).
Because City Halls marshal a bottom-up structure, newspapers also reflect
the same structure. National newspapers are, thus, considered secondary
to regional newspapers, while regional newspapers are considered secondary
to municipal newspapers.
Second, newspapers are controlled by bureaucrats who
assert plans for editorial staff and control issues disseminated in the
newspapers. Editors are not interested in improving their newspapers,
because financing has been pinpointed earlier. While all governmental
newspapers (local, municipal and regional) are financed from the state
budget, many newspapers of public and other organizations are fully paid
from the organizations’ funds. This means that editors have only
one sponsor and do not initiate other ways of financing.
Third, more than half of Uzbek newspapers do not have
their own accounts, so they are not juridical persons and do not have any
legal rights.
These three points were determined during a series of
seminars for editors from local, municipal, and regional newspapers, which
were held in the Creative Centre for Journalists “Ilkhom” in 1995 and sponsored
by the Eurasian Foundation. During the series, nine two-week seminars
were held, thirty editors were invited, and almost 200 editors from local
newspapers participated. In these seminars, we used the material
that I obtained from the Centre for Foreign Journalists in Reston, USA.
As a result, by the end of 1996, twenty-four of 164 newspapers became self-financed,
and income of the regional newspaper “Namangan hakikaty” exceeds the profits
of a national newspaper.
During the seminars, the following conclusions were
made:
1. Although structures of market economics can
be found in all areas of the national economy, the structure of mass media
remained unchanged. And if, for example, there is a tendency to privatisation
in the national economy, there is still a principle of centralized management
in mass media. A contradiction, thus, exists between the new economic
structure of society and the old structure of mass media.
2. It should be noted that almost all the editors
of governmental newspapers were appointed as a result of special decisions
by the administration. We do not want to assert that this kind of
appointments always gives negative results, but in practice we could see
that journalists are selected not for professional characters but for their
loyalty. This means that there will not be any critics on the newspaper.
Indeed, editors are not interested in making their newspapers more forceful
and critical, because they are afraid of losing their jobs. Our seminars
also find that only seventeen percent of local editors have special education,
and the rest are involved under different circumstances. Probably,
that is why almost seventy percent of the editors voted for previous centralized
management of press under the local administrative power and guaranteed
financing and economical support from the government, and thirty percent
(who are in ages below 30 and have only started working in newspapers recently)
voted for total independence and self control in their work.
3. Journalists do not have any economic stimulus
to be active and independent because they have guaranteed salaries.
4. A system to retrain journalists and reorganize
their works is lacking. For the last seven years only one special
seminar, which was titled “Work of Editorial Stuff in Local Newspaper in
the Terms of Economical Relations,” was held. In addition, there
are no reference books and materials that specialize in problems of contemporary
journalism, especially in the marketing of newspaper and the use of advertisements.
Indeed, computers are hardly used by editors. For example, in 1995
almost all newspapers, published in Tashkent, were made up on computers,
but no editors could use computers as well as journalists. In view
of that, the Creative Centre “Ilkhom” opened a special computer class in
which 200 journalists from Tashkent have studied. Today, almost all
the most prominent newspapers opened their own computer classes.
Moreover, there are two more problems facing local newspapers.
First, they do not have their own printing house and have to print their
newspapers in governmental printing houses for a very high fee. However,
assuming that about 1000 copies of local newspapers were printed on the
average, it is possible to use desktop publishing. In fact, having
their own printing houses also means the independence of the newspapers.
Second, the newspapers are distributed under an ineffective system run
by the State. To solve this we should study the foreign experience.
Here, we can assert that most Uzbek newspapers do not
meet the society’s requirements and there is a necessity for a new conception
of mass media in Uzbekistan. This point is clear to the administration
who wants to democratize the mass media. Thus, the Social and Political
Foundation of Democratizing and Mass Media Support was founded, and two
new laws—“About Professional Protection of Journalists” and “About the
Access to Information”—were passed in mid-July, 1997. It is worth
emphasizing that journalists did not react much to the passage of these
two important laws. This suggests that most editors, because of their
conservatism, do not need these new laws.
What should we do then? Should we not pass any
new laws? No, if we want our mass media to improve, the psychological
climate has to change such that these laws can be taken advantage of.
The press cannot be democratized by someone else’s decision. Democracy
will be conceived and will make an optimal base for observing laws.
Thus, I propose a new conception of mass media in Uzbekistan, whose main
features are as follows:
— Refusal of the existing hierarchy, which divides newspapers into
local, municipal, and regional newspapers. Every newspaper has its
own value, depending on journalists’ characters. (By the way, in
regions where newspapers were self-financed, there was a noticeable growth
of interest from local inhabitants). Thus, we should divide them
into local and national newspapers.
— Refusal of direct or indirect governmental financing of newspapers and
establishment of a new system to retrain journalists for work in new conditions
with foreign experience. Here, we should consider the American journalist
experience. First, we should not copy but study the concrete principle
behind which a local newspaper is run, such as the marketing of newspaper,
selection and publication of advertisements, correlation of local and foreign
information, internal structure of newspaper, principles of budget of a
newspaper, etc. Second, American journalism differs from European
journalism for its more mobile organization and more democratic freedom.
(I made this conclusion after probation in the Centre for Foreign Journalists
in Reston, USA, and a two-week probation for journalists in the Economic
Development Institute of the World Bank in 1996.) I was also convinced
that it is much more suitable for market relations to have “jeans” journalism
than European press with ties.
Lutfulla Kabirov
Director of the Creative Centre for Journalists “Ilkhom,” Tashkent