Reading the Newspaper (1938), N. Karaxan (1900-1970), Savitsky Art Museum, Nukus, Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, 19 November 2008. Image courtesy of Flickr.

Editor’s note: neweurasia’s Musafirbek Ozod goes beyond statistics and formal reports to write about what it’s actually like to live and work as a journalist in Uzbekistan. This is the first part of a series, and part of the ongoing CyberChaikhana project.

A few days ago, Chris Schwartz, one of neweurasia’s managing editors, asked me to write about the disconnect between what the news reports about Uzbekistan and what life is actually like there for journalists. I started quoting reports by international organizations but he immediately stopped me.

“No, don’t think like a journalist this time; think like a blogger,” he said.  “Write from life, not statistics.”

As you can imagine, breaking out from the dry officialdom of journalism and speaking with one’s own inner voice is a challenge, but “writing from life” is what neweurasia is about.  So, here goes…

* * *

The media situation in Uzbekistan is at such a low point that no self-respecting journalist decides to work for the public, or any other kind of mass media there.  The reason is because working in these sectors just won’t allow them to grow professionally.

A colleague who is a former employee of a metropolitan newspaper wrote the following to me in a recent e-mail.  For security reasons, I cannot disclose his identity.

My salary was only 120 thousand soum [approximately 65 USD] – and I was not a rookie.

My editor obliged me to write nothing that included reasonable criticism of the President or the government; no analysis of social policy; not a negative word about the President’s family (indeed, don’t say nothing at all unless it’s about his famous daughter, Gulnara); and God be with you if dare report on the activities of opposition parties.  Do otherwise and  you’ll get fired for a long time.

Actually, from what I have seen myself, if journalists are critical about anything in the country, not just the government and its policies, then, first, their article will be immediately rejected by the editor, and second, they will be denounced as a parvenu, or worse, blacklisted.  Blacklisting in Uzbekistan is very serious: the journalist becomes deemed an “enemy of the state” and their families are shunned from normal community life.

So, any sane employee of the Uzbek media will write laudatory articles, submitting himself to official “guidance”.  Yet, praise for articles that are considered “good” isn’t given to the journalists who write them, but to only one man, the president himself!  It’s crazy: journalists must endure humiliation and poverty but cannot even enjoy the simplest joy of reporting — the byline.

Uzbek media gives the impression that the country is a veritable paradise on earth. So, it’s a supreme irony of the situation is that life is hell for the journalists who slave away to present this illusion.

So it’s not surprising that the Uzbek media is having a “brain drain”. My colleague writes,

I left as soon as I felt that I was wasting my time there: every employee of the Uzbek media degrades rather than gains experience to report as a real professional and to write on the issues he/she wants.