According to official propaganda, UzA, the primary news agency of Uzbekistan, is not only a source of trusted information about processes going on in the country but an organization that “became a competitve actor in the world’s mainstream media.”

In this month of February, people affiliated with UzA are supposed to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Right after winning presidential elections in December 1991, Islam Karimov reorganized former UzTAG, Uzbek branch of TASS (Телеграфное агентство Советского Союза — Soviet Union Telegraph Agency), into Uzbekistan National News Agency.

Since February 5, 1992, UzA has served as one of the main megaphones of official propaganda with the news full of — let’s be realistic — too-good-to-be-true stories.

It’s no surprise that local mass media used this ocassion to praise UzA and label it with something like “An Active Distributor of Great Reforms.”

Surprise: UzA has not mentioned anything at all about its anniversary. How come? I don’t think that the UzA leadership would go out of line by adding a piece on how honored they were to have the president’s trust and blah, blah, blah. Or is this — finally– the surrender against the fact that “nothing hurts like the truth”?

Moreover, no official congrats to UzA staff on behalf of Islam Karimov, who just loves awarding people for falsified “large-scale developments” with a number of orders that are almost not known to ordinary Uzbeks.

One of the claiming-to-be-independent newspapers, Hurriyat (literally meaning “Freedom”) published an interview with Deputy Editor-in-chief of UzA, Kulman Ochilov.

I don’t really want to go deep into this… wastepaper, just wanted to highlight a few points that Mr. Ochilov and the newspaper’s correspondent made:

- UzA (succeeder) is much cooler than UzTAG (predecessor) because now they have their own fully-equipped office;

- UzA is one of the best and most trustworthy news agencies not only in Uzbekistan but also in CIS countries… (slowly coming to the main WOW part of the interview);

- Politics and economics are of a greater demand by UzA clients: they explore its website and read all speeches and reports by the president on socio-economic life in Uzbekistan (in real life language: people of Uzbekistan are getting almost to orgasm while and after reading Karimov’s beautifully-written-and-presented-but-very-poorly-implemented initiatives and plans!);

- UzA is one of the first to report on world news, using its all potential to double check the information and present it to Uzbeks (we are closer to the WOW);

- UzA became one of the most competitive actors in the international world of information, thanks to its Uzbek, Russian, English, German, Spanish, French, Arabic and Chinese pages (WOW! just check them out and see if you would really prefer UzA to some international agencies).

- A journalist must fully dedicate himself/herself to their profession, be respobsible, trustworthy and respectful, otherwise it’s impossible to trust them “not only journalism but even guarding a toilet” (what a clear definition to Uzbekistan’s officialdom-affiliated journalists!!).

In the end Mr. Ochilov made a wish:

“We wish to always provide our population with good and joyful news!”

Well Mr. Ochilov, so far you guys are doing it with an A+ grade! Good luck with guarding the toilet!

"Hurriyat Independent Newspaper's" "Active Propagandist of Great Developments", interview with Kulman Ochilov, UzA Deputy Director