In Central Asian states, criticism of journalistic materials by journalists has failed to become peculiar to the media community. CABAR.asia figures out why it happened so.
Media criticism has existed as long as media itself, while media is, in fact, any content: films, TV programmes, digital journalism. Film and theatre reviews are also regarded as media criticism.
To be considered a media critic, not just a blogger sharing his/her opinion, a person must have experience in media. It does not need to be identical to criticised material; a general journalistic experience is enough. Second, a person should be paid for his/her opinion. And the most important thing is any expressed opinion must be substantiated.
“A media critic is not the one who tells whether something is good or bad, he/she always explains why something is good or bad and how it affects a viewer or a reader,” said Anna Shabaldina, ex-editor of media criticism department of ‘New Reporter’, the website about media. “He/she is open to disputes, but the dispute must be substantiated, too. Usually, people just say that they disagree, and we, media critics, lash out at them to no purpose.”
Too familiar people
One of the main difficulties for media critics in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states is, according to Shabaldina, the size of media market. It is small and all journalists know each other, which makes it rather difficult to remain objective.
“This was the first thing that was told to us by Kachkayeva and Petrovskaya (Anna Kachkayeva and Irina Petrovskaya are Russian journalists who gave lectures at the online school of media criticism as part of the MediaCAMP programme from 2019 to 2023 – Editor’s note): ‘There is no friendship in media criticism. If you are not prepared to criticise a person, do not start it.’ I believe that you cannot praise an author only because you drink vodka with him/her on Sundays. When you start to criticise media, you should be prepared to feel the grievances of your colleagues,” Shabaldina said.
And colleagues do feel aggrieved. For example, the TV show ‘Kel, tatulasaiyq!’ (“Let’s reconcile!”) on the Kazakh ‘Channel 31’, tried to reconcile a rapist and his victim, who gave birth to his child. Criticism of the show caused a wave of hate against the authors of the show.
After that, ‘Channel 31’ wrote an open letter stating that they condemned violence, regarded reconciliation only as “a process known in the Kazakh tradition as ‘tatulyq’ based on justice”. And the show contributed to reopening of the criminal case on rape and initiation of the new case on establishment of paternity and payment of child support.
A similar situation happened in Tajikistan. The website ‘Oila’ produced material about a boy who was abused – the interview with his mother, the boy’s comments, real names. In response to the criticism of obvious journalistic ethics, the editor-in-chief published a very emotional open letter, which main point was that ‘you should not hurl mud at us, we just help people seek justice.’
Local colour
Central Asian media criticism has yet another peculiarity. For example, Russian criticism before the war in Ukraine was remarkable for its trenchant criticism mainly of politics and reviews of government-run media, while in Central Asia the focus is shifted more towards ethical and social problems.
“We have problems with ethics in the media. It’s not about the standards of journalism, but about ethics: too much shaming, sexism, victim blaming. Especially in Tajikistan, where cases emerge all the time. For example, when a dressed girl danced on TikTok, the media wrote later that she was a prostitute and a stripper and revealed her personal information. Kazakhstan also has many victim blaming cases, but not in such frightening forms,” Anna Shabaldina said.
Another peculiarity of the region is that it is hard to understand how interesting media criticism is to journalists of Central Asia. While there was the online school, according to Shabaldina, remunerations were attractive. Materials were published in Russian, Kazakh, Tajik and Uzbek languages. Students from Uzbekistan wrote often in the national language; the number of such materials in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan was increased only in the last year of the programme.
Formats of media criticism were quite diverse: reviews of particular publications or YouTube channels, articles, reviews of publications of various media at important dates or during big events and comparison of their specific presentation.
Rare interviews of heads of states, e.g. the interview of president of Kazakhstan Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev to TV channel ‘Khabar’ or Deutsche Welle, were another reason for articles. However, journalistic media criticism turned out to be in low demand beyond the website ‘New Reporter’.
“There are no editors who would like to open a column of media criticism and criticise colleagues. Why should they do it? They will be hated then. Editors can handle only theatre and film reviews, at most,” Anna Shabaldina said.
Quality changes
Despite the key task of media criticism, i.e. to improve quality of journalistic materials, it is practically impossible to assess its impact on media development. Because there is only one objective criterion: when the criticised author or outlet accepts criticism publicly and do change something in their work. It has happened only once, according to Shabaldina, over the life of the online school.
Sergei Kim, a Kazakhstan-based media critic, watched the film-investigation about the nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan on the channel ‘Giperborei’, and called it “a newspaper for YouTube” and recommended that the team improve their ‘television’ skills of working with video content. Vadim Boreiko, founder and host of the channel, agreed with the criticism and changed the approach.
“According to insider information, I am aware that many editorial offices have read us attentively and gained something for themselves. But they responded more often to our blunders. For example, because of the specific nature of translation from Kazakh to Russian, the criticism turned out to be off the point, and we apologised and revised the material. If someone has become better after our publications, I cannot say it was because of us, it is just a guess without public recognition,” Anna Shabaldina said.
Main illustration: image from vectorjuice on Freepik
This publication was funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of IWPR and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.