Reading The World While Flying The World, In Treatment, Media Threat in Kazakhastan

April 27th, 2009 - by: danny

In the HBO series, “In Treatment,” one of the patients in this first created in Israel but redone in America TV series on therapy confesses that the only time he has to think and ask deeper personal questions is when he is flying around the world. I have a similar experience.

An overseas flight, like the one I just came back on, returning from the always fascinating EurAsian Media Forum in Kazakhstan, allows time for me to catch up on reading the large numbers of newspapers I schlep with me from home to the office and back again, and then even think about what they mean.

In European airports, airlines supply, for free, many newspapers to choose from for every flight; one more reason many in Europe are so much better informed about what’s going on. The airports have TV News but not the blaring and endless cable chatter that aims at telling us what to think without always giving us much to think about.

And so I plowed through, compared and contrasted the serious and the trivial from USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. I was delighted to find an editor of the FT praising an article on the failures of the financial press in the British Journalism Review and putting me in the company of Jon Stewart’s blistering attack on CNBC’s Jim Cramer. You get so many more global perspectives and come to see why the picture we have is so often incomplete and lacking nuance, background and context.

One example: I was reading Newsweek’s International edition. (Both TIME and NEWSWEEK have international editions that are often different than the US version.) A story is featured by Zachary Karabell identified as president of River Twice Research. (An opinion piece but not identified as such!) Karabell is arguing that things are not so bad: “If we are in the middle of a new Great Depression, then why are WE (emphasis mine) still ordering $17 cocktails.” WE? What a crock.

This guy is a Wall Street wunderkid telling us today’s depressing “rhetoric” is misplaced. The headline: “MORE GRAPES, LESS WRATH.”

How clever.
How nutz.
Who is he?

From his website: “He is also a Senior Advisor for Business for Social Responsibility. Previously, he was Executive Vice President, Head of Marketing and Chief Economist at Fred Alger Management, a New York-based investment firm, and President of Fred Alger and Company, as well as Portfolio Manager of the China-US Growth Fund, which won both a Lipper Award for top performance and a 5-star designation from Morningstar. He was also Executive Vice President of Alger’s Spectra Funds, a no-load family of mutual funds that launched the $30 million Spectra Green Fund, which was based on the idea that profit and sustainability are linked.”

Thanks, Zach, for reassuring us, for being a voice of pragmatic realism. The only problem us you are totally out of touch with what’s happening. The fear is that unless the IMF gets a whole lot of money and gets it fast and gets it out even faster, there will be a deepening hunger crisis. All the politicians see it as their duty to bolster confidence so they are stressing the positive and being upbeat.. But the truth is, as so many of the reports above confirm, the banking crisis is far from over, more banks imploded over the weekend and unemployment continues to growing. The best news is that the economy is not disintegrating as fast as it was. That’s a good sign?

Media Freedom In Kazakhastan

I have been going to the Media Forum in Kazakhstan for several years now. Its’ well organized, provocative, and well attended. I have been honored to ask to speak with some heavy hitters in the business and alongside well known political figures. From their press release:

“The EAMF agenda is always topical, driven by the latest news stories. It tackles political, economic and cultural issues of international and regional importance, and examines how they are covered by the media of East and West. Subjects on the table this year include:

Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ The global economic crisis – myth and reality
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ In search of the new capitalism
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ The new US Administration – expectations and early results
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ Conflict and the failure of politics and the media, from Georgia to Gaza
Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ Booming blogosphere”

Last year, I was on a panel with former National Security Advisor Zbignew Brzezinski. At the same time, I was conscious of a key contradiction not of the Forum’s making: there is no free press in Kazakhstan. That became an issue this year when the session was invaded by a number of local bloggers challenging a new law that could be passed on April 29 in their parliament eroding freedom of the Internet. I had received a appeal on the issue at Mediachannel and read on a panel I was taking part in on the media crisis chaired by an old friend, Boston’s Dan Kennedy who writes the Media Nation blog. [See Dan's blog for photos and a full report on the appeal I am about to describe.]

From left: Grigory Marchenko, chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan; Igor Panarin, a Russian political scientist; Elkhan Nuriyev, director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Azerbaijan; Willem Middelkoop, a Dutch journaist; and Danny Schechter, blogger, author and documentary filmmaker.

A few minutes later, I was saluted by young and feisty blonde woman wearing a shirt with the words “Shhh There’s Censorship In The Room.” She thanked me and announced that several of her colleagues were protesting outside and expected to be arrested. The real world had invaded the Forum, and the discussion continued into the next panel which was about blogging.

Za Svobodniy Internet [For A Free Internet] Campaign

Her name is Yevgeniya Plakhina. You can find her on Facebook. She explained that she and her many supporters are seeing assistance from all supporters of freedom of speech and the mass media! They write:

Kazakhstan is preparing to pass prohibitive amendments to legislation on information in communication networks. The bill is already being considered by Kazakh parliament members. Its adoption will result in gross violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens and a failure by Kazakhstan to fulfill its obligations to the OSCE. If all forums, blogs and chatrooms are recognized as mass media — and the media are easy to call to account for expressing opinions, using administrative and criminal legislation — the media will ultimately be forced to practice self-censorship. Self-censorship is a violation of the right of citizens to freedom of expression.

If these amendments are passed, the Prosecutor General will acquire the right to terminate the output of a mass media outlet or the distribution of its material before a court issues a ruling on the matter. This contradicts all norms of international law and the standards of the OSCE.

The right to terminate the output of a mass media outlet or the distribution of its material before a court makes a ruling is despotism, as can be said about the blocking of foreign and local websites. The blocking of foreign and local websites is a violation of the rights of citizens to receive and disseminate information! Website blocking and closure of media outlets means the death of Kaznet (the Kazakh segment of the Internet) and of freedom of speech in Kazakhstan! The death of Kaznet and of freedom of speech should deprive Kazakhstan of being the OSCE chairman!

SOS! We need your help!”

She had also written to me: “I really appreciate your help. Thanx. My friends are OK. I guess the authorities were afraid of international scandal, so an advisor to the president took care of letting my friends out. I don’t know whether it will influence their decision somehow whether to pass the amendments or not but they were angry. I know maybe this sounds a bit impudent is there any opportunity to make some noise in journalist organizations there? It is our last hope. As we understand, they already decided to pass them, and only scandal can save us. Thank you very much for your support. Best RegardsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦”

While I am appreciative to the government for sponsoring the Media Forum, I hope the government listens to the voices of its youth and concerned citizens. Kazakhstan was recently unfairly but hysterically mocked by the movie Borat (Some people there wanted to kill comedian Baron Sasha Cohen who created it because they couldn’t get or share the joke.)

But, surely the country has more important things to worry about including banks that are defaulting and a threatening recession than a blogger danger. Repression of journalists will only bring on more bad publicity, and turn a large and beautiful country into a pariah at the very time its President is proposing a new international currency and wants the world to debate his idea.

Also, Memo to President Nursultan Nazarbayev: Please also look into and correct the official hostility and moves being taken against the followers of Hare Krisha. They are not a threat. A little tolerance goes a long way.

And the same message applies to the government of China now marking the tenth anniversary of its unsuccessful, unjustified and brutal repression of Falun Gong practitioners who are marking their 25th anniversary and are reportedly growing in China despite the ban. Just as torture in America did not make us safer or even get good information, violations of press and religious freedom does not work and in the end hurts the violators more than the victims.

Thanks to all who wrote to congratulate and support Mediachannel in our tenth anniversary year. Without your help, we will not be able to continue. Comments to: dissector@mediachannel.org

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