An article posted on CABAR.asia’s website notes that in Central Asia’s nations, criticism of journalistic materials by journalists has failed to become peculiar to the media community.

“They Will Be Hated”: How Media Criticism Works in Central Asia” cited Anna Shabaldina, ex-editor of media criticism department of New Reporter, the website about media, as saying that one of the main difficulties for media critics in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states is the size of media market.  It is small and all journalists know each other, which makes it rather difficult to remain objective.

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 reportedly 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.’

Central Asian media criticism reportedly 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 program.

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 Kassym-Jomart 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 criticize colleagues. Why should they do it? They will be hated then.  Editors can handle only theatre and film reviews, at most,” Anna Shabaldina said.

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 criticized 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.