What we've got here is FAILURE to communicate...

On Thursday, my most recent media concern was over the arrest of many journalists in Uzbekistan.  The arrests came as a result of photographers taking pictures of everyday life in Uzbekistan, or reporting on everyday activities in Uzbekistan.  My general reception of these matters is to pay more attention to patterns of progression and regression of civil and human rights and change over time than understanding what is happening right now. However, this blog has given me the opportunity to look into how this may have happened.

This may seem obvious to some, but maybe not: the Uzbek journalists do not believe what they are doing is libel, and the Uzbek government do not believe that the journalists are not trying to harm their country. So maybe, this is a communication breakdown? The simple understanding of purpose is causing massive human rights turmoil in Uzbekistan; various groups do not fully understand what the other groups’ main purposes and intentions are. Of course, a journalist shouting that they did nothing wrong while they are being arrested does not exactly help their cause, perhaps there can be another way of getting these two groups to come to an understanding in order to prevent, or at least reduce these types of arrests.

Another way of looking at it, as proposed by Serena, is that the government could have interpreted the journalists to have framed their particular stories to make the Uzbek people look a certain way to the international community, and thus drawing negative attention from those who do not understand Central Asian lifestyles. Of course, this is closely linked to the issue of miscommunication of purpose, but perhaps we can place the blame somewhere? Is it possible that the journalists had a motive when producing their stories? In class, we mentioned that all people, and thereby all journalist have their opinion, by extension we effectively eliminate all real forms of objectivity in journalism. Journalists can try to be objective, but even in their style and manner of going about becoming objective has a motive and/or political stance. I have read some of these translated articles and have seen some of the photos that journalists have been arrested for, and I can see how, (especially when the government is looking for a scapegoat) they can be accused of creating a bias against the Uzbek people and the Uzbek government. For the sake of the journalists-- the government had to be looking pretty hard, and for the government-- the journalists should have known what was considered unacceptable.

Here we run into the issue of acceptability. What is acceptable in one country or region will obviously not apply to another, and, what one journalist feels they should be allowed to do, in a country that is notorious for journalist abuse, will almost always conflict with the view of what the government believes is acceptable conduct. There are issues at stake regarding media policies, the environment, international and domestic policies to say the least.

Libel is rarely covered as free speech, not even in the US. So the question then is to what extent is freedom of speech libel? One might say the speech in Uzbekistan is not free enough, and some might say speech in the US is too free, so what do we do with that? Can there be an international standard? When journalists and the government are both claiming that their duties are to the people-- so that the people are protected from libel, and so the voices and the culture of the people can be expressed-- how can one say one is right and one is wrong?

Everyone is framing their story. Everyone has their own opinion. No one can be right or wrong.

Unless you are the Uzbek government. Who is always right.


Jessica F