Global Media News

Global Media News from Central Asia: Our Eighth Webcast!

Global Media News on Central Asia

• Afghani Media:  From Taliban censorship to a free press?
• Press Freedom in Central Asia:  Is Pakistan the most dangerous nation for journalists?
• FM 100:  A visit to Pakistan's popular radio network
• Social Media in Pakstan:  Are Pakistanis on FaceBook? 

Next Week:  Media News from Turkey & Iran

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Afghanistan Media: Post Taliban Regime

The media in Afghanistan is constantly changing post Taliban control.  In the years immediately following the ousting of the Taliban regime Afghan media experienced unprecedented journalistic freedom.  This freedom though is only truly enjoyed by media in the capital city of Kabul. According to Reporters Without Borders the capital city has seen an explosion of private independent media:

"One year after the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, 150 publications are being sold on the streets of the city. Electronic media projects are springing up and dozens of journalists are taking advantage of the various forms of training established by international organisations."

Although the capital city enjoyed freedom of press, the provinces outside Kabul were not so fortunate.

Courts Show Leniency Toward Foreign Journalists in Iran

    Two journalists from Germany who were detained in October 2010 were relased from an Iranian prison four months later. State tv reported that a court in Tabriz said the Germans "deserved to have their punishment commuted and enjoy Islamic mercy". The court decided to throw out their 20-month prison sentence, turning it into a fine of $50,000 each.

    The men were arrested after illegally interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman whose been sentenced to death by stoning after being charged with adultury. Ashtiani's story gained international attention when her husband was murdered by her lover. She was tried for the murder and was found not guilty, but an appeals court has upheld the charge of adultery. The journalists who interviewed the womans son and lawyer were in Iran on a tourists visa and didn't obtain necessary permission before conducting their interviews. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation says the two men posed as reporters when they contacted her family.

    Although these men have been released, their troubles continue. Ashtiani has been trying to pursuade her family to sue these journalists for spreading the rumor that she was tortured in prison. She also claims that these men "embarrased" and "disgraced" her and her country.

 

Government Controlled Media in Iran

The Iranian press  suppression is most common in the capital, of Tehran.  Journalists are restrained; lack funds, and have no modern printing operations. According to an article by the BBC "small district papers have limited circulations; thus, the power of these papers as a source of news for the population is limited." Iranians rely on other international programs for information and news for world events. For journalists in Iran there is no escape from governments controlled media, there are no private or independent media companies allowed to operate within the country.

Government control on media is nothing new to many Iranians however, changes in technology is helping news spread all over the world at a very fast pace.  The internet is becoming a major source of the publishing of many of Iran's information and news. In the same article by the BBC states "the internet has provided a big challenge for the Iranian authorities in its efforts to control the flow of information to its nation." Like most countries who do not allow for freedom of press, it will not long before the Iranian people overturn their leaders for a  democracy.

Radio in Afghanistan

Being that Afghanistan is a poor country, many people don't have the abilities to turn the TV channel or flip open a cell phone to check up on current events. Many people highly depend on radio broadcasting to know what is going on throughout the world. With radio widely spread, everyone, no matter what class, can have the opportunity to hear whats happening.

Afghanistan Controlled Media

      Afghanistan is a country with a controlled media. The idea of a controlled media is the government exposing what it wants to the people. For many years, the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan and all national information. One of the major reasons the Taliban was able to keep the media under control the way they did was due to illiteracy and poverty in the Afghanistan population. According to an article from www.Newyorker.com , 70 to 80 percent of the entire population is illiterate. Consequently the dominant media are radio and broadcast television. The power of illiteracy has been used by dictators and and countries  in the past to keep people enslaved and in bondage.

        After a quarter of a century of suppression in Afghanistan by the Taliban , fortunately there are signs of it coming to an end. According to www.culturalprofiles.net Afghan media is one of the most vital areas of media reconstruction. Action has been taken to assure citizens a way to receive more information. 

Social Networking: Not Catching the Attention of Pakistani Internet Users

    As everyone knows, social networking is one of the most popular attractions throughout the world when someone logs onto the internet.  Although this may be true, in Pakistan, it's a different story.  For many other countries that also do not find themselves on social networks, it is because they don't have the opportunity due to the fact that they are unable to log on to the Internet.  This is not the case in Pakistan because they have a great connection to the Internet so the lack of Pakistanis using social networks is primarily because they are not interested in doing so.  It has been stated by forum Pakistan:

"Pakistan has emerged as a great potential market for social networking, but still only has 1% of internet users using social networks."

    As of now, there are only around 117,000 Pakistanis on Facebook, and only a few thousand users logging onto MySpace which are two of the most popular social networks in the world.  Pakistan has social networks of their own that are very similar to Facebook (Circle!) in the sense that people are able to connect with friends and be able to upload photos and videos for your friends to see.  Even though Pakistan has this, this site still does not attract nearly a fraction of the users that Facebook has in the United States and in other countries.  Maybe the problem is that the use of these sites are to connect with others and Pakistanis might just have a different preference.  The creators of these new sites should try and go at social networking from a different angle and might have a shot to attract more and more users who have different interests.

     Pakistan actually blocked Facebook for a period of time because there was page that featured "blasphemous caricatures" of the Prophet Mohammed and the people of Pakistan were not happy about it.  This also included the block of youtube because people began to post images of Facebook on youtube having to do with the Prophet Mohammad.  It seems that when Pakistanis were to go on to a social network, it was to post their opinion on a higher power in their country and figured that many people through out the world would be able to see this post because of how popular the network (ex. Facebook) was.

    Although Pakistan does not have a large quantity of people logging onto their social networks, Pakistanis are still making efforts to launch new social networking sites hoping that it will catch on more throughout the country.  One of these new sites is linkedpk.com and so far, just like all of their other social networking sites, people have registerd, but not nearly the amount compared to other countries and what the creators of the sites were hoping for.

      Also, since the site is still reasonably new, there are still a couple of problems with the site that have to be worked out.  This is a very common problem when starting a new website, but in order for the site to grow to what the creators expect, it has to be a free flowing site, or no one will want to deal with all of the problems.

 

 

Media in Turkey

Turkey has an extensive media section in their country. There are nearly 300 private TV stations including more then a dozen that are national coverage. There are about 1,000 private radio stations including the state radio station "TRT". According to the BBC

Television is by far the most influential news medium".

Istanbul is considered to be their media capital. The city has 40 major dailies along with 30 publications. According to the Library of Congress

"The media is known to exert a strong influence on public opinion"

The media in Turkey is quite restricted. Military and political Islam are sensitive topics. If journalist chose to cover these topics it can lead to arrest then to prosecution. Many believe says according to the BBC

 "rights groups say journalists have been imprisoned or attacked by police".

It is reported sometimes radio and TV stations have their broadcast licenese suspened. Most of the time it gets suspeneded for airing material that is sensitive.

According to an article on the BBC there are around 35 million Turks online by June 2010. Even though they have access to internet many websites are blocked. One major site that is blocked is Youtube. Youtube was blocked because videos were posted that were insulting to the founder of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk. Turkey allows the use of Facebook. Facebook has nearly 22 million users.

 

Turkey: The Press and the Military

Turkey's English daily newspaper, Harriyet,  reported last week that tensions were again rising over whether Turkey's press is free or not as a major international watchdog issued a stern warning while the prime minister accused the countriy's media of intentionally smearing the government.

The detention of journalists in Turkey is an "alarming threat to press freedom" and contradicts the country’s image as a democratic role model in the Middle East, the United States based human-rights organization Freedom House said in a press statement released. According to Freedom House, some 50 journalists are currently in prison.

 Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to his party group in Parliament, criticized journalists in his country and called on the international press to look closer at the events in Turkey.

Until the early 1980s, television in Turkey was limited to a single state-run channel, which was closely controlled by the authorities. The advent of satellite channels meant that the public-broadcasting monopoly was broken, since Turkey language programs could be beamed in from transmitters in Europe.

BBC News reminds us that Turkey's progress towards democracy and a market economy was halting in the decades following the death of President Ataturk in 1938.  The army saw itself as the guarantor of the constitution,and ousted governments on a number of occasions when it thought they were challenging secular values.

Concern over the potential for conflict between a secular establishment backed by the military and a traditional society rooted in Islam resurfaced with the landslide election victory of the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002.