Parliament Considers Curbs on Media Oligarchs
Parliament Considers Curbs on Media Oligarchs
New legislation to ban media monopolies is being reviewed by parliament in Kazakstan, and NBCentralAsia observers say it could be the first step towards reducing the hold that large financial groups have on information distribution. But they warn that change will be hampered by the lack of mechanisms to ensure a level playing-field.
On April 18, the lower house of parliament started reviewing the third draft of a bill to ban monopoly ownership in the media sector, the Kazakstan Today news agency reported.
Journalists and human rights organisations in Kazakstan have expressed concern that the media market is being increasingly dominated by large financial groups.
According to Tatiana Pak, head of Forpost, a foundation for independent journalism, the media often “serve as the mouthpiece… for a narrow circle of media owners and are at risk of becoming a hostage in the political struggle between media corporation owners and their opponents”.
Pak said that although there are no accurate ways of measuring the extent to which the media are controlled by large holding companies, it is obvious that just a few moguls dominate the market.
Last year, culture and information minister Yermukhamet Yertysbaev suggested creating a state media holding which would include the Khabar TV station, the Kazakstan-1 TV channel, the Kazteleradio TV and radio broadcaster, and the newspapers Kazakhstanskaya Pravda and Yegemen Kazakstan.
Askar Shomshekov, director of the Pavlodar Centre for Supporting Regional Journalism, says that public access to objective information is constrained by the existence of monopoly owners – which include both private financial-industrial groups and the state control.
“What that means for the average person is that they can’t get impartial and reliable information about what’s happening in their country and their own town,” he said. “During the last [2005] presidential election, for example, over 80 per cent of all media reports were about the head of state.”
Media-watchers hope that if the new law is adopted, additional mechanisms will subsequently be put in place to open up the market.
“At the moment, the lack of regulations to demonopolise the media, the state’s selective approach to ownership, and the uneven playing field is only serving to further concentrate the market in a few hands,” said Pak.
But Shomshekov believes that simply introducing new laws will not open up the media completely and “demonopolisation is impossible without creating public service television”.
Introducing laws like the one up for review is just one way of developing independent media, he says. The country also needs real political competition, a robust civil sector, access to foreign investment in the media and an independent judiciary.
Tamara Kaleeva, head of the Adil Soz free speech foundation International fund for the protection of freedom of speech, doubts the legislation will have real teeth.
“The media bill contains only general statements concerning demonopolisation. It won’t have any impact on the activity of existing media holdings, nor will it prevent others from emerging.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
On April 18, the lower house of parliament started reviewing the third draft of a bill to ban monopoly ownership in the media sector, the Kazakstan Today news agency reported.
Journalists and human rights organisations in Kazakstan have expressed concern that the media market is being increasingly dominated by large financial groups.
According to Tatiana Pak, head of Forpost, a foundation for independent journalism, the media often “serve as the mouthpiece… for a narrow circle of media owners and are at risk of becoming a hostage in the political struggle between media corporation owners and their opponents”.
Pak said that although there are no accurate ways of measuring the extent to which the media are controlled by large holding companies, it is obvious that just a few moguls dominate the market.
Last year, culture and information minister Yermukhamet Yertysbaev suggested creating a state media holding which would include the Khabar TV station, the Kazakstan-1 TV channel, the Kazteleradio TV and radio broadcaster, and the newspapers Kazakhstanskaya Pravda and Yegemen Kazakstan.
Askar Shomshekov, director of the Pavlodar Centre for Supporting Regional Journalism, says that public access to objective information is constrained by the existence of monopoly owners – which include both private financial-industrial groups and the state control.
“What that means for the average person is that they can’t get impartial and reliable information about what’s happening in their country and their own town,” he said. “During the last [2005] presidential election, for example, over 80 per cent of all media reports were about the head of state.”
Media-watchers hope that if the new law is adopted, additional mechanisms will subsequently be put in place to open up the market.
“At the moment, the lack of regulations to demonopolise the media, the state’s selective approach to ownership, and the uneven playing field is only serving to further concentrate the market in a few hands,” said Pak.
But Shomshekov believes that simply introducing new laws will not open up the media completely and “demonopolisation is impossible without creating public service television”.
Introducing laws like the one up for review is just one way of developing independent media, he says. The country also needs real political competition, a robust civil sector, access to foreign investment in the media and an independent judiciary.
Tamara Kaleeva, head of the Adil Soz free speech foundation International fund for the protection of freedom of speech, doubts the legislation will have real teeth.
“The media bill contains only general statements concerning demonopolisation. It won’t have any impact on the activity of existing media holdings, nor will it prevent others from emerging.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
