EU Offers Uzbek Reporters In-Country Training

A large European Union-funded project to train journalists in Uzbekistan is unlikely to improve press freedom given the government’s tight rein on the media, even though individual journalists will pick up valuable skills.



The Tashkent-based International Centre for the Advanced Training of Journalists has launched a three-year project which sets out to train 600 journalists, 300 journalism students and 150 spokespersons, according to AFP news agency reports last week.



The one million euro project funded by the European Union and implemented in conjunction with Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, will also establish two schools for young journalists in Bukhara and Urgench.



In remarks made on February 21, Gregor Ryssel, regional representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said the objective would be to improve journalists’ professionalism and strengthen ties between politicians, state institutions and the press.



Despite the media freedom problems in Uzbekistan, representatives of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation told NBCentralAsia that the EU is confident of success.



Obid Shabanov, Bukhara-based journalist and head of Reporter, a journalists’ club, said, “I have attended training courses run by the International Centre and I am sure it is capable of achieving the project goals,” said Shabanov.



But according to political observer Anvar Muminov, journalists who work for the state in Uzbekistan will find it difficult to apply their training in practice.



Quality journalism has nothing to do with a reporter’s skill or their links to government press officers, and everything to do with the restrictions imposed by their organisation, he said.



“No matter how often press officers and journalists visit other countries [for training], there is one owner of the local press and it doesn’t need anyone’s skills,” said Muminov.



Nidoi Mazlum, a correspondent at the internet media outlet Turonzamin, says it is unlikely that media projects will be able to change the long-established tradition where the authorities decide what information is to be made public.



“The importance of a piece of information is defined not by journalists, but by state agencies that decide by themselves whether or not to release it. No project is going to change these established rules,” he said.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)