Following journalism codes of ethics
For the last two weeks I have been doing a research about following journalism codes of ethics in Almaty city. I should get answers to such questions as what kind of problems journalists facing, do they accept money for writing an article, do they feel pressure from government and how businesses influence on journalists’ reporting. I have interviewed journalists, businessmen and got information from chief editors of newspapers such as “Экспресс-К” and “Континент”.
One of the issues of journalism ethics is objectivity. Opinion of Adilhan Nusupov, chief editor of “Экспресс-К” newspaper about objectivity of their newspaper: “Yes, we are journalists and we are hired staff, sometimes we are dependent from interests of groups. This is minus. Sometimes we are not enough objective, our newspaper tries to be in the middle, but everything is relatively”. “As that time when we start to write things which everyone likes, we stop to be journalists. At that time we start to work in show business” said Frank Miller. Unfortunately media organizations which belong to government and private, both of them participate in show business. It seems to be that all media organizations try to be objective but they do it not always. While doing a research I haven’t touched a topic about journalist’s salary, but it was interesting to know is it true that journalists accept money for writing an article. The great wealth of the owners, the fact that ownership of the media is concentrated in a few huge corporate hands and the fact that media corporations, like other corporations, exist only to make a profit. Newspapers makes money from advertising, it is their primary source of income. Newspapers are driven by business. I talked to businessmen, who opened his hotel in spring and paid 200$ to journalists for writing an article about that event. He said that almost everywhere you could pay money and next day an article would be ready, but everywhere prices are different, somewhere prices are higher and somewhere are cheaper. It depends on circulation of newspaper, popularity of newspaper and sometimes journalists just have high opinion about themselves, so they demand more money. Journalists don’t want to admit that they accept money; they say that everything is PR article. But that is a fact that they don’t refuse from giving money to them. The reason of accepting money can be low salary. Nowadays narrow specialist, who mastered in one branch very well is more valuable than universal, who understand everything, but not deeply. A lot of journalists consciously specialize on finance market, the reason of that this branch is most concentrated on money sources. If you learn everything in sphere of finance, you’ll get more salary than your colleagues who cover social, culture and sport topics. In our country there are a lot of “social”, “sport” and “culture” journalists and the problem is that we have a shortage of analytic-journalists who is a high qualified person, who writes about president, government, parliament and different organs and journalists specialized on economics. For developing analytical journalism in Kazakhstan journalists should do a research works, but owners of media organizations are not interested in expensive journalism research. They try to compensate cost of production of newspaper with advertisement and PR materials. They can publish an exclusive material, but only that one which can attract attention of advertisers or attention of whole audience.
In order to consider a country democratic one, its media has to fulfill two functions. The first one is to report the news fairly, completely and without bias and the second function is to be a “watchdog” for the public against abuses of power. Nowadays media market in Kazakhstan is developing in difficult conditions. From one side our country needs high qualified journalists, who work by best western standards and from another side monopolization and use of mass media as a political resource put journalists into definite frame. So two sides contradict each other and it breaks development of mass media. Journalists become to be propagandists and mass media stops to be a source of information and comments. For example representatives of Kazakhstan opposition can not aloud journalists from government media organizations and those who not support opposition present in their event. There are a lot of problems which journalists facing, but everything can be solved. The only factor is time and really good journalists.
