Telling the MPs about journalists. And not just to MPs

The deputy of the Mazhilis (lower chamber of the Parliament) Nurlybek Ozhayev, the author of, frankly speaking, a weird proposal to ban  coveraging of trials, tried to save his image of a progressivist. It turns out that he supports publicity, albeit a selective one.

“The information agenda should be defined by official journalists, not bloggers and  social networks activists. Journalists are qualified people, they write grounded articles. The project stipulates a strict mechanism , so I withdrew my proposal. We are not talking about journalists, but about various activists, bloggers who imagine themselves to be journalists. I will revise my proposal and later submit it again, ”he explained to the Orda.kz correspondent Serikzhan Mauletbay.

Alas, it was not to the point again. In accordance to  all international standards, journalists are not just people who work for the media outlents registered with the ministry of informaton and public development on the basis of labor or other contractual relations as it is written in our archaic media law.

Those wishing to stigmatize bloggers should know that, for example, the UN Human Rights Committee has long ago defined journalism as “‘a function shared by a wide range of actors, including professional full-time reporters and analysts, as well as bloggers and others who engage in forms of self-publication in print, on the Internet or elsewhere. " In the UNESCO Safety Indicators for Journalists, the term “journalist” means both media professionals, including support staff, and so-called community correspondents, that is, those “who use social media to produce, curate or distribute significant amounts of content of public interest. ".

By the way, on November 2, the UNESCO cluster office in Almaty is holding a presentation of a study on the level of safety of journalists in Kazakhstan. The conclusions are interesting, it will be possible to listen to them live.