According to the latest survey of the Freedom House a year after the revolution the freedom in the press in Kyrgyzstan remains restricted.
This announcement makes us feel a little odd wondering why, on earth, this long awaited process of democratization of mass media in the country never overcame a period of stagnation.
It’s really hard to explain why revolution that seemingly contained a promise for all mass media suffering from oppressions under Akaev’s government never brought real and long awaited freedom to journalists in the Kyrgyz republic.

As an executive director of the TV channel NTS that strives to survive and retain its right on the independent opinion and coverage Andrey Tsvetkov, for instance, admits that old practices of intimidating phone calls and indirect threats from officials are again very much in place. He emphasizes: “Authorities keep interfering into mass media business trying to manipulate journalists. Regretfully we still have this small group of people who are being in power or close to power consider themselves the smartest and the most sophisticated ones. They feel that they are in charge of defining our way of work and thinking. As a journalist I simply cannot stand that. It seems that these new spin-doctors think that all journalists are idiots as if we ourselves are not responsible for what we cover and how we do that.”

Can there be any remedy in this case? This question was addressed by the participants of the media forum “Advanced mass media or corrupt journalism” that was initiated by Internews Kyrgyzstan in cooperation with Bishkek Business Club.

In the course of the discussion participants were trying to come up with the solution in order to reconcile two main functions of journalism - being an unbiased carrier of information and being a player at the financial market in the country where only the fittest can survive.
Different options were suggested in this case with forum’s panelists emphasizing that the shift in the public perception of the role and abilities of mass media to serve its audience and to get profits simultaneously should be made.

As media experts kept emphasizing the notions of “bad” and “good” journalism are to be replaced with notions of efficiency and inefficiency in mass media. The idea here is to turn journalism into a profitable business thus contributing to the Kyrgyz press becoming independent in terms of finances. The financial independence will supposedly lead to the potential ideological independence of journalism in Kyrgyzstan. To back up their opinions participants of the forum were using different examples media units that turned into successfully functioning business structures. But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of generalization here.

It’s still arguable whether mass media functioning as successful businesses can still carry the functions of “pure” journalism with its orientation on unbiased reporting. The main fear is that the bias based on economic reasons can even be stronger than the ideological one.