Blogging vs Journalism & Kazakhstan vs Borat

See the important update at the end of the post.

I may or may not get around to collecting and laying out my thoughts on the blogging conference I attended in Almaty, but one thing that kept coming up repeatedly was blogging and journalism. Attendees from the region seemed bent on drawing a clear line between the two.* (The bottom line for me is that there is no clear line between the two, though blogging is distinguished from traditional journalism by having personality.) More often than not, participants who spoke up characterized bloggers as being less responsible and professional than journalists. I am not particularly convinced that is much of a problem as pretty much only the cream makes it to the top. Furthermore, I don’t think too much should be made of journalists being superior to bloggers because plenty of them are not so hot themselves.

For example, check out this story on Kazakhstan and Borat. While Kazakhstan has tended to make too much of Borat, journalists, it seems to me, are going to great lengths to reveal an enormous conflict between Kazakhstan and Borat and to portray official Kazakh acts as reactions to Borat when possible. Incidentally, this is great for both Kazakhstan and Sacha Baron Cohen. The latter gets free movie promotion and the former gets a fair deal of press making clear that it is not a land of Jew-hating, gypsy-hunting peasants.

Elicia Murray’s story is interesting though. In some ways, it is like a typical blog post. She lifts much of her story from other sources. For example:

The Times newspaper in London reported that Kazakhstan had also bought airtime on US and international satellite channels to show advertisements presenting a better image of the country.
…
The Times reported comments by a Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev: “We understand that Borat is a kind of satire, but it is just a pity that Mr Cohen chose Kazakhstan as the origin of his hero … As far as I know, he has never been to Kazakhstan, although there have been efforts on the part of some people here to invite him so that he can see what our country is really like.”

Bolding added for emphasis.

Further, she makes assertions of fact that do not appear to be backed up with evidence. She says about the latest big movie release in Kazakhstan,

Kazakhstan has invested $53 million in making the historical epic, Nomad, to counter what it sees as the damage inflicted upon the nation’s reputation by Borat.

It’s fairly clear to me from taking the 15 seconds to look up the movie’s imdb page that the odds of it having been made as a response to Borat are almost nonexistent. I don’t know why Miramax would have put money up behind something that is all just part of a Central Asian government’s campaign against a British comedian.

Not that I think there’s anything particularly wrong with Murray’s story even if the part about Nomad could be far more accurately reported. (For background on Nomad see an earlier post here, and for discussion of the film’s recent release, see neweurasia Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.) But her story does underline that the line between journalism and blogging is extremely blurry and that not too much time should be wasted on trying to put each in its own corner.

*Which, considering laws on media in, for example, Kazakhstan, does make some sense.

See the rest of the post for the Nomad trailer.

Update
Australian journalists are, it appears, feeble-minded. Perhaps we should say that there is no clear dividing line between journalism and blogging, but that there is one between journalism and blogging on one hand and Australian journalism on the other.

Why do I say this? Here’s another member of the Aussie press saying Nomad has something to do with damage control concerning Borat.

BARNEY PORTER: But constantly irritated by the Borat character, the film has struck a raw nerve with Kazak authorities.

So much so, that the government is spending more than $50 million to create its own film featuring an 18th century Kazakh warrior named Mansur, who’s on a mission of courage and romance to united the Kazakh tribes and free them from the invaders from Mongolia.

I don’t know why this is bugging me so much, but it is so easy to discover that while there is a political and nationalistic side to Nomad, it has nothing to do with Borat. Why would the Russian and US production companies involved, not to mention Milos Forman, the executive producer, care the slightest bit about striking a blow against Borat for the proud people of Kazakhstan? Maybe, just maybe, they could care less, the movie has nothing to do with Borat, and some journalists are just stretching just a tad too much to create a bigger story than actually exists.

This post was written by...

Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.

Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.

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