Lack of climate change media coverage in Kyrgyzstan

By Gulnura Toralieva

Kyrgyz journalists don’t cover climate change because of Russian propaganda, general disinterest and prohibitive expenses, said Nurzat Abdyrasulova, director of the civic environmental foundation UNISON.

“Last time, the most popular Russian TV channel showed a documentary that claimed that climate change is just speculation and a lie. After such programmes, many journalists in Kyrgyzstan become convinced that they should not pay attention to this problem and report on it,” Abdyrasulova said.

“They also think that climate change is a product of fantasy from scientists. No journalist has deep knowledge about climate change,” she added.

Lack of interest is also suffocating climate change reporting. A seminar for local journalists organised by UNISON in the beginning of April, aiming to help them report on climate change, stimulated little interest.

“It was really hard to get journalists to take part in the three-day training, [even though] it was led by experienced journalists and scientists, was free-of-charge and even paid for provincial journalists [to come],” Abdyrasulova said. “After confirming their participation they didn’t come and we called them many times to remind them about the event, which was very disappointing.”

“Most environmental reporting is perfunctory, with no analysis of the situation at all. The journalists only use press releases… and never do investigation by themselves,” she added.

To support this opinion, Abdyrasulova mentioned that news on the Copenhagen summit didn’t appear in the media. “There was only one small news item about this event and it looked very weird in comparison with the volume of information presented by journalists in other parts of the world. I couldn’t understand such a silence from the local media.”

Another reason why other environmental issues are poorly covered by journalists is that the government’s policy towards the environment is: “Everything is ok with our environment. We have no factories. Manufacturing died after the Soviet Union’s collapse, so there is no pollution now,” in Abdyrasulova’s words.

The journalists also help the government create an illusion by ignoring environmental reporting,” she said. The other reason is that ecology as a subject is not taught properly in the schools or universities.

As an NGO leader, she also has problems communicating with journalists.

“Frankly speaking, I have never tried to build bridges with journalists. It is really hard to make them be interested in our job and publicise the environmental problems to attract attention from the public and government,” said Abdyrasulova. Last time she organised a press conference on the results of the Copenhagen summit, only two journalists came.

“It is very expensive today to attract media attention in Kyrgyzstan. If you want something to be published you should pay. Environment itself is not interesting to journalists, despite the fact that the public wants and should be informed about the quality of their lives and risks around them,” said Abdyrasulova.

For example, people don’t know about the dangers of old pesticides left by Soviet agricultural organisations. “There is evidence that use of this type of pesticide may cause cancer. But people are not aware of this risk and they not only use them themselves, but also sell them to other farmers,” she claimed.