A number of people have asked me whether I think EurasiaNet is still reliable as a news service., now that I have left it -- not only over the unconscionable imposition by management of a Twitter gag on me about the whole region of Central Asia, but about disturbing indications of a change in the company line (you can read my statement about this in detail here).
I'm going to refrain from answering that question now, just out of genuinely needing to think about it a lot more, but let me weigh in on what I think is good and bad.
No one is irreplaceable and even though I produced half of the content on this website most months, I have no doubts that the waters of EurasiaNet will close over me without a trace. Some of what I produced will be replaced but the dedication to digesting the regional press and letting the regional voices speak for themselves may be reduced.
The irony is that I can get more traffic on my little blog here than I could being only on my blog page at EurasiaNet, i.e. not on the front page. And even the front page didn't yield so much more traffic as to warrant submitting to a Twitter gag. The reality is that unless you are in the top three News story slots at EurasiaNet attached to people's Google readers and other news readers on their i-phones, you might as well be in a dissident newsletter in Uzbekistan. But those top stories might be about milking reindeers in Mongolia or the Kyrgyz language missing in Google or a reprint from RFE/RL . Consumers should demand more.
So what makes for good reporting at EurasiaNet, given these and other constraints?
This story by crack investigative reporter Deirdre Tynan is a very good EurasiaNet story. Indeed, among the best from this author.
I posted the same story myself 10 days ago to the "queue" but it never got passed because it wasn't "polished and textured" (snort) or perhaps it sounded too dire (people were scavenging for firewood to burn in Andijan, according to uznews.net). [Update: later I noticed it was published just to the blog page after this post appeared.] But Deirdre did what reporters in the region can and should do (as distinct from bloggers and chroniclers of regional press in New York can do): she reported.
She picked up the Skype and/or email and called real people that lived in Andijan and got their live quotes. This is what Radio Ozodlik does every day, with a far bigger staff and larger stringer network -- it's hard, it's expensive, it's dangerous. That is indeed what is required to report the news from this region, however, and it has to be realized.
Deirdre did what EurasiaNet reporters so often don't do: she reported, and kept herself out of the view, instead of striking a mannered pose like a gentleman explorer-diarist of the 19th century. I always feel as if some sort of writing-man's version of Indiana Jones is lurking behind the EurasiaNet pages with so many pieces there. There is always this mannered sort of hardened cowboy-reporter shtick -- "I was the man, I was there, I saw it, now give me a drink -- oh, and Mashenka, go top off my cell phone minutes, there's a good girl."
Then there's the "let's sit at my desk and not go out and report and just pick up the news and see if I can snark at it." It's one thing if your job is to digest the news and you sit in New York, but if you are in the region, you should pick up the phone/email more or at least comb the regional press for stuff besides cats (the traffic-building staple for EurasiaNet) -- on a week when the new prisoner total is released, when the ombudsman is summoned by OSCE because they can't get into the prisons; when prisoners have been rioting for days, when the main human rights activist is being harassed by having a child in her care jerked around by authorities.
Taking up the snide "thinking man's anti-Sovietism" -- which these "progressives" aren't especially good at doing -- seems to be the garden perennial. Just like the old newsroom adage for reporters, "it's always the anniversary of something" -- you can always ridicule Soviet stuff for easy copy and never think about the springs and dyanamics of what maintains it.
This piece by David Trilling has that sort of lack-of-reporting and condescending-tone posturing that I find teeth-grating (and which I myself was pushed to write, and simply refused).
We all get it that these dictators are monsters, are caricatures of themselves, and are soft targets for lampooning. They've been hit again and again and everybody's taking their turn at throwing eggs. But could you now report something? Yes, I realize this sort of paragraph is dripping with, um, "polish and texture":
Uzbekistan’s apparatchik-in-chief could still give a Sovietologist pause. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, President Islam Karimov – an economist by training – continues to stuff his people full of fabulous statistics, records even. But like the excerpts from a Central Committee meeting, something doesn’t quite add up.
Instead of reminding us once again that Uzbekistan is still "like" the Soviet Union (to go further, it *is* the Soviet Union that never really quite broke up), why not find out more what do people think about it? Can we get some interviews? Can we get some World Bank bureaucrat -- paying for all this -- off the record? Can we even work that well-worn rolladex that consists of Alexander Cooley and...Alexander Cooley and get a comment?
That answer is "no" -- not only because of a certain amount of antequated and lagging journalistic habits that die hard, but because it is expensive. It takes time -- and money -- and more reporters -- to get stuff like that, and there isn't the budget on this really shoe-string operation, in relative terms. I usually tried to fix the problem of having only the Soviet-like press for "news" generation every day by trying to counterpose it -- "they say this, we say that, or they say the other thing."
Even so, you can go further if you drop the 19th century/early 20th century "I'm a journalist in this exotic region!" pose. Learning the lingua-franca (Russian) and the local languages might help, too. Treating people as other than ponies in your "stable of journalists" helps, too -- treat them as equals and colleagues who might be better than you at some things.
I also have to point out that this whopping 568-word piece with heavy cut-and-paste from other people goes way over the "norm" I was given of 300-400 words -- and without any seeming complaints as it has continued for years just as I continued for years with pieces that long until suddenly nickled-and-dimed to death last month.
Possibly in the name of "objective journalism" or perhaps time constraints, this author doesn't seem to contact any grantees live -- they're an email away, and one thing Human Rights Watch has been able to do with George's $100 million is to staff up for every conceivable issue and/or country) -- or ask some of the people -- live -- in the cotton campaign, although Trilling does link to some FAQs with allegations that the Karimov family personally benefits from cotton sales (likely, but not really established). That's already progress for this author, who strangely linked to an apologia for child labour in the cotton industry the last time he put a link in an article in Foreign Policy.
I mentioned wondering where the prison strike was, and when we'd see it on EurasiaNet -- finally after some days, it appears today. The news from this region is extreme -- it's that kind of place. So why soften the headlines and say "Authorities Confront Mass Prison Protest" -- as if we have to worry about the authorities (!) maintaining their status quo here, instead of running with the headline that every other news site, regional and international ran with: Prisoners sewing their mouths shut, they are that desperate. Or even, Prisoners revolt after 30 deaths. Something that lets us know that you understand the newsmaker here is the desperate prisoners, not the nervous authorities.
I've got lots more to say on this subject and will be saying it. Now, isn't it somehow verboten to comment on a place where you used to work critically? Or "unprofessional" or spiteful?
Oh, no. Oh, not at all. And that some might think so is what is wrong with the terribly conformist and stultifying intellectual life of the left around the Soros empire.
EurasiaNet is a public resource, that is paid for by George Soros' billions, and it has charitable tax-exempt status. It is a nonprofit organization. And that doesn't make it excempt from criticism any more than a corporation is exempt from criticism.
There are no comments on the site open -- that's by design, by fear of the managers. They have this site under a ridiculously draconian legal lock and key and fear people reaching for George's deep pockets in lawsuits, so they keep the comments closed. To be sure, they have an "[email protected]" where you can write what you "like and don't like" -- ensuring that every author's name has to appear in Google zillions of times with the phrase "don't like" -- which is one of the many demotivators there. Most sites would call it "feedback" instead of inciting hatred. And they'd open the comments -- RFE/RL does, admirably; Registan does, to some. Many others do.
And there's something sacrosanct about NGOs and foundations -- people never criticize them aloud because they fear for their own livelihoods. What if they never get a grant -- or a job! -- in this town again!
I totally understand that fear, having faced it literally myself, unlike any of you. The reality is, however, that the combined salaries of the well-situated academics and pundits like Joshua Foust at Registan utterly dwarf the freelancer fees and independent contractor fees for EurasiaNet writers. And perhaps in a non-profit advocacy operation that's warranted. Yet it means that it's a voice that has outsized visibility due to the powers of Soros in general, but one that if it weren't funded by Soros might not survive. That means it does deserve a critical eye. Not only the savaging that Foust has subjected to it -- and the creepy accommodation that EurasiaNet has now made to him and his "stable" -- but any content there, as any article in any news site deserves -- and gets -- scrutiny and free comment.
