The Mass Media is the powerful lever of development of a country in the political, economic and social spheres and freedom of speech has a huge meaning.  It seemed that abolition of censorship in Uzbekistan on May 2002 would open a vast for the enlargement of the mass media.  And it is true: the number of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and TV channels sharply increased. There are 964 newspapers registered in Uzbekistan today.  The incorporators of 306 of them are offices of state and local administrations, 114 of them are owned by public organizations and 109 belong to private individuals or commercial frames and have an entertainment and advertising character.  The other newspapers belong to different establishments, industrial enterprises and do not have popular significance. So, the percentage of state newspapers on the Uzbek media market is 51. And if we consider that most public organizations which have owned newspapers were established by the government then, in fact, the state controls about 75 % of newspapers. On average, 10% of the state newspapers budget is   profit from advertisements, another 10% is profit from sales and the rest is money from subscription which is mostly forced by the government.

The situation with commercial newspapers is different. The budget states 50 % is profit from sales, 30 % from advertisements and about 10-15 is subscription. In general, there are nearly 50 commercial periodicals which are tabloids which are competitive.  The three main tabloids in Uzbekistan are “Darakchi”, “Tasvir” and “Prestige”. Their circulation is about 250- 300 thousands which is 5-6 times more than the main official newspaper “Halq Suzi” (“Public Word”). Tabloids do not publish materials about politics or economics. They contain entertaining information and reprint from foreign editions. 

Practically 70 % of newspapers and magazines are published in the Uzbek language, 27 %   in Russian and about 3% in the English, Tajik, Kazakh, and German languages.

In spite of the increasing volume of mass media, as I said in the beginning, the circulation is diminishing.  The competition and the remuneration of labor on the media market are quite low. All these impact on the quality of print materials and edition. Most articles do not evoke wide public interest because editors lives and works with the idea “stay far from political problems” and exercise excessive circumspection in choosing subjects.

The majority of journalists working in Uzbekistan can entertain, but can’t inform about and analyze real problems. A visual demonstration of this is social opinion in Uzbekistan. While I was studying at University we organized a project called “Mass Media in Uzbekistan”. Students created special blanks with a number of questions which reflected public opinion. The blanks were filled by people in the street, buses, and shopping centers. All that showed that about 60 % of the population reads newspapers. 40 % prefer “Darakchi” and “Tasvir” tabloids.  On the question “why they prefer entertaining newspapers” they answered that anyway, there is nothing to read about in officials editions except harvests, International exhibitions in Uzbekistan, and  how Uzbekistan confidently goes into democratic and market reforms.  Everyone knows that the Mass Media is controlled by the government and they understand all this democracy and freedom of speech are fake.

Despite the sad situation the press market and the fear of the government in the Uzbek Mass Media there are some groups which swim against the current.  These journalists are writing mostly on the internet, they are persecuted by the government and most of their web sites are blocked for opening from Uzbekistan. But these people are really fearless and they are trying to use every single opportunity to inform about problems in our society through foreign sources of Media.

So, at the present time we can not speak about the Uzbek Mass Media as a power of democracy, but it reflects the political situation perfectly. “Show me the Mass Media market and its argument and I will give you a political picture of this country”. Journalism is the connecting-link between government and society and even if it is weak now I believe it just takes time, experience and courage to make it strong and powerful.