The Mongolian media has changed rapidly and deeply over the last decade in the democratic transition. The development of journalism has been heavily influenced by whichever party has been in power as the major political parties, MPRP and Democratic Party, took turns to rule, ending thee century with a coalition government.
The policy of the DP, which ruled in 1996-2000, was to give full independence to the media. Respecting freedom of public expression, the DP encouraged everyone to exercise the rights of free expression of opinion, to publish and criticise whatever they wanted.
The Democrats believed and hoped that the right way for the free media to grow was through this difficult developing process.
This clear, simple and somewhat romantic doctrine resulted in a mass media that was chaotic, unethical and non-humanitarian in many ways. It was a time when the shadow of yellow journalism overwhelmed the Mongolian media, and as a result, the attempt to establish truly objective, balanced media freedom was baffled. There were a number of libel and defamation cases against journalists and their organisations, and there were also threats against, and assaults on, journalists.
It seems that the MPRP when in government wanted to re-exert authoritarian control over the media. This was especially so in 2000-2004 years, when there was an obviously trend for government and civil servants to misuse their authority by manipulating the media in their own interests, and opposition politicians found it difficult to gain publicity for their views.
Public opinion was obviously heavily affected during these years when dissenting opinions were rarely aired on the state-owned electronic media.
Thus the Mongolian media were forced to adopt the two extremes for the decade, and are now obeying the ‘law of wild capitalism.’ At one extreme are media trying to give the public balanced, objective and responsible information; at the other is media serving the interests of business groups and politicians.
Are we blind to the evidence that people of countries with long democratic experience understand the deficiencies of authoritarian control over the media freedom, and that for a century media freedom has developed properly?
Today we need to create and develop responsible media freedom in Mongolia.
From others’ experience we know that for this to happen, we need a favourable legal environment, where journalists have free access to information and have the legally guaranteed right to protect of an information source, and that we need to create conditions in which journalists can be proud of their chosen profession and wish to observe a code of ethics.
The warped media development has resulted in pressure from vested interests of all kinds, including political parties and businesses, who get upset if they feel their views are not adequately covered. There are even newspapers that serve only the wealthy few, who believe they can buy journalists like supermarket goods.
The current Mongolian situation has lost the balance between the media and politics, and politics are governing the Mongolian media.
A decade ago, I wrote and article, which urged, “Today we face the task of raising Mongolian journalism to a higher level, so that we can fulfill with dignity our role as a public watchdog and the fourth estate. This is the essence of free media.”
I would like to address this phrase again to all Mongolian journalists.
B. Galaarid, Editor-in-chief, Unuudur newspaper
Dean, Journalism Faculty, Cinematographic Institute