To representatives of the publishing industry and mass media
Dear friends!
I sincerely congratulate you on your professional holiday – the Day of the Press and Mass Media! Let me express my sincere respect to you and wish success in your intricate and noble activity.
We all know well that your work has always been thorny as much as responsible. This responsibility is even greater today, when our country is at a new stage of development, when openness, publicity and freedom of speech are becoming the requirements of life.
The modern world is changing rapidly. Competition, as in all walks of life, is also intensifying in the area of receiving and disseminating information and shaping public opinion. In such difficult conditions, life sets us more and more of new tasks.
Taking into account all these factors, large-scale media development reforms are being implemented in Uzbekistan. The legislation in this area is being improved; conditions are being created for the free activity of mass media of diverse forms of ownership and socio-political orientation.
In the Uz domain of the global network, the number of websites and information portals in various languages has been growing.
As you know, in order to effectively implement policy in the information sphere, the Agency of Information and Mass Communications was established under the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, building on the former Agency for Press and Information of Uzbekistan.
The Agency coordinates media activities, protects the rights and interests of journalists, fosters cooperation with media companies abroad, creates opportunities for a wider use of foreign web resources and websites and, in general, ensures pluralism of opinion in the information space.
Today, our most critical task is to train for the media, which are becoming more operational and multifunctional, modern specialists with active civic stance, able to withstand fierce competition in the global information space. I am convinced that the University of Journalism and Mass Communications of Uzbekistan, which we created for this very purpose, will become the basic higher education institution of the nation for training professionals, who not only wield the knowledge and skills required for this occupation, but also have creative thinking, are fluent in information technologies and foreign languages.
Worthy of particular attention is that, lately, the trend in the country’s media business has been shifting towards in-depth analysis of the positive changes in our lives and constructive criticism of the existing problems. Surely, this contributes to the effectiveness of reforms, of public control, to growth in the social activity of our citizens. Crucially, officials and decision makers at all levels as a result will work with an eye to public opinion, to the demands of the times.
To be sure, the official who is confident in his knowledge and potential, professionalism, is not afraid of criticism, and thus considers cooperation with the media an effective form of dialogue with the people. After all, such a dialogue is one of the most important factors ensuring the development of the country.
In the meantime, we all need to bear in mind that various disputes and debates in the information field should first of all be based on reliable facts and objectivity, take place within the framework of the law and ethical norms, and not for personal gain or personal revenge, self-promotion. We must not allow for humiliation of the individual, insult to the honor and dignity of the person. Such downbeat phenomena are assigned no place in our media space.
I think that you, dear representatives of the media, who put the interests of the people and the Motherland above everything else, realize this truth deeper than anyone.
I would like to underscore once again that the enormous transformation in our life today, the very logic of the reforms being implemented, requires that all of us work in a new way and put forward new promising ideas and initiatives.
In this respect, we still have much to do together to boost the material and technical base as well as the cadre potential of the mass media, to ensure that the national press earns a high rank in the international arena, introduce more widely into the sphere, including publishing, bookselling and distribution of print goods, the market mechanisms that have proven efficient in the world, learn to work in an open and healthy competition.
We will definitely keep working consistently toward bolstering the guarantees of freedom of the media, decently evaluating and encouraging the difficult work of journalists, consolidating the democratic principles, pluralism of opinions and views in our society.
Dear friends!
Once again I sincerely congratulate you, and all the numerous audience of admirers of your work and talent, on the holiday.
I wish you all robust health, new creative successes, peace and well-being to your families.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev,
President of the Republic of Uzbekistan
