2009 Yearbook of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media

Asian countries, is another example of broad public awareness. The public television topic raised at the conference also sparked widespread public discussion in the media of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Finally, the debate that arose at the latest conference, held in Bishkek in 2009, over the training of journalists also raised a number of relevant issues for both media and higher educational institutions engaged in the training of journalists.

It became clear that the media’s requirements to journalists differed substantially from the goals pursued by the instructors at departments of journalism. It turned out in particular that many of the instructors at postsecondary institutions view the training of journalists as training cadres for the ideological support of the ruling regimes. Another matter of equal importance was post-secondary training’s detachment from real-life practices and the generally low educational level of journalists now being trained.

To be sure, the aforementioned problems existed even before the conferences were held, and generally continue to exist today. A conference does not solve these problems in and of itself, but the mere formulation of these problems, along with their elevation to a high level of regional debate, is a powerful means of drawing public attention to them. By generating widespread publicity, we get a problem on the agenda and compel society to react to it in one way or another. Is this not a result?

The next point is the element of informal communication. In terms of results, we can compare any conference to an iceberg, where the part above water is the official part, listed in the programme, while the part under water is what goes on in the back rooms of the conference during coffee breaks, different meetings, events, and ordinary conversations among the participants. I am firmly convinced that everything that happens in the back rooms is of much