“Creating a free media environment is the best answer to propaganda” – Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted at the press conference in Tashkent that local publications play an important role in the effective fight against foreign propaganda. He responded to blogger Nikita Makarenko’s question that Uzbekistan feels great pressure to change the opinion formed by Russian propaganda in the local population, and how the U.S.A. can help Uzbekistan in this regard.

“I think it only underscores the importance of having a strong, vibrant, and well-resourced local media.  And one of the things that we discussed today, including with the president, was the importance of that, the need for that in part to be able to deal with misinformation coming from Russia or from any other source. So we have programs, as you know, to support independent media but also in our own engagements with other governments urging them to do what’s necessary to create the right environment in which media can grow, can flourish, and can bring a diversity of voices and a diversity of views to the public.

And with that information, let people make up their minds about what’s right and wrong, what’s good policy and what’s bad policy, what’s an appropriate direction or not.  But it’s certainly true that Russia has built up a very strong and long-enduring propaganda and misinformation system that is felt here and is felt in other parts of the world.  And the best answer to that, of course, is the strongest possible environment for genuinely free, independent, open media to bring the facts to people and let them make up their minds,” Kun.uz correspondent quoted Blinken as saying.