WikiLeaks film ‘Mediastan’ comes to RT

[John Dolva]

"When presented with the idea of publishing the leaks, AsiaPlus Editor-in-Chief, Marat Mamadshoev, nervously jokes: "We'd rather get approval from our superior first... the Washington DC overlord of Asia Plus!"

Meanwhile, the editors of the Kazakh Telegraph Agency told the team they would be “wasting their lives in vain.”

The stark picture of the media landscape in Central Asia is intended to encourage a discussion about where the “practical boundaries of our access to information and knowledge are.”

The film’s director, Johannes Wahlstrom, told RT that the release of Mediastan is an “acid test” to discern where the allegiances of the media lie.

screeshot from Mediastan documentary

“Compared to what we were used to, we were surprised at how honest the Central Asian journalists were in describing their censorship and limitations,” he said.

“It is often easier to see the limitations and imperfections of someone else or a country elsewhere than it is to look at oneself and once own surroundings,” Wahlstrom told RT.

The film is a challenge to Hollywood’s ‘Fifth Estate’ which was condemned by WikiLeaks as a “propaganda attack.” However, Wahlstrom accepted that the film’s “flop” had actually worked in WikiLeaks’ favor.

“The success of Mediastan, on the other hand, has a lot to do with the Hollywood story, since we have been able to use their marketing to our advantage,” Wahlstrom said."

part 1,2,3

http://rt.com/news/mediastan-wikileaks-asia-release-505/