This morning I met with a young American man who is in Mongolia doing a research project for a policy foundation he works for in the States. We discussed the July 1st riots, a small bit of Mongolian politics (which I only pay minimal attention to these days), and the current state of media freedoms in Mongolia. During our discussion I was reminded of a post I wrote in 2005 about Free and Fair Media. I drew a comparison of free and fair media using Natan Sharansky’s book, The Case for Democracy (a must read). My guest asked me, “In five years do you think the condition of Mongolian media will be significantly improved?” I thought about it for a moment and gave a resounding yes.

In the Sates conservatives complain about the liberal slants on the big three networks, CNN, and MSNBC. The left complains about the conservative slant on FOX News. In some ways there are similar things happening here. For instance, many people complain about the MPRP slant of TV9 and TV5. Others complain about the Democratic Party slant of C1 or NTV. In many ways, comparatively speaking, the Mongolian situation is similar to the U.S. Regardless of the bickering between sides it is a legitimate exercise of media freedom to slant stories however a station may wish. If MSNBC wants to slant left, that’s their right. If TV9 wants to slant toward the MPRP, that’s their right. The principles of press freedom are not violated. Such practices may not necessarily be good journalism, but that’s a different issue. Each station has a right to report the news from a perspective and in the manner it sees fit. That’s part of what press freedom is about. It’s also why Eagle TV tries to remain as neutral as humanly possible. That is also the the legitimate exercise of press freedom.

So many positive things have happened in Mongolia regarding freedom of speech and press. The state of media here today is much better than it was seven years ago when I moved to Mongolia. As I explained to my guest, there is no legal censorship or pressure on news organizations, but certainly there is some political and cultural pressure from time to time—though not nearly as bad as it was seven years ago. Significant strides in media freedom have been made. There are still some problems regarding transparency of operations and political ownership issues, but overall the improvement has been great. And I believe it will continue to improve as more and more Mongolian journalists exercise their legal rights and forge ahead to take risks covering the truly important stories.

As I already noted, the discussion I had today reminded me of a post I wrote in 2005 on this subject. You can catch that post by clicking here.

I was given access to the roof of Central Tower in downtown UB today. I spent about an hour taking various shots of Ulaanbaatar. I also applied some “tilt-shift” effects to the images to create the illusion of miniatures. The images are on my Flicker page.

Raindrops falling in front of my lens on July 21st, 2009.
Click the image for a larger version on my Flickr page.

A short blurb in today’s UB Post that has some wondering if religious freedom in Mongolia may encounter problems.

The Mongolian immigration authority is examining religious missionaries in Ulaanbaatar with the help of the Metropolitan Police Department and General Taxation Office in regard of recent complaints lodged against Christian activities.

The authorities said any temple or church that breached Mongolian law will see forced closure. In Ulaanbaatar only, there are around 180 religious churches and temples operating. Around 90 of them are Christian and 60 of them Buddhist, and the rest of shamanistic practice.

We’re running all day live coverage of Mongolia’s presidential elections. Coverage started at 7am. We’ve currently got 6 live locations via three microwave links and three broadband links. This is, if we’re not mistaken, the most “in community” coverage being run by any station. In fact, only Eagle TV is providing all day coverage. Other stations are only doing cutaways for specific events, then they return to normal programming.

We’ve got nearly 50 people working the election this year and so far the coverage has been received very well. As things stand this is our best election coverage to date. I’m very proud of our team.

Catch some of the coverage yourself through our live Internet feed.

UPDATE: At 6am this morning the Democratic Party declared, based on their preliminary results, that Elbegdorj had won the presidency. They then had a little celebration and march in Sukhbaatar. The catch is that the official results have not been announced yet. Everyone is still waiting on the  General Election Committee to announce the results. So, like good journalists, our people are staying on the clock 24/7 while we wait. Coverage continues and viewership is growing beyond belief.

More than 15,000 people have watched the live Internet stream of the coverage so far, and the number continues to grow. A few other sites have picked up our Internet stream and embeded in on their pages. That’s good for us, thank you very much.

Everyone is hoping that there will not be a repeat of riots from last year. Last year one of the impetuses for the riot was an announcement of “early” and “unofficial” election results to be followed by the official results which were contrary to the first reports. Now we have another “early” claim so we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for no repeat of last year.

We’ve also got people in the door filing reports for AP, ABC Australia, and CNN. All are here for access to our video materials to file reports.

Thanks for watching locally and online. Without our audience we’d be nothing. It’s for our audience that we do everything we do.

UPDATE: The MPRP conceded the election to Elbegdorj in a noon time press conference. Eagle TV was the first to break the news. The official numbers from the GEC have not yet been announced.

For nearly three years we’ve wanted to present Eagle TV’s Bible-centered movies in a format that would help our viewers understand the Bible’s interconnectedness and depth. We came up with a concept for creating what amounts to a study Bible on TV.

Other than the daily newspaper, most Mongolians are not big readers. The culture is not necessarily oral, but it comes pretty close. If you live in the city Mongols tend to be well educated and very literate. But as you go farther into the countryside things change. Literacy is still in the 90 percentile range, but the actual practice of reading isn’t that big. The most effective way to share Christ, at least for our ministry, has been to use the storying approach. Our ministry is unique in that we use a series of Bible-centered movies to do the story telling for us.

Now we are moving our set of movies up to the next level. Instead of simply showing the movie on the screen, we are creating a unique visual format that will not only display the movies, but also add unique graphics, scripture references, and historical information to the presentation. In effect we are creating an on-air study Bible loaded with information to help deepen the viewer’s experience with the scriptures.

The only thing that has held us back from producing the programs prior to this time has been manpower and time. I thought of recruiting some of the missionaries locally to help with the project, but that didn’t work out so well. Most are already up to their eyeballs in ministry projects and relationship building. So, being the behind the desk, nose in The Book guy that I am I decided this was just one more project I needed to do myself. I don’t mind it, in fact, I love it. It simply gives me more time to explore the scriptures in depth. I’m already scriptiny my regular teaching program, Together Through The Bible, and spending 90 minutes to three hours nightly on seminary study. How much more Bible can I ingest? I think I’m finding out. My guess is that somewhere between 6-8 hours a day is being spent in Bible study for teaching, scripting, and schooling. But thankfully, since we have a full time station manager keeping watch over the station my time is freed up to do exactly this kind of work.

This afternoon I began the scripting effort on the first movie, The Bible, circa 1962 with John Huston. Yeah, it runs a bit slow at first, but the new visual elements we are introducing will really spruce things up. And to my surprise, I was able to script the first 15-minutes rather quickly, in about two hours. That may seem rather slow, but believe me, this is a complicated chore so two hours is pretty spiffy.

This Sunday Mongolia holds a hotly contested presidential election. While I’ll be on hand at the station from 7am until the election is over, most of my time will be spent scripting Bible 2.0. There’s a lot of ground for me to cover. I need to be able to script eleven movies with about 26 hours of content. A while back my assistant did a calculation figuring out how much time it took me to script an hour’s worth of programming and the number of total hours needed to complete both my TV show and Bible 2.0. When she was done she held up the numbers to me and said, “If you want to finish scripting these programs by the end of summer you’ll need 336 work days to do it” (or some such outrageous number).

Yikes.

Oh well. This is one of those times when you just look at the challenge in front of you, you grit you teeth and say, “Bring it.” Seriously though, if I manage to get this all finished before the end of August  it will truly be a God thing.

Just got word that one of our friends who lives in our building went to change a thousand dollars into tugrigs at the Golomt branch in Sansar. Lo and behold the more than 1.4 million tugrigs she received were all counterfeit. Every one of the 149 10,000 tugrig notes she received from the teller were fake.

Don’t banks scan their bills?

The news had me checking my wallet and thankful that I use my debit card for 90% of my transactions.

Today I am the guest for the PreachItTeachIt.org podcast. Our discussion revolved around missions, Mongolia, and the unique challenges Mongolian culture poses for missionaries.

Enjoy.

Superbowl starts at 7:00am in Mongolia, carried by ESPN and Mongolia’s first Superbowl party is at Irish Pub this morning. I’m sitting here with Albuquuerque visitors Servey and Neil, taking in the big screen.

The party was put together by Eagle TV’s Baika, a former Denver resident and football fan.

There’s a lot more people here than I thought would be. American football is a virtual unknown in Mongolia, but not to this group of Steelers fans. Of course, I’m geographically committed to cheer for Arizona since I’m from there…but also ‘cuz my wife told me too. I know what’s good for me.

UPDATE: As reported on CNN.