Bad example for the OSCE

According to 2019, World Press Freedom Index compiled by the international human rights organization "Reporters without Borders" Georgia improved the situation by 1 point in the ranking, taking 60th place. After the 2018 revolution, Armenia significantly improved the situation and dropped to 61 place in the ranking. Azerbaijan continued to move in the opposite direction, ranking 166th among 180 countries.

Of course, this international statement could not affect the conference, where the issue of the safety of journalists, freedom of the media, economic self-sufficiency and access to information were the subjects of reports and discussions, and naturally in the proportion that the governments of the countries of the South Caucasus formed their policies regarding freedom of speech and expressions.

Traditionally, the example of Azerbaijan, as the most unsuccessful country in the field of freedom of speech in the Caucasus region of the OSCE remained visual for the conference participants and looked unsightly in the light of the media processes that are taking place in Armenia, with which Azerbaijan competes quite sharply in various fields for the Karabakh conflict.

Perhaps this is so, Azerbaijan is ahead of Armenia in terms of gross domestic product, per capita income, state budget, including military, but in the field of media freedom the gap is striking and inadequate to the level of the economy, resources and capabilities.

The course of the conference and the position of Azerbaijani official representatives showed that Baku is still captive to an outdated information policy, which led to a catastrophic decline in the country's image, the loss of communication between the government and society because of the loss of freedom by the media. The record reduction of the official advertising market to 7.5 million manats and the reduction in the financing of print media by the state due to the loss of their influence serve as evidence of a significant reduction in the readership and viewers of traditional media in Azerbaijan.

The mass exodus of the audience to social networks in Azerbaijan has become irreversible. This process was artificially triggered by the massive destruction of free media as important sites for readers and viewers. By virtue of this erroneous policy, Azerbaijan has outstripped the pace of transition of the audience from the field of influence, poorly operating within the framework of the norms of traditional media into a social chaotic information space.

At a conference in Tbilisi, the danger of fake news was seriously discussed by those responsible for maintaining freedom of speech in the OSCE, led by Commissioner for this topic Arlem Desir. If in countries of democracy, where appeals and initiatives are still able to some extent to work due to the presence of a culture of pluralism and tolerance, then in Azerbaijan the OSCE recommendations are difficult to implement due to aggression in the relations of opponents and advocates of freedom of speech.

From Tbilisi, the situation in the conditional Azerbaijani information space looks depressing, not only in comparison with its neighbors, but also because of the growing radical public informational opposition to the government"s official course. Just a small one-year period between OSCE conferences revealed a significant increase in the flow of anti-government informational initiatives. If the current state policy on freedom of speech is maintained by the next conference, their dominance will be indisputable