The authorities intend to take under control the information environment

Baku/22.07.21/Turan: On July 22, the National Press Day, Mehman Aliyev, the director of the first in Azerbaijan independent "Turan” News Agency, commented on the situation with freedom of speech in the "Difficult Question" program.

The print media, from which the history of the Azerbaijani press began, can be said to have died, and by no means a natural death, Aliyev said. This is a natural result of the government's long-term media policy. The implementation of this policy began in 1998, when there were no Internet publications yet; there were only TV channels and print media. The true flagships of the domestic media were the few independent newspapers, which became the main alternative to the pro-government media, since all TV channels were controlled by the government.

At that time, censorship had already been abolished, and therefore, in order to neutralize the independent press, the government decided to destroy the economic basis (by taking control of the advertising market and destroying print distribution networks) of the media, he said.

“It was a long-term policy, as a result of which the print media were put into the archives of history,” he said.

As for the Internet publications that emerged later, according to Aliyev, the government gradually took them under the control. Since 2005, a gigantic flow of petrodollars has poured into the country. This allowed the government to create manual online publications. The media created and developed in the course of a natural process, unable to withstand government pressure, were virtually bankrupt. They were replaced by artificially created ersatz media. It is clear that something artificially created cannot be effective. Moreover, under conditions of censorship, both political and economic. Therefore, our media suffered serious losses. A completely ugly situation was created - TV channels, the remnants of the print media, online media began to be financed partially legally, and mostly illegally by government circles. It is obvious that these publications were and continue to be dependent on the authorities both politically and economically.

According to Aliyev, the authorities hoped that in this way they would be able to form public opinion, manipulate it, orienting it in the direction it needed. However, these expectations did not come true. This was prevented by the emergence of social networks. Society itself began to produce information in them, to carry out information exchange, etc. A parallel information environment has emerged, beyond government control.

“It is not surprising that society today takes information from social media, and the media rushed there too. All this, of course, causes concern for the authorities, and now they are thinking about restrictive measures to stop this process. All this prompted the government to create a Media Development Agency and start developing a legislative framework, which helped to take control of not only the media, but the entire information environment,”  Aliyev said. –0--