British Foreign Office declared media freedom its priority

Baku/05.01.19/Turan: The celebration of World Press Freedom Day celebrated on May 3 for Great Britain this year is particularly significant in the light of the decision of the Foreign Ministry of the United Kingdom that media freedom is one of the priorities of the country's foreign policy.

This means that London will pay even more attention to freedom of the media, British Ambassador to Baku Carol Crofts said at a meeting with Azerbaijani journalists on Wednesday.

The British Foreign Office in July will hold an international conference on media freedom, to which foreign ministers, civil society and media representatives from around the world will be invited.

Journalism continues to be a dangerous profession, the ambassador continued. In 2018, a record number of journalists were killed. Another problem of modern media is fake news, Crofts stressed. The ambassador called one of the examples of this problem the coverage of "The Case of Scripals" in Azerbaijan.

"Last year, for the first time after World War II, the United Kingdom was confronted with the use of chemical weapons, which is linked to the Case Scripal.

Azerbaijani media published 46 stories on this topic, which reflected the point of view of Moscow. And only one story reflected the view from London and told the truth," the ambassador continued.

Azerbaijani expert in the field of media rights, Alesker Mammadov, noted that free media activities depend not only on the journalists themselves. For this, the state should form the legal and practical environment. In this sense, Azerbaijani journalism is not lucky. In the 28th year of independence, Azerbaijan ranked 166 in the index of press freedom in the world. The blocking of sites that are not acceptable to the authorities, including without a court decision, has become a new problem in recent years. From 3 to 4, The number of articles in the criminal code that punish defamation has increased from 3 to 4.

World Press Freedom Day in the dungeons celebrate a well-known freedom advocates: Afgan Mukhtarly and Seymour Hazy, and three more journalists.

Mammadov hopes that the next World Freedom Day in 2020 Azerbaijan will meet without journalists in prisons, without Articles in the Criminal Code for defamation, without blocking the online media. - 06C16--