Experts have identified significant violations of the law in the pro-government media

A group of media experts led by Alesker Mammadli conducted monitoring of Azerbaijani media receiving state financial assistance. For 4 months (from July 15 to November 15, 2023), 16 media outlets were monitored for compliance with legal requirements and professional ethics. In addition, the effectiveness of the use of budget funds allocated to support the media was checked. The results of the monitoring were presented on March 6 at an online conference with the participation of journalists, media experts and civil society activists.

The purpose of the monitoring was to ask how much the professionalism of the media has increased and whether they comply with legal obligations after the adoption of the new media law, developed under the pretext of improving the media sphere, the preamble of the 38-page study says. 

The new law, which came into force in 2022, allows the activities of media entities after their registration in the Media Register, which by law should be publicly available. However, it is still on his website https://reyestr.media.gov.az / there is no information about the number of media that have received state registration and the number of media that have been refused.

According to unofficial data, over 20 media outlets have filed lawsuits in the courts for refusing registration. At the same time, there are also resources that did not apply for registration. As a rule, independent media are denied registration, the report notes. The media that received financial assistance from the Media Development Agency were selected for monitoring. These are 17 daily and weekly newspapers and 39 online resources. Of these 56 media, 16 were selected based on the number of the audience determined by the counters on the Internet. Thus, 5 daily newspapers, 5 weekly newspapers and 6 online media were selected.

These are the daily newspapers “Yeni Musavat”, “525th newspaper”, “Baki Khabar”, “Yeni Azerbaijan” and “Syas”, weeklies - “Adalat”, “Unique”, “Herbi Und”, “Hurriyet” and “Hafta ichi”, as well as news sites - Qafqazinfo.az, Sonxəbər.az , Yenisabah.az , Mətbuat.az , Bizimmedia.az , Publika.az .

The monitoring was carried out according to the following criteria:

• Respect for the presumption of innocence;

• respect for privacy, protection of personal data, honor and dignity;

• protection of the identity of minors, victims;

• ensuring balance, impartiality, truthfulness, objectivity;

• Stereotypes and unacceptability of hate speech.

In just 4 months, 182,267 pieces of information were studied.  In 9,863 of them, information was admitted, the dissemination of which is prohibited by law. Of these, 4,518 (45.81%) accounted for online media, 3,279 (33.25%) for daily newspapers and 2,066 (20.95%) for weeklies. By the nature of the violations, most of the interventions in the "privacy of personal life" were revealed. There were 4,224 such violations, or 43.38% of the total number of violations.