Media Development Agency confirmed its intention to send to court media unregistered in Media Registry

Baku/10/20/22/Turan: In a message to Turan, commenting on the rules of the Media Register that came into force on September 22, a representative of the state Media Development Agency (MDA) said that according to the "Law on Media", the fate of media that have not applied for registration in the Register within six months will be considered in court, upon submission of MDA. Turan reported this in the Article "Media outlets that failed to apply for registration in MEDIA will face trial."

However, the Law on Media does not say anything like that, there are no direct and indirect instructions about it.

Turning to the MDA for clarification, Turan received a second, lengthy explanation from there.

As stated in a letter from director of the communication department of Saida Shafieva, according to Article 78.3 of the "Law on Media", the print and online media that were in force before the Law came into force must, within six months from the date of formation of the Media Register, apply to the MDA in line with the rules for maintaining the Media Register as set forth  in Article 73.6 of the "Law on Media".

“This provision," the MDA explained, "has a transitional status and, before the Law comes into force, is intended to balance the legal position of the media that worked before this Law with the newly created media.

Paragraph 74.1 of the Law defines the requirements for entities that have applied to the Media Register for inclusion in it. The media, which operated before the adoption of the Law, could not know about the adoption of such rules in the future. It is for this reason that the legislator has formed an article on temporary points and given these entities a six-month period to bring their activities in accordance with the new Law by contacting the Media Register," the letter from the MDA says.

After a six-month period from the start of the Media Registry, Article 78.3 of the Law becomes invalid and from that day on, Article 62.2 of the Law is valid for all media entities, regardless of the time of their creation.

According to Article 65.4.4 of the "Law on Media", the cases of subjects of print and online media who have not applied to the Media Agency, or those whose data will not be confirmed during verification, will be considered in court. This process corresponds to Article 62.2 of the "Law on Media," the explanation from the Media Development Agency says.

Thus, the Turan agency concludes, there is a hidden meaning embedded in the "Law on Media" which has a pronounced repressive character, and has nothing to do with the oral statements of the head of the MDA about the unhindered work of the media that are not registered in the Register. Six months after the start of the MDA activity its Register from a purely informational and statistical resource, as presented in the MDA earlier, is reformatted into a punitive one, which can accept pleasing media into its ranks, refuse objectionable, and also exclude media that have been fined before the authorities. And after being excluded from the Register, these journalistic collectives, as well as previously functioning editorial offices that did not apply to the Register for registration, will be brought before the court, whose close dependence on the authorities in the Azerbaijani reality is well known.

It makes no sense to discuss what serial decisions the judges will make on the submission of the MDA, so that Turan is not accused of insulting the Azerbaijani court.-0-