The problem of access to information in an information vacuum

Baku/27.05.21/Turan: Recently an information has been spread that the Azerbaijani military are building posts on the border. Only after information about this and even a video was published on social networks, the official structures of Azerbaijan made a statement. Representatives of official structures, which post information only on their websites and send by e-mail, often do not answer calls and inquiries from journalists.

In many cases, the public can obtain information about an event only from the speeches of President Ilham Aliyev. On May 21, during the discussion in the video format of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center "South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Development and Cooperation" Ilham Aliyev stated that Azerbaijan returned 14 detained soldiers to Armenia. Prior to that, no official organization reported on the number of returned soldiers.

What are the official institutions closed to the press?

The Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan "On Access to Information" states that access to information in Azerbaijan is free of charge. Everyone who contacts the owner of the information has the right to find out whether the requested information is in the possession of the owner of the information, to receive information freely, without hindrance and on equal terms for everyone.

The chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Milli Mejlis, Zahid Oruj, told Turan that in the modern period, the government management system could be implemented precisely through communication.

The MP believes that power means communication.

“Where there is an information vacuum, there will definitely be troll armies, rumors, provocations of forces trying to carry out socio-psychological engineering,” he said.

The chair of the committee noted that although the war ends in the form of armed operations, its other phases continue to occur on a daily basis.

“If the armed forces, without tanks and guns with their bare hands, are restoring the state border step by step, which is the main attribute of our independence, then in this case the information policy becomes number one. For several months, we have been calling the captured Armenians terrorists, the opposing side prisoners of war. There is a very serious need for our diplomacy and public representatives to react actively,” he said.

Oruj says that the Azerbaijani society carried out an active information policy during the 44-day war.

“His model needs to be improved. The first person in the state did not allow a repetition of the information blockade, which we experienced, at least in the 90s, not only on military squares, but also through interviews with TV channels considered information giants. Even the audience from these countries was taken into account, and during the broadcast we saw that most of the comments were sympathetic to us and worked in our favor,” he said.

Oruj stressed that, based on this; all branches of government should consider information, which is an integral part of modern social life and governance, as their daily work.

Oruj stressed that, based on this; all branches of government should consider information, which is an integral part of modern social life and governance, as their daily work.

“We must understand that today accounts in social networks of all media structures or structures in power must be active. In the modern era, the Internet has assumed the function of informing the population, the emergence of social networks has changed the essence of governance. We must understand that power cannot be transferred to social networks,” he said.

According to the deputy, dominance in the information space should always be a part of politics, state line.

“If there is no official position, then alternative leaders of public opinion are invading the information space in any form. This means that information is becoming more dangerous than weapons”, noted Oruj.

Media expert, lawyer Khalid Agaliyev said that the legislation of Azerbaijan defines several ways of disclosing public information.

“One of them is online disclosure. The law "On Access to Information" contains a list of information that must be disclosed online," he said.

The expert says that institutions that own public information are open by about 50-60 percent. "There are structures in which the openness of information is 80 percent; there are structures in which this figure is about 20 percent."

Agaliyev noted that requests are another way of disclosing information.

"These can be verbal or written requests. Looking at the status of requests execution, about half of every 10 requests are answered. It also depends more on the information you want. For example, you can submit 100 requests to a government agency and request detailed information on budget expenditures, and get an answer to 2-3 percent of the request, but questions may arise when out of 10 requests, 7 will be answered,” he said.

The expert noted that if you look at the reasons for non-disclosure of information, then in addition to hiding shortcomings in the activities of the structure, technical issues are also revealed. When the law "On Access to Information" was adopted, it was envisaged that all state structures in the field of public information should create appropriate structural subdivisions in it. However, in this form, structural divisions were not created in most of the Azerbaijani structures and continued to work in the format of the old Soviet press services. This is not enough to provide quality services," said Agaliyev.

He stressed that one of the problems in the field of the right to access information is that no one is punished for violating this right.

“If any official does not provide the journalist with the public information, he can be brought to administrative responsibility. This legislation has been in effect for 15 years, and these provisions have not yet come into force. The courts claim that the percentage of satisfaction of claims for information requests is very low, and in the best case, 1-2 out of 10 lawsuits can be satisfied,” Agaliyev said. —0—