Project’s Name: Monitoring of Observance of Professional Ethics Standards and Laws in Azerbaijan’s Media

Project’s Authors: Azerbaijan Journalists Union, New Generation Journalists Union, Ruh Organization for Journalists Protection, Najaf Najafov Foundation, Democratic Journalists League

The project’s aim is to observe the trends in Azerbaijan’s media, inform the society about them, improve the professional activities of Azerbaijan’s journalists, help them correct their errors and shortcomings and gain new experience and skills.

The 12-month investigation started on 10.01.2007 and will be completed on 09.30.2008. It abides by the principles suggested by the New Generation Journalists Union. These principles correspond to the Ethics Code of Azerbaijani Journalists, according to which the entirely supposed professional ethics violations in the media are symbolized by 50 codes. The symbolized violations are grouped into 13 subgroups, according to their similarity. These subgroups are united into three main groups. The instruction for monitors on the ways of conducting the investigation is still the key issue that can be used as a criterion here. The instruction is attached to the report.

The monitoring regarded 57-59 newspapers and 3 Internet sites. The media are issued in Azerbaijani and Russian. The newspapers are printed at least once a week (however, the periodicity of several newspapers sometimes changes). The investigation’s main peculiarity is drawing the attention to only one segment of journalism – the professional ethics principles. The political, social and other areas and problems of journalism are beyond the frameworks of the investigation.

April was the sixth month of the investigation. That is why we decided to submit not only this month’s results, but also those for the entire six-month period.

Overall 18,715 violations were registered during the first 3-month period of the investigation (November and December 2007 and January 2008). This meant 6,238 violations every month on the average. Overall 9,016 violations were registered over the last three months (February – 3,242, March – 1,904, April – 3,870), which meant 3,005 violations on the average monthly. Therefore there were two times fewer violations than in the first three months. We noticed in our previous report that the ethics violations in media showed a decreasing trend. However, we also noted that the coming presidential elections could seriously affect the situation and weaken the positive trend that already emerged. The further increase in the violations – 3,870 in April against the 3,242 of February and the 1,904 of March proved this prediction. However, the general decrease in the violations against the last two months of 2007 (7,210 in November and 7,150 in December) looks very obvious and indicative.

- What were the most obvious factors revealed by the six-month monitoring against the background of decrease in the ethics violations?

- Overall 27,720 violations were revealed on the three groups during the six-month monitoring. The violations were grouped as follows:

This means Group N3 including the most serious violations was represented the least of all – by 2,949 violations (10.6%).

Most of the violations (21,020 or 75.8%) referred to the four codes shown below:

Code 15 belongs to Group 2 and the other three codes belong to Group 1. The rest of the violations (6,700 or 24.2%) belong to 32 codes. We suppose the fact will attract attention.

The Code 15 violations were mainly observed in the Yeni Musavat newspaper. This newspaper was only twice exceeded on this index by the 24 Saat newspaper during the six-month monitoring (in January and February). The Yeni Musavat was the “leader” on this code in November (96), December (207), March (108), and April (130). In general, 749 (44.5%) of the entire violations made by this newspaper during the 6-month period (1,682) belonged to Code 15. The Yeni Musavat was also ahead of all others on Code 01 violations (Unbalanced information). Only in January this paper was exceeded on this index by the Azerbaijan newspaper (55). The Yeni Musavat released unbalanced information 397 times in the period of our investigation (96 in November, 100 in December, 41 in January, 42 in February, 49 in March, and 69 in April).

The situation with the violations grouped on Codes 06 and 08 should attract attention, because the Ses newspaper suddenly “surpassed” the others on these indexes, beginning from February 2008. This paper made Code 06 violations (Journalist is biased) 245 times and Code 08 violations (Journalist propagates for or against) 206 times over the last three months of our investigation.

The Ses made other violations too. The monitoring team revealed this newspaper made more violations than others on all the codes in April (519) and became the “champion” of the “negative rating list”. The paper was negative N1 in April on Group 3 representing the most serious violations (libeling and defamation, insult of honor and dignity, interference in people’s personal life). The Ses made 128 of them. The paper also made 315 violations on Group 2 (Respect to the sources of information), being the negative “leader” here too.

The monitoring team also revealed that the Ses, Ideal and Muasir Musavat newspapers became especially aggressive over the last few months. Though the Muasir Musavat is printed only three times a week, it showed the following indexes on Group 3, beginning from January: January – 21.49% (49), February – 34% (68), March – 22.21% (36), and April – 14.2% (56).

The legal examination of the violations exposed by the monitoring team proved that 83% of the Group 3 violations of April were made by the following three newspapers: the Ideal - 32%, the Muasir Musavat - 27% and the Ses - 24%. Most of these violations (54%) were illegal enough to institute criminal proceedings against. The “corpus delicti” violations were grouped as follows: the Muasir Musavat - 16, the Ideal - 13, and the Ses - 7.

Of course, the monitoring team should only register the violations of journalism ethics in Azerbaijan’s media. But we also ought to say the following as citizens of Azerbaijan:

At first, the unjust and untrue opinion of the Azerbaijani media as insulting, defaming, libeling, etc. has been spread mainly by the very three newspapers that themselves made the gravest violations most of all. We believe this should be discussed at the Council of Press.

At second, when respectable and well-known newspapers publish anything that could be interpreted as defamation or libeling, the response comes immediately. Both the allegedly insulted person and the public in general respond to this strictly. But the above-mentioned three newspapers insult and defame a lot of people in their every issue, and often do this in the way that should normally cause them to stand before the court for the obvious presence of corpus delicti. But the insulted people do not pay attention to the defamation spread by these media. When asked about their indifferent attitude, the victims of the libeling say they are “bored with this and there is no use applying to the court”. This means the people do not believe the court can ever do anything about these three newspapers.

Why should this happen?! Why are the people so indifferent about the necessity of proving and protecting the truth and their own good reputation? Maybe, the courts and public prosecutors should take on the initiative and create a judicial precedent of protecting the citizens’ rights even if they have not applied for that? In fact, according to the law, printed articles are considered as sources of information and reference for the law enforcement bodies even if no citizen has complained about them.

And now let us look through the April results obtained by the monitoring team.

Overall 3,870 violations were registered in the observed media in April. The violations were grouped as follows:

The Zaman, Palitra and Azerbaijan newspapers entered the first ten instead of the Hurriyyet, Olaylar and Express papers that were represented here in March. The other seven remained as they were.

The ten violations spread most of all are shown in the table below:

The negative “top ten” newspapers on the three violation groups are shown below.

Group 1 (Serving the Truth, Accuracy and Objectiveness):

Group 2 (Respect to Information Sources)

Group 3 (Protection of Image, Honor and Dignity, Inviolability of Personal Life)

The results on the observed web sites were as follows:

Our team’s telephone number is 4933339.

Our email address is monitorinq@inbox.ru

The project’s Coordinator is Israil Musayev.

The project’s (Monitoring of Observance of Professional Ethics Standards and Laws in Azerbaijan’s Media) results for April 2008 will be more entirely displayed on the web site: http://nnf.az