“In my opinion, the reaction of my friends to associate the occurrence with Armenian counterparts was shallow,” such opinion was expressed by Chairman of the Azerbaijan Journalists’ Union “Yeni Nesil”, Arif Aliyev, at the opening of the conference entitled “Hate speech and information wars. Challenges of Quality Journalism” held on November 23-24 in Batumi, referring to the scandal in participation of the Azerbaijani delegate at the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. The conference is organized by the initiative of “Deutsche Welle Akademie”. Project Coordinator of South Caucasus, Moldova and Ukraine, Petra Rashkevich, in the opening speech, said, “The journalists in your country are under political, economic and other pressures, and our goal is to assist these countries for the sake of development of high-quality media.”
Note that in the framework of 6 mass media each from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, a study was conducted on October 1-31 on the manifestations of hate speech. According to the study, for example, the Azerbaijani print media contains more manifestations of hate speech (55.4 percent) than in TV or websites. Mostly, manifestations of hate speech are reflected in the ethnic, domestic political matters, whereas in the international, religious and gender aspects, these manifestations are less. In the Azerbaijani print media, the most common recipient of hate speech on interstate affairs is the Russian Federation, and then comes Armenia.
According to the study, the hate speech in Azerbaijan is defined as an average severity. Arif Aliyev wrapped up, “The state officials are the main hate speech disseminators, then come the journalists. This speaks of the low level of pluralism, it means that the journalist takes the information from somewhere and by using only one source publishes it without the second party.” Board member of Media Diversity Institute, Elina Poghosbekyan, presented the findings of the study made in the mass media of Armenia. (Studies were performed in «Голос Армении», «Aravot” newspapers, Public and “Armenia” TV channels, news.am and lragir.am websites). “In the mass media of Armenia, the manifestations of hate speech are about twice less than in Azerbaijan. In our country, such manifestations in newspapers are also more; journalists are considered to be the first source of hate speech, then comes the state officials.”
In Armenia, as well as in other countries, the level of severity of hate speech is average. Executive Director of Council of the Charter of Journalistic Ethics of Georgia, Tamar Rukhadze, presented the findings of the study for Georgian media. The studies showed that the main addressees of hate speech in the Georgian print media are first of all Russians, then Armenians. Ukrainian journalist, project manager of “Internews-Ukraine”, Andrey Kulakov, inquired that similar attitude towards the Russians is clear and what about Armenians. Among a number of excuses, one of Georgian journalist said that one of the reasons is that these two neighbors always have disagreements about who is the oldest nation in the region. We also note that in 342 (3.9 %) out of the studied 8679 publications of Azerbaijani media contains manifestations of hate speech, in 221 publications of the Armenian press out of 11,748 – 1.9 %, and in 115 out of 4,593 Georgia’s press – 2.5 percent.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
