The Baku office of the Council of Europe (CE) publicized the results of the first week of the Azerbaijan’s media monitoring on the eve of the November parliamentary elections. The monitoring is being conducted targeted to the conformity of the “Code of behavior of the Azerbaijan’s media during the election campaign”, adopted on 13 July 2005 on the results of the joint workshop held by CE and the Azerbaijan’s President Executive Office, Trend reports
The expert’s team head Seynal Mammadli said, the monitoring was held in the period from 19 September till 24 September 2005 and covered 42 newspapers and 2 TV channels. According to the results of the printed media poll, the largest number of infringements was recorded in the materials of the oppositional Azadlig newspaper. Among 131 articles, dedicated to the forthcoming parliamentary elections in 100 of them violations were revealed (76,33 %). In the second place is the government “Halg Gaseti” and violations of the Code of Behavior were recorded in 9 from 12 articles (75%) of these newspapers. The oppositional “Yeni Musavat” newspaper with 71,69 % and the independent В"525-th gazetteВ" with 65,93 % share the third and the fourth places.
According to Mammadli, during the first week only two (the Public TV and the TV channel “Lider”) from 6 planned for monitoring TV channels of Azerbaijan were analyzed. On the results of the monitoring in 40 programs of the Public TV 20 infringements were recorded, while in 40 programs of the Lider TV channel only 6 cases of the Code non-compliance were noted.
В"The monitoring is targeted at bringing the real state of affairs to the Azerbaijani public. The citizens are to know which media do not fulfill their commitments”, the expert noted, saying the monitoring will affect positively the pre-election situation in the country.
The monitoring will be accomplished on 19 November. The CE Secretary General special representative in Azerbaijan Matts Lindberg noted the results of the monitoring will be incorporated into the CE final report on the 6 November 2005 parliamentary elections.