Organized by the OSCE for media of South Caucasian countries, the third conference Media-business and its problems began in Tbilisi. The event brings together the journalists and experts from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, OSCE and other international organizations, Trend Special Correspondent reports.
Making a speech at the conference, the Director of the Center for Extremal Journalism Oleg Panfilov said that the journalists of the post-Soviet countries face pressure because they participate in the information war or political processes. He said that the juridical illiteracy of journalists equal to the illiteracy of officials. They have many problems with the officials.
Panfilov underlined that there are two key reasons for the problem with media of former Soviet countries weak education and absence of the freedom of press. He offered the journalists to begin new formation of media in South Caucasus including the former Soviet countries or otherwise to remain as previous.
The editor-in-chief of the Azerbaijani newspaper Zerkalo Kanan Guluzade touched on the legal and political working conditions of media in Azerbaijan. He said that today nearly 2,600 medias have entered into official registration in Azerbaijan. The matter in not the number, but quality, he said. According to him, there is a small number of state medias
in Azerbaijan. The representatives of the medias under the government have a large access to information and state officials.
The expert Zviad Koridze touched upon the topic of the former state media in Georgia. He stressed that several state medias still remain in Georgia, which receive grants from the state.
The representative of CS Publishing House Vardan Alonyan touched on the newspaper business in Armenia. He stressed that there are problems with social-political newspapers in Armenian. The prices for the newspaper production have increased over past 12 years, but the prices of newspapers remain as previous.
The former Juridical Adviser of London Open Society Fund Morris Lipson stressed that the programs of the same quality are transmitted on many televisions of South Caucasian countries. He stressed that there are various kinds of monopoly in different countries. He set an example from the situation in Italy. In this country, former Primer Minster Silvia Berluskon has three TV channels. In addition, Lipson touched up on the other kinds of dominations in the TV channel market and mentioned the importance of transferring to the digital broadcasting to eliminate many problems in the TV channels.
In addition, he made a number of recommendations. First of all, he said that it needs to adopt a law preventing the predominance of several players on media market and use the rules ensuring the transparency in this respect.