Armenia-Azerbaijan Media Bias

Background:

Media is a powerful tool for shaping public opinion. It also has the potential to build confidence across existing fracture lines by covering a wide spectrum of issues, relying on a bigger range of sources for stories, representing the voices of the non-elite as well as the elite, and consciously eliminating bias from coverage. However, without accurate and unbiased information free of negative rhetoric and stereotype, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will continue to see themselves as enemies without any commonalities. Unfortunately, the media in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially television, is one of the primary vehicles by which faulty information is distributed about the other country. To address these issues, EPF’s Armenia-Azerbaijan Media Bias program combines focus group-based research on public perceptions about media bias with training for 15 television and newspaper journalists and editors in each country; two separate media monitoring assessments to measure changes in bias and to further document the types of inaccuracies that frequently occur; and an innovation fund to launch small, cross-border pilot projects addressing issues of bias. EPF will work closely with the program’s four core partners: Yeni Nesil (Azerbaijan), the Yerevan Press Club, Internews-Az and Internews-Am.

Goal:

To increase the amount of accurate and unbiased reporting of the bilateral relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and to foster a cooperative network of editors, journalists and media NGOs from Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Impacts:

The program commenced in June 2008 with grant contracts concluded between EPF in Armenia and Azerbaijan on the one hand and the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on the other hand. In summer 2008, CRRC teams in Armenia and Azerbaijan held focus groups in Armenia and Azerbaijan, respectively, and produced a report on public attitudes toward and trust in the media, especially, regarding Armenia-Azerbaijan relations. The report will be translated into Armenian and Azerbaijani and will be presented to international and local stakeholders in both countries. It will also be used as reference material during the upcoming national trainings for journalists and editors, as well as for the elaboration of an action plan with recommendations and guidelines for initiatives that increase accuracy and unbiased reporting) at the regional conference of targeted Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists and editors later this year. Among other things, the report recommends that “…NGO[s] and the donor community need to stress time and again to those who promote biased media in Armenia and Azerbaijan that accurate reporting can be in the state’s interest – that unbiased media is not a good in and of itself and beyond improving local stability, it is in the long-term stability and geopolitical interest of both countries to provide unbiased news.”

In August 2008, the key staff of the Yerevan Press Club (Armenia) and Yeni Nesil (Azerbaijan) participated in the EPF-organized session led by British media experts to develop a methodology for media bias assessment. On September 15, 2008, the Yerevan Press Club and Yeni Nesil initiated a two-month baseline assessment of bias in television and print and electronic media of Azerbaijan and Armenia using internationally recognized data collection and analysis methodologies. The first draft of the baseline report on the results of the assessment was elaborated in December 2008. Concurrently, national teams of trainers are further elaborating universal training modules and materials (that they received at the ToT session led by the above-mentioned British experts) in order to make them correspond to local realities in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

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