Table of Contents I. Introduction or why to research Azerbaijan

Table of Contents

I. Introduction or why to research Azerbaijan…………………………………………………..2

I.1 Azerbaijan and post-Communist Transformation in Media …………………………3

I.2 Journalism ethics……………………………………………………………………..4

I.2.1 Professionalization……………………………………………………………...4

I.2.2 Western vs. Soviet Objectivity………………………………………………….6

I.2.3 Political Instrumentalization of Media………………………………………….9

I.2.4 Deprofessionalization and proletarization………………………………………9
I.3 Ethical norms and codes…………………………………………………………….10

I.4 Editors

I.4.1 Editors and their functions…………………………………………………….13

I.4.2 Editors Under the Looking Glass……………………………………………...14

I.5 Typical Newsroom Hierarchy in Azerbaijani……………………………….............15
II. Research project

II.1 Research purpose and research questions………………………………………….19

II.2 Basic Concepts……………………………………………………………………..21

II.3 Research population………………………………………………………………..21

II.4 Selected methods of research and data collection in Azerbaijan…………………..23
III. Empirical data and its interpretation………………………………………………………..24

III.1.1 Gender, age and marital status data…..…….………………………………..25

III.1.2 Education of respondents ……………………………………………………25

III.1.3 Editors and their stances towards journalism education……………………..26

III.1.4 Work experience……………………………………………………………..28

III.1.5 Satisfaction and motivation of Azeri editors………………………………...28

III.1.6 Role of editors in Azerbaijan………………………………………………...31

III.1.7 Summary……………………………………………………………………..32

III.2 Editor’s stances towards professional ethics…………………………………..33

III.2.1 Journalism ethics…………………………………………………………….33

III.2.2 Editors and ethical codes…………………………………………………….35

III.2.3 Union of Azerbaijan Journalists and its place among journalists……………38

III.2.4 Editors and Ethical Dilemmas……………………………………………….44

III.2.5 Chapter Summary……………………………………………………………49

IV. Types of editors………………………………………………………………………………..50
V. Conclusion

V.1. Reality of Azerbaijani journalism ………………………………………………...51

V.2. Future researches………………………………………………………………….53
VI. Index……………………………………………………………………………………………55
VII. List of literature………………………………………………………………………………56


I. Introduction or why to research Azerbaijan
Human societies are dynamic entities that through different processes constantly undergo changes. Along with changes in a society, or should we say in an audience, methods of gathering and dissemination of information also pass through significant metamorphosis. Azerbaijan presents a unique case when a country with a democratic regime installed in 1918 after collapse of the Czarist Russia was occupied and forcefully annexed by the Soviet Union. For more than 70 years the country gradually passed through totalitarian, quasi-totalitarian, authoritative stages of Soviet regime ending with its collapse in 1991 and emergence of Newly Independent States. However, though the country regained its independence the seventy years of totalitarian hardships left a deep footprint in traditions and habits as well as political culture in Azerbaijani society. Journalism being an adapting field that changes along with the society it serves did not escape those negative influences either.

During early stages of its transition period Azerbaijan as well as other NIS countries declared its adherence to democratic values meaning among other things liberation of press from censorship and freedom of speech and information. Seventeen years later Azerbaijani media moved from totally state-run media system into a system of a variety of media outlets constituting approximately 3000 titles. Liberalization of press registration, however did not automatically lead to establishment of free media environment and nowadays the situation with mass media remains far from matching democratic standards. While causes for the failure of the process of media liberalization may be multiple and interconnected one of the most obvious is of course ongoing war with neighboring country Armenia that currently occupies 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory. For fifteen years Azerbaijan is in a state of neither peace nor “hot” war and is by all means a war-torn regime and that impacts not only functioning of media but of all other institutions of democratic development. In this context Azerbaijan is clearly different from Baltic states that evolved from post-soviet regimes into competitive democracies.

Recently, political regime of Azerbaijan came under heavy criticism by international media and human rights organizations as well as geopolitical actors for the situation when many journalists of Azerbaijan are exposed to physical violence and criminal prosecution for their thoughts and articles expressed via media outlets. It is necessary to say that the bulk of court cases against journalists in Azerbaijan constitute defamation, libel and personal insult cases where journalists are accused of not respecting honor and dignity of politicians, celebrities, etc. and of intentional besmirching of their names. Many journalists as well as media right activists point out flaws in Azerbaijan Criminal and Civil Codes that allow authorities to use effectively gaps to silence political critics. However, it is necessary to say that media of Azerbaijan show high level of political parallelism
and instrumentalization giving way to an excessively partisan, unfair, unbalanced and sometimes beyond any ethics, journalism.

Remarkably, for the past twenty years of the independence there were only two publications concerning media of Azerbaijan. Author of one of them “Public TV in Press Mirror” Zeynal Mammedli was taken to court where he was fined and the book was ordered to be withdrawn from circulation for author’s bias coverage of the subject. The second title “Azerbaijan Media Baseline Assessment” published by Internews Azerbaijan in 2004 is a book providing basic overview of Azerbaijan media. However, due to deficiencies in implementation of the research authors declare right away that the publication is not of scientific but rather of illustrative nature.

Following research might be of interest both for scholars and general public since its aim is to reveal people who manage Azeri media and play pivotal role in the functioning of organism called printed press of Azerbaijan – editors. By ascertaining profile of this caste of media managers we to certain extend may advance to answering a question – why media in Azerbaijan are as they are?

I.1 Azerbaijan and post-Communist Transformation in Media
Seventeen years passing from the collapse of the Soviet Union Azerbaijan still finds itself in the process of transition and we need to ask ourselves the question: when this transformation will be over? Did Azerbaijan achieve the successful shift from one system to another? The answer is probably not very pleasing since an impartial observer may find that Azerbaijan due to different reasons deviated from democratization process and now possesses a society with limited pluralism (Balik,S.-Kubat, M. 2004) that does not allow Azeri media to transform successfully into watch-dogs and execute appropriate functions that media enjoy in consolidated democratic states. Karol Jakubowicz in his work Post-Communist Media Development in Perspective proposes to use definition used by World Bank (2002) that has categorized post-communist countries, combining analysis of political system type with that of economic policy (Jakubowicz 2005). Countries emerged after break up of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are split in two categories – Category A and Category B. First category is represented by countries that due to their democratic traditions and intensive relationships with the West were able to create elites that were more inclined to implement consistent reforms towards democratization once the Soviet colossus has fallen. Among countries belonging to this type is Czech Republic. Azerbaijan on the contrary finds itself in category B. Even though Azerbaijan had very liberal democratic regime¹ installed in 1918 its short
existence did not allow creation of strong democratic traditions in the society. Along with reestablishing its independence Azerbaijan immediately was dragged into war with its neighbor Armenia that occupied its territories. The loss in the Karabakh war and 14 years of life in the state of neither peace nor war have caused understandable deviations from the process of democratization and Azerbaijan along with its neighbors Georgia and Armenia finds itself in category B as a war-torn regime. Jakubowicz identifies eight complementary or contradictory processes of change in post-communist media systems (ibid). One of the above mentioned processes and the corner stone of this research’s interest is professionalization of journalists.

I.2 Journalism ethics

Simple as it seems the junction of these two words has caused debates that drag on since the last century. The term “journalism ethics” implies that journalism as any other profession has its moral issues that arise due to special knowledge that professionals gain while working in their field, and that professionals while providing service to the public they serve are regulated by a codex of rules. This explanation is sufficient only to the point when someone sets a question forward – wait, is journalism even a profession?

I.2.1. Professionalization

What can be defined as a profession? Though being a vague, term profession stands for an occupation, vocation or career that requires specialized knowledge of its subject and involves academic training and a formal qualification to do the job. In other words, it is expected that one who calls himself professional uses systematic knowledge and possesses expertness in the subject. Moreover, his activity is monitored and regulated by a board of other professionals that examine professional’s competence and skills as well as adherence to an ethical code of conduct. Craft or vocation can become a profession only after a process of professionalization that requires transformation of a craft or vocation into an institute possessing formal requirements based upon education, controlling regulatory body with powers to accept and punish its members in case of disobeying professional rules. Professionals tend to enjoy high levels of autonomy, meaning they have a high degree of freedom to make independent judgments about their work.

However, the concept of autonomy includes not only judgment, but also self-interest and a continuous process of critical evaluation of ethics and procedures from within the profession itself. Due to these factors, it is not uncommon that society bestows upon professionals high social status generated largely by high social evaluation of professional’s work, which is regarded as vital to the well being of the society. Many professions require expertise in the subject since without it entry to the profession is barred and that gives power and self-esteem that allows some professions act monopolistic in the process of serving society. For instance, medical workers and lawyers have the power, prestige and value that society bestows upon them and thus they enjoy high social status and are regarded as professionals.

In essence, it is possible to separate the process of professionalization in two distinguishable levels – structural and attitude-related. The structural level embraces education and profession entry requirements while attitude-related level as is obvious from the name is defined by one’s attitude towards profession and its mission. Many scholars and journalists agree that journalism meets those definitions only conditionally and is rather a semi-profession than a full-blooded profession (Volek, 2007). Journalism has no formal entry requirements for new members and does not posses fully systematic knowledge obtained in the process of education and required for conduct of professional activity. Journalists are adaptive and are expected to show expertise in different subjects and that illustrates their flexibility to choose their field of competence as well as choose what kind of public service ideal they serve. Moreover, it is a common theme that journalistic organizations have, with few exceptions, very little impact on day to day practice and serve journalists as a forum for exchange of ideas rather than a controlling regulatory body.

Hallin and Mancini (2004) stress that professionalization degree of journalists varies across media systems however, Russian scholar Svetlana Juskevits from University of Tampere of Finland goes farther and proposes that in post-Soviet countries the term of profession might have different connotations due to specific realities of the Soviet Union.

It seems more fruitful to identify as a phenomenon the 'Soviet professions' and to study them as the product of the Soviet system and to put the question on how they developed in the conditions of the modernization of not liberal society according to the state plan and the process of leveling of class structure. In this context there was a single occupation, which held the highest status in the social stratification and occupations and met all requirements for a true profession in the western theory. In particular it had power, prestige, autonomy, self-control and self-regulation, body of knowledge and techniques, service orientation, ethics, membership. This occupation was party practice (Juskevits 2001).

Thus, a research implemented in any of post-Soviet republics must proceed with maximum precautions and not take bluntly theories based on studies of Western media but adapt it to local realities or completely discard them as irrelevant to the local context. In the research Professional Roles of Contemporary Russian Journalists conducted by Juskevits in 2001, she notes that a decade later after collapse of the Soviet Union the usage of the term profession in Russia remains in the Soviet tradition and brings mainly the trivial sense not containing any special demands on the profession and its practitioners. (idem)

I.2.2. Western vs. Soviet Objectivity

Media outlets are expected to comply with certain standards in the process of creation of media products. One of the key standards is the quality of information distributed by media (McQuail 1999). That is where objectivity term steps in and ensures the quality of information. The question of objectivity is another popular debate topic that does not seem to exhaust for at least half a century. The camp of objectivity deniers argues that journalistic objectivity is an oxymoron since it is impossible to remain absolutely neutral of the subject and modern term of objectivity in journalism is nothing more than a cover up of media biasness.

“Opponents of objective journalism argue that pure objectivity is unobtainable and that the notion of objectivity is, at best, a shield devised by corporate America to insure a sanitized version of the truth, and at worst, an ideological weapon used to maintain the status quo.” (Jon Katz 1997)

However, practitioners of objective journalism avoid the ongoing philosophical debate on means and values of objectivity by concentrating on methods of practice employed to achieve this unobtainable goal. Their goal is to eliminate biases that journalists bring to reporting by separation of facts from opinion. Thus, proponents of objectivity believe, that if the news reporting is based upon facts that can be verified it will lead to an objective coverage. “Penultimately, it was hoped that the extraction of reporter biases would yield a more pure form of news reporting based singularly on facts -not absolute facts, but verified, consensual facts (Walter Lippmann 1972).

However, Westerstahl proposed that objectivity does not arise solely from pure facts that by the way may have biasness inbuilt in them but from values as well (McQuail 1999). In his research dedicated to studies of objectivity among Swedish journalists Westerstahl (1983) proposed following theory [see table 1] where objectivity is bound not only to factuality but to an impartial style of presentation of acquired information.

Westerstahl proposed that factuality depends on unsolicited by opinion truth that can be verified in a positivist manner. The second necessary precondition – relevance, is less clear and unambiguous since there can be a distinct cleavage in its understanding between general audience and professionals i.e. what those two groups consider to be of interest and relevance.

The second precondition for objectivity according to Westerstahl’s theory is impartiality that can be achieved by creation of balance [giving every side equal right to be heard] and neutrality of presentation [not taking sides]. However, Westerstahl added new concept of informativeness that links objectiveness with information quality, which allows recipient to notice, understand and memorized it. (McQuail 1999)

As it was mentioned earlier, practitioners of objective journalism in order to avoid complications of philosophical and idealistic debate on objectivity translated it into practical technique allowing fair and factual reporting. The influence of scientific objectivity concept that emerged in the second half of the 20^th century with rising of positivism is obvious. The method uses the same principle that if the rules of objectivity are followed, different scientists using similar data will come to the same conclusion and thus prove it legitimate. Western standard of objectivity thus expects journalists to gather as many facts as possible before drawing conclusions, verify the spelling of all names; understand the information to be reported; avoiding unwarranted assumptions; place the story in the most relevant context; and consistently seek statements from all relevant parties in a story (Metzler 1979). Obedience to these procedures allows masses to trust media on the basis of belief in media’s objective reporting. (McQuail, 1983:146)

Thus the Western concept of objectivity implies that facts are carefully selected and constructed upon neutral stances by professional journalists. Yet, again we are bound to take necessary precautions and say that Western concept differs from the concept that has worked on the territory of Azerbaijan for more than 70 years. The objectivity of Soviet media was built upon sociopolitical information in accordance with "objective" historical laws of Marxism-Leninism. In other words, ideological function of objectivity in the Western concept is implicit while for the Soviet concept it carries an explicit charge. In the Soviet Union concept of neutrality was discarded as early as in 1919 since according to Lenin’s view neutral information is an illusion (McNair 1991). Ownership of media was taken from entrepreneurs and placed under strict control of the Party organizations, executive authorities and public organizations as were professional unions. Under the patronage of this roof organizations media had only one goal – to provide tribune for organizations they represented (idem). Essence of the Soviet objectivity consisted of unquestionable trust in Leninism doctrine and it meant that the more information journalist will gather the more will incline towards political “truth”. Soviet study book for journalists states that objectivity is the key requirement of the Leninist methodology where objectivity is based upon envision that historical materialism is the only correct scientific theory. Thus, no wonder that concept of objectivity was in a deep contrast with the Western standard of impartiality and neutrality and carried specific Marxist-Leninist definition of socialist realistic objectivity. Journalists that received their education in the Soviet era and hold on to their experience and knowledge gained during that time, objectivity remains what it used to – correctness of the Party line and objectivity means demonstration of the correctness of that statement. That fully answers the definition of Soviet system by Siebert:



Table 2: Soviet system according to Siebert’s Four Theories of Press²

I.1.2.3 Political Instrumentalization

Gradually starting 1960s the term objectivity had fallen out of favor in American media and editors along with other media actors introduced the fairness concept that was supposed to substitute the old ideal of objectivity by devotion to facts and details, its completeness and continuity (Dennis, Pease 1992). Yet in many cases neither objectivity nor fairness are possible and that is in case of political instrumentalization. The instrumentalization is the process when media are controlled by outside actors – parties, politicians, social groups and movements or economic actors seeking political influence. In other words newspapers established or owned by these actors do not serve public good but are conceived to support and express political ambitions into the world of national politics. In such circumstances note Hallin and Mancini professionalization level in media will be low since journalists will lack autonomy except to the extent that they enjoy it due to high political positions, will lack a common culture and sense of social purpose differing from purposes of political leaders affiliated with media, no criteria that will guide practice of journalism and media will serve particular interests rather than functioning as a “public trust.” (Hallin, Mancini, 2004) The authors do go on mentioning phenomena of commercial instrumentalization when media serve first of all advertisement purposes yet in Azerbaijan the latter is currently improbable.

I.2.4 Deprofessionalization and proletarization

Deprofessionalization is a process when professional attributes in the course of time loose their values. Deprofessionalization can be caused by social, economic, demographic or political trends. For example a profession may become deprofessionalized by not sufficiently coping with a decline in the importance and vitality of its services, monopoly over such practices as admission, training and licensing. A profession may also lose mastery over its own knowledge base or when its ethical standards are compromised by self-interest or narrowly vested group of interests (Keidai Ronshu 2006).

On the other hand proletarization can be defined as a process where professionals become subject to new forms of control eroding their status as professionals (Haug, 1973). It occurs mainly due to financial instability when professionals are pushed to work with non-professionals and gradually loose distinction between professional and non-professional.

Stepping aside, we would like to get back to our previous discussion of transformation process in post-Soviet area and look if a country that successfully transited from a post-communist towards free market society has problems with proletarization and deprofessionalization processes. Let’s look at the Czech Republic where, according to Czech scholar Jaromir Volek the process of deprofessionalization has been directly connected with the lowering of professional standards and criteria to enter journalistic community due to massive exodus of professional journalists in the first half of 1990s.

A new generation of professionally untutored and easily-manipulated journalists - beginners appeared and the middle generation disappeared. This trend was especially significant in local and regional media where we identified the strongest effects of proletarization (Volek 2007). Journalists working here are not only less educated but they are overtaxed and their average income is under average income of whole population. Last but not least they have no support of professional organizations and trade unions which have low socio-political status and very weak respect among journalist (Volek 2007).

As we can clearly see even successful transformation into a consolidated democracy and pluralistic society cannot completely shield from negative impacts of the described negative processes. In the case of Czech journalists’ proletarization is caused by disillusionment in their career due to pressures inflicted by commercial and marketing logic causing loss of professional autonomy (Volek, 2008).