Kyamal Ali: authorities dictate topic of Karabakh settlement to Armenian and Azeri media

The one-sided coverage of the issue of Karabakh settlement by reporters from Azerbaijan and Armenia is caused by the pressure of the authorities on the media, the journalist Kyamal Ali said at public hearing on the topic "Journalists in Karabakh Conflict: Peacemakers or Arsonists?"

The hearing was held on June 8 in the Georgian village of Tekali near the Azerbaijani-Armenian border and was attended by about 60 people.

According to Kyamal Ali, in the post-Soviet zone, with its unsettled independent journalism and a specific idea about the mission of the media and the freedom of expression, journalists found themselves between a rock and a hard place. In his opinion, Azerbaijan and Armenia are "in the state of violent cold war," and journalists are recruited to the front of this war.

Luiza Pogosyan, the editor of the website named "Alternative Start", expressed the position of the Armenian party. In her view, journalists are not admitted to the coverage of the conflict, while the public opinion had been treated to such an extent that both the reporters and the respondents have lost the ability to express their real viewpoints.

Amalia Ogandjanyan, the correspondent of the Deutsche Welle in Georgia, said, when talking about the conflicts in the Caucasus in general, that journalists play "not an indicative role" in them.

"Everything that is watched, read and heard is more saturated with aggression and the desire to finish off the enemy, not by the desire to contribute to the settlement of the conflict; although there are journalists who, in spite of the fear of being misunderstood and even rejected by their own colleagues, and in spite of financial problems, are doing their job without excessive noise," she said.