Stepanakert Press Club offers OSCE to monitor conflict coverage in media

The OSCE Minsk Group is to organize the regular monitoring of how the Karabakh conflict is being highlighted in the media of the parties to the conflict. This was stated by Gegam Bagdasaryan, the head of the Stepanakert Press Club. According to Armenian journalists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot", the initiative proposed by Gegam Bagdasaryan cannot be implemented at the current stage of the conflict.

On May 30, Gegam Bagdasaryan published an open letter to the co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman.

Gegam Bagdasaryan offers to extend the mandate of the Minsk OSCE Group and to introduce the mechanisms for monitoring the Armenian and Azerbaijani mass media highlighting the conflict. According to Gegam Bagdasaryan, it is difficult to talk about a peaceful settlement of the conflict in terms of the information war, when "hate speech often sounds more terrible than shots."

As part of the monitoring, it is suggested to detect cases of dissemination of ethnic hatred in the media.

Even in case if the media monitoring mechanisms are implemented, they will not be effective. This opinion was voiced by Laura Bagdasaryan, the director of the Research Centre "Region". According to her, a similar initiative could be implemented in a relatively quiet situation, when there was a clear diplomatic activity between the parties to the conflict.

According to Laura Bagdasaryan, the April war has radically changed the situation, including journalistic damaged relationship.

As an example, Laura Bagdasaryan has referred to an article published in the newspaper "Gundelik Azerbaycan", accompanied with a photo showing how an Azeri soldier put his foot on the body of an Armenian soldier.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.