Chairman of Azerbaijani Press Council: I assess Freedom House’s report non-objective

"I assess nonobjective the report of "Freedom House" on the situation of press in Azerbaijan", Chairman of Azerbaijan’s Press Council (PC) Aflatun Amashov said commenting on Freedom House’s final report on the situation of freedom of press in the world".

He noted that there is a special state care to the press in Azerbaijan and it is directed to the development of our press: "The state support conception was adopted to the development of Mass Medias in Azerbaijan, the state fund was established on it in recent years. Today internet media is developing, about 500 thousand use "facebook"".

PC Chairman underlined the problem of journalism: "Bur these problems will also find their solutions. I was surprised when I saw that our country is in 171st place among 196. Everybody knows that there are countries which have ruined press. There are countries which don’t have the developed internet media. Looking at the organization’s report we see that these countries precede us. Neighbor country Turkey precedes us to 70 steps, though 61 journalists are in jail in this country. Or Iraq is among the list of most dangerous countries for journalists, but this country precede Azerbaijan in the organization’s list. All these surprise me, I assess this list nonobjective."

Note that in its new report, "Freedom House" organization put Azerbaijan to the list of the worst situation of the freedom of press – "Non-free countries". Freedom House assessed the situation of freedom of press of 196 countries and Azerbaijan is in 176th place in this list.


/APA/