16 March 2009, 22:10
IRFS: Azerbaijani TV Channels give little coverage of referendum
According to the opinion of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) of Azerbaijan, on March 1-10 the TV Channels gave little attention to the questions put out to the referendum on March 18 on amending the Constitution.
On March 15, the IRFS made public the results of the second stage of media monitoring on how they cover the referendum campaign. The monitoring embraced 8 national TV Channels and 7 printed media.
Among the TV Channels, only the public one (OTV) held debates on the referendum topic. "However, granting every Agitation Group (AG) with 10 minutes each per week does not allow conducting any all-round and extensive discussions," Emin Guseinov, director of the IRFS, said in his conversation with the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
Same as during the first stage, in the second one, no social advertisements about the referendum were found in the media.
The monitoring is conducted under the project funded by the UK Embassy in Baku.
It was a day off; therefore, we could not get any comments on the monitoring results at the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).
The "Caucasian Knot" has already informed that on March 5 the IRFS of Azerbaijan made public the results of the first stage (February 18-28) of mass media monitoring for coverage of the referendum campaign towards March 18 on amendments to the Constitution. According to the monitoring data, opportunities of oppositional AGs in the press and on TV Channels were restricted.
Author: Faik Medzhid Source: CK correspondent
