OSCE HOLDS SEMINAR FOR MEDIA OF SOUTH CAUCASIAN COUNTRIES
Author: A.Ismaylova

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Nov 2 2006

Organized by the OSCE for media of South Caucasian countries, the
third conference "Media-business and its problems" began in Tbilisi.

The event brings together the journalists and experts from Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Armenia, OSCE and other international organizations, Trend
Special Correspondent reports.

Making a speech at the conference, the Director of the Center for
Extremal Journalism Oleg Panfilov said that the journalists of the
post-Soviet countries face pressure because they participate in the
information war or political processes. He said that the juridical
illiteracy of journalists equal to the illiteracy of officials. They
have many problems with the officials.

Panfilov underlined that there are two key reasons for the problem
with media of former Soviet countries – weak education and absence
of the freedom of press. He offered the journalists to begin new
formation of media in South Caucasus including the former Soviet
countries or otherwise to remain as previous.

The editor-in-chief of the Azerbaijani newspaper "Zerkalo" Kanan
Guluzade touched on the legal and political working conditions of media
in Azerbaijan. He said that today nearly 2,600 medias have entered into
official registration in Azerbaijan. "The matter in not the number,
but quality," he said. According to him, there is a small number of
state medias

in Azerbaijan. The representatives of the medias under the government
have a large access to information and state officials.

The expert Zviad Koridze touched upon the topic of the former state
media in Georgia. He stressed that several state medias still remain
in Georgia, which receive grants from the state.

The representative of "CS Publishing House" Vardan Alonyan touched
on the newspaper business in Armenia. He stressed that there are
problems with social-political newspapers in Armenian. The prices
for the newspaper production have increased over past 12 years,
but the prices of newspapers remain as previous.

The former Juridical Adviser of London Open Society Fund Morris Lipson
stressed that the programs of the same quality are transmitted on many
televisions of South Caucasian countries. He stressed that there are
various kinds of monopoly in different countries. He set an example
from the situation in Italy. In this country, former Primer Minster
Silvia Berluskon has three TV channels. In addition, Lipson touched
up on the other kinds of dominations in the TV channel market and
mentioned the importance of transferring to the digital broadcasting
to eliminate many problems in the TV channels.

In addition, he made a number of recommendations. First of all,
he said that it needs to adopt a law preventing the predominance
of several players on media market and use the rules ensuring the
transparency in this respect.