The issue of media freedom and the right of a citizen to receive accurate information was discussed at the PACE today. MP Naira Zohrabyan spoke about manipulating public opinion with hatred and enmity propaganda through fake news, citing CE member Azerbaijan as an example, where the Azerbaijani media was at the forefront of spreading hatred and enmity towards Armenians.

Zohrabyan called for much stricter legislation for the total propaganda of hatred and enmity through fake news in the CE member states, considering hatred and incitement to ethnic enmity as one of the most serious challenges in Europe.

In her speech, Naira Zohrabyan said ․

“Dear Colleagues,

Today, we are discussing an extremely important report on media freedom and the citizen’s right to receive accurate information.

Yes, in our information world, the media is in many cases more than the most powerful weapon.

And here is a country in our European family, whose even the most cursory monitoring of the media field is terrible. When the leader of that country, Azerbaijan, talks about the reasons for their victory in the last Artsakh war and mentions that they won because they were able to educate a generation growing up with hatred and enmity towards Armenians, he is right and the Azerbaijani media had an undeniable contribution to that. They preached and continue to preach anti-Armenianism, violence, hatred and falsification.

When an Azeri politician announces that an Armenian should be killed in Karabakh and the whole Azerbaijani media resource spreads it, when a 13-year-old Azerbaijani girl announces that she wants to become a sniper to kill an Armenian and it becomes a top media topic in that country; we have the horrible picture we had during and after the 44-day bloody war: atrocities, lies, fabrications, and media manipulations.

The trial of Armenian soldiers, who are presented by Azerbaijan as terrorists and saboteurs, is underway in Azerbaijan these days, and the entire Azerbaijani media is full of falsifications and misinformation about these immoral trials, and what accurate information and protection are we talking about to protect the public from fake news? Today, in our days of free media, if we fail to protect our societies from fake news, which especially in totalitarian countries feeds racism, intolerance and lies, we will have a result like Azerbaijan, where the media field is flooded every day with videos torturing and humiliating Armenian prisoners of war and public opinion welcoming it all.”