Your trusted source

In Azerbaijan, opposition journalists have long been beaten, blackmailed and some even killed. But now, it appears a few are being bought, reads the article in the American EurasiaNet organization.

The article notes that when it comes to media freedom, President Ilham Aliyev’s administration has a dismal record. The government has tended to resort to the stick to go after journalists who expose official misdeeds, or otherwise vex people in high places.

With a presidential election fast approaching in early October, however, authorities have evidently opted to offer a few carrots in the hopes of quelling critical news coverage.

In late July, the government opened an apartment building with 155 one-, two- and three-bedroom units to be occupied exclusively by working journalists and their families. The 17-story structure, built at a cost of 5 million manats ($6.37 million), is located in the Baku suburb of Bibi Heybat. Many of the takers are affiliated with pro-government media outlets and information entities.

“President Aliyev clearly hopes the apartment building’s opening will help soften his administration’s troubled democratization image,” the material reads.

The author notes that some journalists contend that the offer of free housing is a thinly disguised government bribe, designed to influence media coverage. “Authorities have finally turned the fundamental right to freedom of speech into the right for freedom from paying rent for an apartment,” quipped former newspaper editor Shahveled Chobanoglu in a Contact.az op-ed.
The Article notes that Turan news agency was the only privately owned, pro-opposition outlet that refused -- despite several supposed invitations from the government – to seek any apartments for its employees. One Turan reporter, Huquq Salmanov, suggested that the government seemed more interested in trying to compromise the journalistic integrity of opposition media outlets, than in helping any specific journalist in need.

When Salmanov, whose family faces acute economic hardship, applied for an apartment as an individual, officials told him he could “only get an apartment as a Turan correspondent.” “They wanted to have Turan in the list of recipients,” Salmanov claimed. “I did not want to play these games, and refused,” Salmanov notes.

The article notes that Salmanov is far from the only journalist struggling to make ends meet in Azerbaijan. On average, monthly salaries for broadcast, online or print journalists amount to just 450 manats ($574), while the typical rent for a flat in central Baku can easily be double that, if not more. The comparatively high cost of living in Baku is what drove most, if not all the opposition journalists to apply for a place in the Bibi Heybat building.