Azeri Paper Says Two TV Channels Continue Campaign Against Opposition Reporter

Excerpt from Zulfiyya Sakitqizi’s report in opposition Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat on 13 April headlined “Lider and ATV continue to disseminate dirty slander”

Some TV channels have been carrying out a smear campaign against Azadliq reporter Aqil Xalil in the past few days. This drew the attention of the OSCE Representative for Freedom of the Media Miklos Haraszti, who visited Azerbaijan.

[Passage omitted: Haraszti's remarks]

Haraszti called on the TV channels to stop the campaign and said their action ran counter the law.

Following the appeal of the OSCE representative, we investigated whether the TV channels continued the campaign. We monitored TV programmes throughout the day. Incidentally, we did not monitor ANS and Xazar TV since they did not join in the smear campaign against the journalist. We paid special attention to AzTV, ITV [Public TV], Lider, Space and ATV. It emerged that while other channels had stopped the campaign, Lider and ATV were continuing to disseminate the dirty slander.

Originally published by Yeni Musavat, Baku in Azeri 13 Apr 08, p 3.

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