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There were a lot of holidays in March, a factor which also reflected itself on the work of the printing houses. Fewer newspapers and magazines were published therefore, compared with other months. This meant there were much fewer violations on much fewer codes. The average daily index of violations for March was better than that for February (taking only the printing houses’ workdays into account): in February the daily index was 154.3 (with 21 workdays). There were overall 3,242 violations registered in February. In March there only were 16 workdays and 1,904 violations were registered. The average daily index was 119. This means the violations in media decreased by 33% in March against February.

The situation improved, regarding the wide spread violation of Code 15 (no reference to the source of information). There were 1,284 violations on this code in February (61.1 violations daily). In March there were 601 violations on this code (37.5 daily). This means the violations on Code 15 decreased by 39% on the average. This probably means the increasing respect to the principles of ethics and the improving professionalism of the journalists, which should certainly cause optimism. But it is still difficult to talk exactly about the factors that caused the positive changes. It is even more difficult to predict the events, taking into account the approaching elections, when the political emotions will certainly increase and most probably influence the press. However, we can already note an obvious tendency in our media – the violations of professional ethics by journalists are decreasing.

The 10 violations most often spread in Azerbaijan’s media in March are shown in the following table:

The violations on groups were as follows in March:

Compared with February, the role of Group-3 violations in the total increased by 2.4%.

The 10 newspapers that made violations most of all in March are listed in the following table:

These 10 newspapers made 52% of the entire violations registered.

The violations made by newspapers on separate violation groups are shown in the following tables:

Group 1 (Serving Truth, Accuracy and Objectiveness)

Group 2 (Respect to Information Sources)

Group 3 (Protection of Image, Honor, Dignity, and Inviolability of Personal Life)

The Ses, Yeni Musavat, Ideal and Respublika newspapers are among the “leading” ten on all the three violation groups.

As for the violation groups in weekly newspapers and those printed 2-3 times a week, the Muasir Musavat paper kept the obvious “leadership” (as it did for several months). This paper made 103 violations including 36 belonging to Group 3 (which made up 22.2% of the entire violations observed on this group). The newspapers printed 2-3 times a week made 43 violations on Group 3, and the Muasir Musavat made 84% of them. This newspaper was the “leader” on each of the three violation groups among the non-daily newspapers.

There is an interesting observation about the table showing Group 2 of the violations. The Yeni Musavat made almost all of its Group-2 violations (108 of the 110, or 98.1%) on Code 15 (No Reference to Information Source).

Code 15 also overwhelmingly prevailed among the violations made by most of the other newspapers shown on the list: the Uch Nogta – 83 of the 86 violations were on Code 15, the Hafta Ichi – 44 of the 47, the Ideal – 40 of the 45, the Express – 42 of the 44, and the Olaylar – 30 of the 30.

The situation regarding Internet sites is as follows:

Our group’s telephone number in Baku is 493-3339.

Our email address is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The project’s Coordinator is Israyil Musayev.

The project’s (Monitoring of Observance of Professional Ethics Standards and Laws in Azerbaijan’s Media) results for March, 2008 will be more entirely displayed on the web site: Najaf Najafov Fund