Poor professionalism and difficult conditions for media practitioners challenge the media sector in Azerbaijan

Professionalism among journalists, cases of defamation as well as the killing of a journalist in 2005 were all contributing factors that lead Azerbaijan to almost hit the bottom on the worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006 produced by Reporters Without Borders.

The media sector in Azerbaijan is formally a free market with a mix of public, government and privately owned media institutions. After the independence from former Soviet Union, Azerbaijan saw a boom in new media with mostly newspapers popping up. today, however, some of especially the independent print media are facing difficulties to survive economically.

In 2007, IMS conducted a needs assessment of the media sector in Azerbaijan in which Azeri journalists and media practitioners unanimously called for professional skills enhancement initiatives.

Training had been provided by several international institutions but had not always had the desired effect. Members of the media community therefore expressed a need for a central place in Azerbaijan, where media could gather and have access to media development opportunities.

As a result, IMS is currently setting up the Azerbaijan Media Centre in Baku with the aim to ensure greater professionalism for the media in Azerbaijan as a means to enable the Azeri media to provide more diverse and in-depth information to the public.

The media centre will be independent and financially sustainable and seek the backing of domestic and international actors. Once operational, the centre is to provide a variety of services to the media community including professional training, research facilities, access to information resources and databases for journalists, production facilities and ICT. The centre will also have meeting facilities where members of the Azeri media community may host conferences, public hearings, seminars as well as round table discussions.

The establishment of the Azerbaijan Media Centre is based on experiences in a number of countries. IMS recently hosted a meeting in which representatives from media centres around the world met to discuss future ways for financial sustainability and commercially viability of media centres. The inputs and lessons learnt shared in this conference were compiled in the report: "Building Sustainability for Media Centres" published by IMS in 2007.

The Azerbaijan Media Centre will be established by IMS and in the first four years funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.