The American independent portal
Eurasianet.org published an article on the mechanisms of control over the work of the media by the Azerbaijani authorities. The author of the article says that every day, sometimes multiple times a day, editors at news outlets in Azerbaijan get identical WhatsApp messages, usually with a file attached labeled: “Recommendations.”
For example, on a recent day it was about Iran. Baku and Tehran were suffering through a period of heightened tensions, and Azerbaijan’s government was trying to thread a needle: stand up to what it saw as aggression from its much larger neighbor, without letting things escalate too far.
So Azerbaijan’s media got specific instructions.
“Based on President Ilham Aliyev's speech on Iran, it is requested to expand the campaign on Iran-Armenia relations, drug trafficking, and looting of the occupied territories [in and around Nagorno-Karabakh] by these two countries,” went one October 15 message, hours after Aliyev had spoken at a video summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
A few hours later, media agencies got another message. This time they were asked to be careful with their wording: no expressions that insult the “honor and dignity” of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There should be no mention of “South Azerbaijan,” as Azerbaijani nationalists refer to the northern provinces of Iran, populated heavily by ethnic Azerbaijanis. Media should use “hard logic and facts” to make the case that “instead of making false accusations against Azerbaijan, Iran should apologize.”
Another state-affiliated media outlet, Axar, quoted an analyst who claimed that Iran had used Karabakh not only for drug trafficking but for money laundering.
None mentioned Khamenei specifically, or “South Azerbaijan.”
On September 20, a week before the one-year anniversary of the start of the war with Armenia, “we ask you to produce materials and start public discussions with a tempo increasing every day,” the message read. “The keywords are ‘Victorious Azerbaijani people’ and ‘Triumphant Supreme Commander-in-Chief.’”
Often the instructions are on what not to cover. When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was visiting Azerbaijan with Aliyev, he made a joke about the fact that Jahangir Asgarov, the president of Azerbaijan’s flagship airline AZAL who was accompanying the two leaders, did not have a moustache. The exchange was captured on video but shortly after, media got a message: “Please do not broadcast the mustache joke […] that part of the video can be presented on social media by making that section inaudible.”
When Aliyev was interviewed by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, he was asked about an investigative report, known as the Pandora Papers, that detailed his family members’ and associates’ vast real estate holdings in London.
According to Eurasianet.org, such orders are permanent. It is mentioned that it is not clear where those messages come from, but according to the journalists familiar with the instructions, they are sent from the President's office.