Leading media representatives, policymakers and other stakeholders, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), came together in July 2024 in the fascinating city of Shusha in Azerbaijan's Karabakh region. The 2nd Shusha Global Media Forum hosted delegates from various professional backgrounds, including print media, television, publishing, editing and more. Besides the participants of Azerbaijan, citizens of an additional 49 nations had traveled to Shusha, making it clear that this was no ordinary event; it was indeed a large-scale event of global proportions.
While the forum has been widely covered, in this opinion page contribution today, I will focus on a remarkable keynote address delivered by Hikmet Hajiyev, who is the assistant to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, and at the same time, head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration.
Under the overarching theme of “Unmasking False Narratives: Confronting Disinformation,” the forum was certainly a timely opportunity, as we are confronted with the constant threat of fake news in far too many places and countries. Fake news is not just about individuals using social media to make headlines – though proper research is essential – but also about governments in various countries creating false realities, thus becoming threats to peace and stability.
Writing for media outlets focusing on Türkiye, we are accustomed to combating a trend that many of my colleagues, both at home and abroad, refer to as “Türkiye bashing.” It was, therefore, both exciting and saddening to see that Azerbaijan is faced with the same menace of having to counter “false news” attacks constantly.
Here is what Hajiyev had to say; the quotes are presented chronologically as delivered during his opening speech. Since it is a videotaped transcript, any spelling or grammatical mistakes are the sole responsibility of the author of these lines; however, great effort has been made to avoid any errors. The original tape was kindly provided for use in this article by Hajiyev’s office.
Below is a quote ending with the disinformation word ‘unquote’: “Let me provide you with a real situation about the effect of what we faced a couple of years ago. I'm quoting Sept. 29, 2020, BBC News.
Minister of Defence of Armenia says that fighter jets of Armenian armed forces were shot down by Türkiye’s fighter jet F16 in Armenian airspace. As a result (the) pilot of the Armenian SU-25 fighter jet has been killed, Minister of Defence of the Republic of Armenia.
That was news (...) provided by BBC and then spread out to other major international media.
(...) But what was the real situation? The real situation was that two Armenian fighter jets in the Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan in Azerbaijan's airspace collided with one another, and they destroyed themselves.
One year later, we found and retrieved one of his SU-25s. Now, it rests in the trophy park in Baku, and everybody can see it. But again, the damage was done during wartime, and it took a lot of effort to decide to debunk and present the reality (unquote).
The reason for featuring this distinguished politician and expert is twofold. First, as highlighted by Hajiyev, the foreign state propaganda machine attacking Azerbaijan underlines the serious threat posed to global harmony by allowing fake news to take center stage. However, we must avoid falling into the neatly laid traps set by those promoting false information. The majority of peace-loving citizens in all nations, often misled by extremist politicians and with no chance to verify what is actually true and what is false, are not to blame. Verbal and actual warmongers, respectively, are to blame.
Second, the criticism vis-a-vis digitalization must be taken at face value. Granted, we live in a digitalized world, and many aspects of day-to-day life have become easier. On the one hand, the EU is embarking on its path toward internal market digitalization. On the other hand, Türkiye will soon restart the Free Trade Agreement upgrade process with the U.K., with digitalization at the forefront of matters.
But correct me if I am wrong – was there not perhaps a certain warning inherent in Hajiyev’s speech? Referring to “pollution” regarding distortion of facts, are we sure that the more unsolicited online news is disseminated, the better?
This brings me to my closing comment. Quite a few of the fellow speakers at the Shusha Forum expressed concerns about whether a form of control over who can post what on social or traditional media should be monitored. As this was a media forum of the highest global caliber, no one would ask for their profession to be censored. However, as the traditional source and fact-checking journalists, we want to stay in business. In that case, we must make sure that those who distort reality, regardless of whether they are an individual on social media or a government agency representative, are better monitored and ideally taken out of the business.
If we are all careful, neither artificial intelligence nor fake news trolls and bots can win, but if we shrug it off, the dangers are imminent. Will three-source fact-checking traditional media survive? In the interest of a flourishing democracy, let us hope so.
