Euronews’ relations with Azerbaijan (Observation)

I visited Euronews today and noticed a peculiar piece on the front page, https://i.imgur.com/WY2umC3.pngwhich reads "In partnership with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan".

Seeing that, I looked up Euronews on Wikipedia to see if I could uncover anything more about it.

I came across this part:

The network began broadcasting on 1 January 1993 and covers world news from a European perspective. In 2022 the network was bought by a company linked to Viktor Orbán’s government. The acquisition was partly financed by funds from the Hungarian state.

Source: Secret documents reveal that Orbán’s people were behind the purchase of one of Europe’s biggest TV channels

I also happened to visit Aliyev’s own website today, which highlighted an "interview" done by Euronews on the front page: https://archive.is/Y4bHZ.

The interview itself (https://archive.is/nRdok) can hardly be referred to as such. They aren’t even softballs, but rather prompts for Aliyev to give scripted responses that promote COP29 in Baku and investing in Azerbaijan. Of all the questions they could ask about Azerbaijan’s environmental record, including its brutal treatment of domestic environmental protestors, they ask nothing of substance.

A further search reveals that in the last 10 months, Aliyev has only had three interviews with international media, all three of which were with Euronews. Before that, the last interview he had with Euronews was in 2015. Why the change, and why the sudden back-to-backs with just one outlet now?

There’s even a special page on their website dedicated towards promoting tourism in Azerbaijan: https://archive.is/rsTA1.

More searches show that there’s a large number of paid articles by the Azeri government, including but not limited to: https://i.imgur.com/o20Vlhf.jpeg.

These paid articles go back as early as 2018, but accelerated around 2022-2023, the same time that ownership of Euronews fell under Orban’s circle.

As early as 2013, Euronews has had a peculiar focus on Azeri topics otherwise not picked up by other international outlets. Here’s some examples, including but not limited to: https://i.imgur.com/RGbbeIJ.jpeg.

That is, I don’t see DW, France24, BBC, AP, or anyone else talking about how the otherwise obscure city of Ganja is inspiring Europe’s youth (lol). As you can see from the screenshot compilation, these ones aren’t categorized as "In partnership with" like the first screenshots, but I suspect they’re still paid for several reasons.

• Having observed Azerbaijani media, marketing, and propaganda for over a decade across various mediums, they all fall in line with their standard m.o. This is the same type and style of stuff they promote domestically and abroad. The one that especially sticks out like a sore thumb is the one about landmines, which is a favourite talking point that their media and government likes to harp away at and use to bash Armenia.

• There were virtually no such articles of this nature for Armenia or Georgia. I had to sift through page after page to find something similar for either of these two countries, whereas they were abundant and present on every query for Azerbaijan. Is one of the least free and most corrupt countries in the world deserving of such disproportionate positive coverage, or are there other influences at play?

While we’re at it, we can also talk about the Armenian Genocide for a bit.

In 2009, TRT, the state-owned national broadcaster of Turkey, acquired a 15.7% stake in Euronews and joined its supervisory board.

Euronews has a habit of referring to the Armenian genocide as "killings" and the like, and when it actually does use the word genocide, it tends to use single or double quotation marks. Some other sites have done this as well, but here’s where it gets weird.

There’s a tag on Euronews called "1915 Turkish-Armenian Incidents": https://archive.is/fWsOS. Anyone who has paid attention to Turkey’s rhetoric, policy, and stance on the Armenian Genocide knows that their official term for it is 1915 Turkish-Armenian Incidents. Literally nobody else outside of the Turkish government uses that phrase.

Furthermore, if you look at the URL for this page, even though I’m on the English language page of Euronews, it contains the word "events"which I’ve highlighted here: https://i.imgur.com/cyTXASt.png. It’s Turkish for "event"but why would that be there if I’m on the English language page? It almost seems like this part was built by the folks sponsoring genocide denial, but English was their second language and they subconsciously used Turkish instead of English and forgot to change it.

Euronews also hosted a Turkish genocide denial piece by an employee of the Turkish government. https://archive.is/UZWbI

They had a similar piece but from the Armenian perspective, but it’s still egreigious. Would they also host a piece advocating both for and against the existence of the Holocaust?

A lot of this crap involving TUrkey peaked during 2015, the 100th anniversary of the Genocide. TRT sold their stake in Euronews as of 2017 if my understanding is correct.

On the flipside there’s also a tag on their website called "Armenian Genocide" (https://archive.is/8mwAU), and there are some more recent articles where the term genocide isn’t used in quotations.

So, all in all, what am I getting at? This is an example of a compromised media outlet that is under the influence of its financiers. And although it’s not a revelation by any stretch, that Azerbaijan spends exhorbitant amounts of money trying to polish turds/advance their malicious foreign policy. But otherwise, I just felt like sharing my observations.