Civilnet
The upsurge of tensions in the Karabakh conflict broke the usual silence about this part of the world in newspapers across the world. Since August 1, 17 reports and analyses were published online by newspapers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They covered the most recent clashes without providing much analytical detail to the context of the conflict. The articles, in general, were neutral as there was no clear trend between pro-Armenia and pro-Azerbaijan bias. Numbers of reported deaths varied widely.
About half of the articles cited the Azerbaijani Press Agency (APA), which was described as “semi-public” by Neues Deutschland or “close to the government” by Der Spiegel. All other sources were from military or government sources of both sides. The articles underscored that the information was indeed contradictory. An example is the German TV station Deutsche Welle, which wrote that “both adversaries accused each other of breaking the demarcation.” Most other articles used the information provided in this piece. In addition to the Defense Ministries of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the most cited source was the Armenian presidential administration, which the Austrian Wiener Zeitung quoted as warning of further “war adventures.”
Authoritarian Azerbaijan against the Impoverished Micro State
All articles differentiated between the Republic of Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the Republic of Azerbaijan. All three states were described as unitary actors. This means, that the articles generally granted independent status to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The exception to this is the left-wing daily Neues Deutschland, which referred to the Karabakh defense forces as “Armenian-Karabakh paramilitaries.” In one of the first reports on the issue, German magazine Der Spiegel labeled Nagorno-Karabakh as a “Dwarf-Republic.” Swiss leading newspaper NZZ adds that Nagorno-Karabakh is “fully impoverished,” while the Austrian regional newspaper Tiroler Tageszeitung reminds its readers that Azerbaijan is “rich in oil” and that it has “massively armed its military recently.”
This points towards the biases present in some of the articles. As a tendency, pro-Azerbaijan bias is more salient in German articles, whereas Swiss and Austrian media is rather biased towards Armenia. The Swiss state broadcasting agency SRF points out that “Armenia is committed to a peaceful solution” and that a convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross was targeted by Azerbaijani forces while assisting Armenian harvesters on the international border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Equally, Austrian newspaper Der Standard noted the “authoritarian governance” in Azerbaijan as part of the problem. German newspapers in turn sought to place Armenia as dependent on Russia. Die Zeit for instance writes that Russia is “Armenia’s protector.”
International Chain Reaction or Domestic Reasoning
In general however, all articles were cautious to present both sides of the story. Moreover, the articles refrained from accusing either side of starting the recent upward spiral of violence. Accordingly, the coverage is marked by relative neutrality. A weak point of most of the articles was the absence of context. While the articles generally included a brief paragraph on the history of the Karabakh Conflict, the information remains basic. Only the online magazine Telepolis provided a balanced background on the conflict, including references to ethnic tensions and international law.
Swiss NZZ saw a connection to the detainment of Azerbaijani human rights activists Leyla and Arif Yunus for “alleged espionage” for Armenia. German Tagesschau however, is more in line with the consensus position of the articles in linking it to the Ukraine conflict. It further points out that Israel and Russia have supported Azerbaijan with weapons and concludes that Azerbaijani governmental policy is in “intense contrast to the Council of Europe’s position,” which the country is heading toward at the moment. The German online daily 02elf, which is known as being critical of the West, argued that the violent clashes were caused by Armenia because of the “systematic pressure from the West.” The Russian news agency RIA Novosti ran a German-language analysis, which followed the same motif in seeing Western rejection of the Eurasian Customs Union as a trigger for aggression in Karabakh. Contrary to usual coverage, this economic interpretation was however not picked up by other media.
All Information is Provided through Official Channels
Three gaps are noteworthy in the press analysis. Firstly, several influential newspapers did not run reports on the conflict. This includes three of Germany’s five leading newspapers, conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, centrist Sueddeutsche Zeitung and left-leaning Tageszeitung. Secondly, no civil society voices were included in the reporting. For the Armenian side, all information was provided through military and governmental channels. Contrary to customary reporting in German-language newspapers, no local media was used as sources for information at all. Thirdly, no article provided an explanation to the estimated number of 1500 ceasefire violations in the last weeks. Subsequently, German-language articles did not report how Armenian civilians living on the border are under constant Azerbaijani fire, as CivilNet has reported in recent days. The exception to this is a report by German state television Tagesschau of August 1, which however does not refer to the current clashes at all.
The ongoing conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and especially Israel are currently drawing most of the attention of the German-language press. Nonetheless, the worst incidents of the Karabakh conflict since the Russian-brokered ceasefire have stirred the interest of the media. Its coverage of unclear numbers and contradictory press releases shows a certain form of informed neutrality, but the 17 articles miss out on the local civilian perspectives on the conflict.
SOURCES:
Der Standard (Austria), 01.08.2014
Der Spiegel (Germany), 01.08.2014
Deutsche Welle (Germany), 01.08.2014
Tagesschau (Germany), 01.08.2014
Deutsche Welle (Germany), 02.08.2014
Tagesschau (Germany), 02.08.2014
Wiener Zeitung (Austria), 02.08.2014
Die Zeit (Germany), 03.08.2014
Neue Zuericher Zeitung (Switzerland), 03.08.2014
Schweizer Rundfunk (Switzerland), 03.08.2014
Telepolis (Germany), 03.08.2014
Deutschlandfunk (Germany), 04.08.2014
Neues Deutschland (Germany), 04.08.2014
02Elf Abendblatt (Germany), 04.08.2014
RIA Nowosti (Germany/Russia), 04.08.2014
Tiroler Tageszeitung (Austria), 04.08.2014
Die Welt (Germany), 05.08.2014
AUTHOR
Benedikt van den Boom
Stories
