Dauren Diarov

What's your assessment of the 11th session of the council of heads of CIS state news agencies, which ended recently in Baku? What do you think of the overall level of cooperation between the media of the CIS?
 
Our information council has been growing more active recently. Sessions are held twice a year while we used to have difficulty getting together every few years. Now we have an accurate schedule and we meet in a different country every six months. And these meetings are needed, because we take something new for ourselves from each of the meetings, not only related to cooperation amongst the media in the CIS, but personally for ourselves. This is a sort of session of professionals on the information market. This is why our information council is a leader in terms of cooperation in the CIS.
 
How do you explain the council’s increased activity?
 
Our countries have recently formed their position on a wide range of issues. The economic situation has improved in most of our countries. For example, in the late 1990s-early 2000s our countries had no funds to pay for travel, organize events and meet each other. Meanwhile, today, when almost all of our countries have conducted economic reforms, we can pay closer attention to another side of cooperation. These are some of the factors that influence this. However, 20 years have passed since the USSR collapse and it has become clear that we have not moved a long way away from each other. Therefore, when he met participants in the 11th session of the CIS Information Council on 1 March, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said these 20 years have united us. We have a common past, common cultural values and outlooks.

This year Kazakhstan became OSCE chairman. This was thanks to our joint efforts, because a collective application was submitted to the OSCE and, thanks to all of our friendly countries, Kazakhstan became chairman of this international organization. This is the first post-Soviet and post-socialist country to chair the organization. This proves that the level of existing cooperation, mutual understanding and trust between them is so high that we can make collective applications which cannot be ignored by the world community.
 
How would you assess cooperation between Azerbaijani and Kazakh mass media?
 
We have very active cooperation, primarily with AzerTaj. This is a state agency and KazInform is also a state agency. We have many points of contact and we have developed the same way. We will also turn 90 this year, so we are like twin  brothers. We are implementing common projects, we have a bilateral contract on cooperation. We exchange photographic and information material. As well as AzerTaj, we are actively looking for other friends in your country because Azerbaijan today is a dynamically developing country. It has astonishing GDP growth rates and economic growth. Therefore, your country is one of our closest friends. We don't have correspondents in every country, but in Baku Kazinform has its own office.
 
What problems related to other countries should be widely covered by the CIS media? 

I would like to say that everyone is sick and tired of the wave of negative material in some media. Sometimes scandals, probably not even conflicts, distract people from what the state, government and president are really dealing with.

The main mission of state media is the need not to inform people of unpopular officialdom, but to provide clear information about the actions of the government and the president. This is what we do. However, sometimes problems arise over confidentiality and in some cases inner censorship. I mentioned the flood of negativity, but if there are problems, they should also be shown with impartiality.

W.W.
News.Az