A pro-Iranian news website deyerler.org beat out RFE/RL’s azadliq.org from the leading news source position in Azerbaijan.
According to Alexa ratings (Alexa Internet, Inc. An Amazon.com Company) Deyerler.org, a religious (subsequently tendencious) website is in 20-th place, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service website, whose professional code requires an objective, impartial news coverage is on 41-st in the target region. In Iran and some Central Asian states, RFE/RL’s language websites’ rating is even worse.
Unfortunately, it was my, let us say, “prediction”, that pro-Iranian, religious news media in Azerbaijan will rise and many media managers, who promote Western journalism standards underestimate this factor. I don’t like predictions. My notes were based not on analysis, but the fact that I witnessed a lot of short-comings in representing Western journalism in Azerbaijan.
Actually, I was separated from the radio, where I worked for 12 years, due to my opinion (at discussion stage, before any decision!) I told that a show-off, based on a quantitative results will kill our organization. The part of this show off was winning 24 hour FM from Azeribaijan. In my opinion, many changes served interests of some middle level managers, rather than interests of journalism and our organization.
At the time RFE/RL owned an one-hour MW in Azerbaijan and changed it for 24 hour FM lease. After a year the government closed down FM, which it lawfully owns. But fiasco’s author Abbas Djavadi and his supporters were promoted (immediately after winning athe FM) for this deal and they started to shape all of the organization’s broadcasting to Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
I witnessed how Mr.Djavadi introduced a censorship to get deal with the Azerbaijani government. I understand that an organization should trust its manager. But I couldn’t understand, why there is no double check.
I would not say that RFE/RL managers are stupid. This organization’s managers’ view on news media, especially M.J Bears (R.I.P.), K.Girnius, and J.Trimble helped me to deeply understand the principles of western news media.
RFE/RL is important as surrogate broadcasting for countries where there is no independent news media. Then why can ordinary Iranian mullahs beat it on the news media market?
The organization’s problems date back to cold war times. Actually it was not a news organization. You could hardly find professional editors among it’s language service management. Most of them were recruited probably for political reasons. And they did a great job. But this was not a journalist’s job. After the cold war any attempt to reorganize it and create a news organization only served the interests of a handful of middle managers, despite their occasional losses. Then broadcasting director J.Trimble was close to solve this heavy heritage problem, but unexpectedly president T.Dine assigned him another duty. His successor Mrs.DuBach actively started changes, which even worsened the problem. And for last 4 years the status quo remained almost unchanged and strengthened.
Where is the hidden secret? How is seemingly calm, reliable, and obedient middle level manager manipulating everyone?
There are probably many secrets that I don’t know. But I know one of them: the stability threat game.
Yes, I agree, any organization needs stability and security to be functional. For this reason you must give managers authority and power. But if the manager engaged in internal political games, misuses this power, provokes potential professionals, then presents them as a threat to organization and replaces them with relatives, amateurs, or just bilinguals, without any profession, there is no way to prevent it. Abbas Djavadi and his cousin Abbasali Djavadi (who retired from VOA a few years ago) did the same. They tried to fill US surrogate broadcasting organizations with amateur journalists, some of them without any University degrees, including a language service director at RFE/RL.
The result: Yes you have a safe, stable organization, promoting free media, pluralism… But what if such an organization can’t compete with totalitarian-minded mullahs on journalism field?
Another secret: In rare cases promotions were made on base of a real performance result. Despite the fact that program reviews are being held by independent entities, some low and middle level managers easily manipulated the result. I had a lot of proof, but I’m not going to get into details.
The secrets which I don’t know
Sometimes I participated in RFE/RL’s extended editorial meetings.
A service director, now associate broadcast director A.Djavadi said that we should air any news only after two other reliable news media reports on the topic. I thought he would immediately be disqualified for such attitude toward news reporting. No. Just applause. Great positive attitude toward work.
At the extended editorial meeting Djavadi said that before our news program was 2X10-minute long. Now with the same staff (6 people) we prepare 3X30-minute live news. In the near future we will increase it to 4X60 minutes. It seemed that disqualification is imminent. But Mrs. DuBach took him seriously and ordered other services to take an example.
I just remembered an anecdotic situation
When I was studying at the journalism department of BSU during the late 80s, a fellow student, who just returned from Moscow, proposed to prepare a reform plan for our wall newspaper. He said that The Moscow State University’s students are preparing 5 meter long wall newspapers. Let us make at least 3 meter long wall newspapers in Baku . For a long time we laughed at him. But I never imagined that after 20 years, in the center of Europe, an US organization would take such proposals seriously.
Mr.Djavadi even went further and proposed to cut permanent staff by 50 percent, hire cheap labor force and stay 24 hours on air. And imagine if RFE/RL managers took it seriously. Now some of RFE/RL’s language websites resemble 100 meter long, 500 meter long , 1 km-long news lists… No focus, no stress, no headline and no editorial talent…