Manipulation and dishonesty from News.az

Snapshot from News.az

How News.az blissfully forgets that gays are discriminated in Azerbaijan, but hastily stands in defense of gays in Armenia.

It's a bit old news, but I saw it only now - thanks to a Facebook friend -- a pro-government Azerbaijani news website News.az published a story titled "Gays discriminated in Armenia".

The news piece is not about discrimination toward gays in Armenia as you would tell from the title, but rather is about the Council of Europe report on situation of sexual minorities in 47 member states.

I wanted to point out how approriate was the title - but News.az had copy-pasted the news from unrelated Armenian website News.am together with the title itself. Except for, News.am gives title as "Gays discriminated in Armenia - CoE".

Ordinary practice, people would say - however, if not one moment.

The Council of Europe report also covers Azerbaijan, which is also a member state of the Council. And according to the same report, gays are also discriminated in Azerbaijan.

An honest news website - if it wants to cover this report - should give a complete picture and besides, it is an Azerbaijani website and should give info about Azerbaijan in the first place.

However, we don't find any news on News.az about Azerbaijani section of the above-mentioned report.

News.az blissfully forgets that gays are discriminated in Azerbaijan, but hastily puts a news piece about gays being discriminated in Armenia.

You think it's all? No, there is also another, bigger moment.

News.am writes:

According to the report 9 out of 47 Council member states, do not have comprehensive legislation on non-discrimination based on sexual orientation. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Russian Federation, San Marino, Turkey and Ukraine are among these states.

News.az repeates, but with one significant omission:

According to the report 9 out of 47 Council member states, do not have comprehensive legislation on non-discrimination based on sexual orientation. Armenia, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Russian Federation, San Marino, Turkey and Ukraine are among these states.

So, reading News.az report, you may also need detective skills to find out the ninth country which was not named.