[1][2][3] Most Azerbaijanis receive their information from mainstream television, which is unswervingly pro-government and under strict government control.
[4] Reporters without Borders ranks Azerbaijan at the 167th place (between Egypt and Bahrain) out of over 180 countries on the Press Freedom Index, with a score of 58.48.
[5] The Aliyev government in Azerbaijan restricts public access to information about the owners and shareholders of Azerbaijani companies.
[7] Reporters Without Borders has called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to firmly condemn Azerbaijan for tolerating escalating press freedom violations.
[9] Activists such as Sing For Democracy and Amnesty International brought up the issues of Azerbaijan's rights as it hosted the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, after the song Running Scared by duet Ell and Nikki won the 2011 contest (these activists described its title as ironic.
Media freedom groups have expressed particular concern about the government's surveillance of journalists' internet and telephone communications.
Other legislative measures - from hooliganism to the possession of drugs and weapons, treason, and tax evasion - are regularly used by authorities to punish and prevent critical reporting.
[14] International instances such as the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe have consistently refuted the justifications by the Azerbaijani authorities that jailed journalists had been prosecuted and sentenced for common crimes.
[16] Prison conditions for journalists are reported as dire, with routine ill-treatment and denial of medical care.
The president Ilham Aliyev and his party control most of media and informations, despite the official 1998 ban on censorship.
[14] In the recent years had strengthen the control on the internet activities of bloggers, social-media activists and journalists.
[14] The Azerbaijani government has increased its control over the internet, harassing social media activists, bloggers and online journalists.
Legal norms criminalising online defamation have deterred social media mobilisation too, together with the arrests of bloggers and activists.
[50] On 3 March 2017, Mehman Huseynov, popular video blogger and activist, was arrested in the courtroom of Suraxanı raion court of Baku and sentenced to two years imprisonment on charges of defamation.
[54] As a consequence, in practice it is difficult to obtain comprehensive information on the ownership structures of some media outlets, in particular private broadcasters.
[52] In fact, in June 2012, some amendments to the Law on the Registration of Legal Entities, on Commercial Secrecy and the Law on Obtaining of Information further worsened the transparency situation since information about corporate owners and their shareholdings of private media have been declared commercial secrets and deleted from public websites and registers.
However a monitoring report by RWI and the Open Society Institute (OSI) found that the reality of access to information fell short of the ideal.
In addition, their report found an entrenched culture of secrecy within Azerbaijani government institutions and a lack of awareness of the right to information among the public.
Since 2012, commercial confidentiality includes also "information about founders (participants) of legal entities and their share in equity capital, and this significantly hampers journalistic anti-corruption investigations".
Acting in compliance with this decree, the security service of the Baku State University impeded journalists from covering a students' protest.