Key Takeaways:
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The piece uses “strategic narrative” (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, Roselle) to argue that Western coverage of Azerbaijan is not random error but selective framing: same facts, omitted context, assigned villains. Azerbaijan’s MEDIA agency said so on 31 August and 3 September, calling it a campaign against sovereignty and reputation.
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The main exhibits: The Guardian’s review of The Black Garden is said to show Armenians facing “countless” Azerbaijani campaigns while skipping Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani land, Azerbaijani displacement, and UNSC 822, 853, 874, and 884 (1993). NEXTA asked “Sabotage in Azerbaijan?” after a 2 September Goranboy depot fire before a cause was known, tying it to Russia and Ukraine. Poland’s TVP World (26 August) drew a formal protest and a summons of Ambassador Radomski; BBC Russian and Le Monde are grouped as similarly thin on Baku’s side.
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The author’s ask is not a ban on criticism. It is context and evidence: do not invert the Karabakh sequence, and do not geopolitics-first an unexplained blast. Clustered, loaded stories, the piece says, start to look like hybrid information war rather than independent reporting.
Narratives matter in international politics because they influence how events are understood and remembered. British scholars Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin and American scholar Laura Roselle, in their work on strategic narratives, show how political events and actors are connected into stories that shape perceptions, beliefs and behavior. Such narratives give meaning to individual events by placing them within a broader framework. However, when information is selectively presented, taken out of context or deliberately manipulated, narratives can also become instruments of distortion and disinformation. This does not mean that facts themselves are relative. Rather, the same reality can be presented selectively: some elements are emphasized, others omitted, and particular language is used to assign roles to the actors involved. A distorted narrative therefore does not always require invented facts. Selective use of context, omission or unsubstantiated interpretation can sometimes be enough.
Recent Western media coverage of Azerbaijan offers a case in point. In the space of several weeks, The Guardian, BBC Russian Service, France’s Le Monde, Poland’s TVP World and the Poland-based NEXTA platform have all carried highly critical and biased material on Azerbaijan. The subjects have been different, yet the timing, similarity of framing and concentration of such publications raise legitimate questions about whether this wave of negative reporting is entirely coincidental and whether political or lobbying interests may be involved. Despite covering different issues, recurring features can be observed: missing context, loaded framing, narrow sourcing and, in one particularly striking case, speculation before the basic facts had even been established.
Azerbaijan’s Media Development Agency (MEDIA) responded on 31 August, accusing several Western outlets of biased and inaccurate reporting and arguing that the Azerbaijani position was either insufficiently represented or ignored. The Agency also raised the possibility of political and lobbying interests influencing such coverage. A second statement followed on 3 September, this time describing a broader information campaign directed against Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, policies and international reputation.
The strongest example of the problem is The Guardian’s review of Alexis Pazoumian’s documentary “The Black Garden”. The central issue is the historical context provided by the review. One particularly revealing passage concerns the review’s description of the former Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. It portrays Karabakh’s Armenian population as confronting “countless military campaigns from the Azerbaijani army”, a formulation that places Azerbaijani military action at the center of the story while leaving the preceding circumstances largely unexplained. For a reader with little knowledge of the conflict, the implication is fairly straightforward: “Armenians are subjected to Azerbaijani military action”, reinforcing a narrative of Armenian victimhood while portraying Azerbaijan as the aggressor. What is largely absent is the history that preceded those campaigns – the occupation of internationally recognized Azerbaijani territories by Armenian forces during the first Karabakh War, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who could not return to their homes for almost three decades, and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions. It should be noted that four UN Security Council resolutions, namely 822, 853, 874 and 884 were adopted in 1993, reaffirming respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and calling for the withdrawal of occupying forces from Azerbaijani territories. Moreover, the conflict resulted in the ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of Azerbaijanis from the occupied territories, as well as the deaths of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians. Azerbaijani towns and villages were levelled to the ground, while historical, cultural and religious sites were destroyed during the years of occupation in order to eradicate Azerbaijani traces. Therefore, Azerbaijan’s military campaigns cannot be separated from this historical context as they were aimed at restoring the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over its internationally recognized territory, as well as protecting its citizens against the occupying forces. By presenting Azerbaijani military campaigns without adequately explaining the occupation and displacement that preceded it, the review effectively reverses the sequence of events and reinforces the image of Azerbaijan as the aggressor, whereas Azerbaijan itself had been subjected to aggression, ethnic cleansing and occupation.
There is a telling point in The Guardian’s review itself: the author acknowledges that the documentary could have benefited from more detailed sociopolitical context. Yet the review does little to provide that missing context. The chairman of the Baku-based Center for Analysis of International Relations and Multiculturalism (AIR Center), Dr Farid Shafiyev, highlighted precisely this problem in his response to the publication. According to him, describing Armenians as having fought “against” Azerbaijani military campaigns while failing to explain the occupation of Azerbaijani territory, the displacement of its population and the UN Security Council resolutions calling for the withdrawal of occupying forces amounts to an unbalanced presentation of the conflict.
The Poland-based Belarusian outlet NEXTA provides a very different, but equally telling, example. On 2 September, a fire accompanied by explosions occurred at an ammunition depot near Nizami village in Azerbaijan’s Goranboy district. Even though the official cause of the explosion had not yet been established, NEXTA published a post on X with the question: “Sabotage in Azerbaijan?” Although the platform itself acknowledged that the cause remained unknown, it immediately questioned whether the incident was a coincidence, pointing to strained relations between Baku and Moscow. It then referred to Azerbaijan’s decision to place three Russian nationals on an international wanted list, Moscow’s reaction to that decision, and Russian suspicions that Azerbaijan had secretly supplied weapons to Ukraine. In this way, an incident whose cause was still under investigation was placed within a geopolitical narrative suggesting possible Russian involvement, without evidence establishing such a connection. The obvious question is why sabotage was introduced at all before investigators had established what happened. Ammunition-depot fires can have many causes, including technical problems, storage conditions, safety violations or human error. The question mark does important work here. It allows a dramatic possibility to be introduced without stating it as fact. Add references to Russia and Ukraine, and an unexplained fire suddenly becomes part of a geopolitical confrontation. The facts had not changed; the story surrounding them had. The episode also prompted a response from Azerbaijan’s Media Development Agency (MEDIA). Its analysis indicated that the recent wave of negative coverage formed part of a hybrid information campaign managed by a single center. MEDIA went further, accusing Western media outlets of conducting an organized disinformation campaign against Azerbaijan and pointing to what it regarded as the irony of Western media frequently warning about external hybrid information threats while engaging in similar practices against Azerbaijan. Therefore, the NEXTA example raises a straightforward journalistic question: should geopolitical explanations precede evidence?
The same tendency has appeared in other recent Western media coverage of Azerbaijan. On 26 August, Poland’s publicly funded TVP World broadcast an Eastern Express programme on Azerbaijan that Baku regarded as biased and politically loaded. Two days later, Polish Ambassador Paweł Radomski was summoned to Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and handed a formal note of protest. The ministry described the allegations made in the programme as “biased, non-objective and completely unacceptable.” The fact that TVP is a Polish public broadcaster gave the dispute an additional political dimension. Baku characterized the broadcast as an unfriendly step inconsistent with the spirit of Azerbaijani-Polish relations. It once again demonstrates that international media narratives can have consequences beyond the media sphere. Viewed alongside the other examples, the TVP World episode also raises broader concerns about disinformation and hybrid information warfare. When similar negative narratives about the same country appear across different media outlets within a relatively short period, questions naturally arise as to whether they are entirely independent or form part of a wider information campaign. This is particularly relevant in an environment where narratives themselves have become instruments of political influence and hybrid warfare.
Recent coverage by BBC Russian Service and France’s Le Monde provides further examples of the biased narratives and disinformation that form part of this broader hybrid information campaign against Azerbaijan. In both cases, critical claims about Azerbaijan are presented through strongly negative framing, while the country’s position and the broader context necessary to assess those claims receive considerably less attention. The issue is not their right to report critically on Azerbaijan. Critical journalism is legitimate and necessary. The problem is that some of the information presented is not grounded in established facts, Azerbaijan’s position and the wider context are often disregarded, and the resulting narratives may serve the interests of various lobbying groups. One publication omits historical context; another begins with a loaded frame; another introduces an unverified geopolitical possibility. Individually, each case may be explained as an editorial decision. Taken together, however, they contribute to a biased picture of Azerbaijan for international audiences and may point to a coordinated and deliberate hybrid information campaign.
This brings us back to strategic narratives. Miskimmon, O’Loughlin and Roselle explain how strategic narratives construct meaning in international politics and shape the perceptions, beliefs and behaviour of international actors. Seen from this perspective, the cases discussed above are not simply about the wording of individual articles or posts. The similarities in selective presentation of facts, omission of important context and politically loaded framing may point to the deliberate construction of narratives as part of a broader hybrid information campaign against Azerbaijan. Such a campaign seeks to create false perceptions of the country, undermine its positive international image and weaken its standing in the international arena. Azerbaijan does not need immunity from criticism, and objective journalism does not require foreign media to adopt Baku’s position. What it does require is context and evidence. Armenian experiences of the former conflict can be reported, but Azerbaijani displacement and decades of occupation cannot simply vanish from the same history. Likewise, an explosion at an ammunition depot can be reported without giving an incident whose cause remains unknown an immediate geopolitical explanation. When context is systematically omitted, facts are selectively presented and speculation is inserted into reporting, journalism risks becoming an instrument of a broader disinformation campaign rather than a means of informing the public.
