Covering a song contest scandal

Last year Eurovision song contest was accompanied by a scandal: Azerbaijani security service interrogated Rovshan Nasirli, a young Azerbaijani man, who voted for the singer of Armenia in the contest. Azerbaijan and Armenia has a disputed area, Nagorni Garabagh and as it is stated in UN resolutions Armenia has occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories. Azerbaijan has more than 1 million refugees from these territories.
Rovshan Nasirli told in his interview to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty that the security service official blamed him in betraying to the motherland and questioned his patriotism during the interrogation and insulted him for voting to the rival country singer in the contest.
Many international media organization, like CNN and BBC, discussed this news for a certain time after Radio Free Europe had published the story.
The local media and the government accused Radio Free Europe for not defending interest of Azerbaijan and discrediting him for the sake of Armenia.
I was one of the Radio Free Europe reporters who covered the story.
Before doing that I questioned myself for a while.
Should I keep my eyes to the human rights violations because my country can be internationally discredited?

Do I betray my nation by covering the story?


I think I did not.

As I told in my previous blogs, I am trying to follow Kantian way of thinking – have you values and principals and follow them. To lighten dark places is my professional principle. And also defending the truth is also my personal value.
My government did wrong to insult a person for voting for the rival country singer. It was his right to vote for whoever he wanted.
I should have covered it not considering the result of news. If not I should have had expect all the reporters in the world to hide the truth for the sake of their government and the country.