They were also, in common with some other participants, in favour of finding international assistance to set up an All-Caucasus information agency or television company. This would be an agency which would have representatives from all regional groups, which they felt would be a step forward in communication between the conflicting regions. The Azerbaijani and Armenian journalists, however, were in general not in favour of such a step. They favoured assistance to existing media organisations, in order to help them improve the lines of communication between different regional media organisations. In general, participants called for more assistance on the level of training in professionalism, including the dissemination of new ideas and contemporary texts on journalism, mechanisms to improve the exchange of information between journalists working in different regions and more international attention to be directed to their problems and difficulties regarding freedom of speech.
Ethnic chauvinism is omnipresent in the media during times of nationalist tensions and conflicts.
It is a major instrument of paving the ground for mass scale violence. Merciless propaganda is a factor of sometimes decisive importance for the outcome of armed conflict. Recent wars in the former Soviet Union and the disintegrated Socialist Yugoslav Federation proved this. On the other hand, there is a wide-spread expectation that if reports about ethnic strife are created by media professionals freely and presented in a balanced manner, they can help overcome conflict by enlightening the public and allowing them to form their own opinion and political will. The EIM's workshop in Moscow circled also around these questions, but of course without the ambition to determine specific solutions.