“In Armenia, the decriminalization of libel in 2010 was followed by more than 30 civil defamation cases, many brought by senior officials or politicians against the media. A number of Armenian cases resulted in newspapers being ordered to pay very high fines and damages,” the report of Mats Johansson (in the picture) for the PACE Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media presents the state of media freedom in the Republic of Armenia in this manner.
The report also mentions the case of the Armenian Times, when the newspaper had to pay 6 million AMD to each of the three parliamentarians who won the cases against it. The report says that the paper was able to pay the fines with the help of donations from its readers.
As for the elections held in the Republic of Armenia, the PACE report reads: “In the case of the Armenian parliamentary elections on 6 May 2012, a joint delegation of international election observers of the OSCE, the Parliamentary Assembly and the European Parliament reported a general lack of public confidence in the integrity of the election process.”
The Swedish delegate states in the report made to the PACE that in the Republic of Armenia, a set of television channels are engaged in the practice of using material taken from paid political advertisements. According to the delegate, it damages the credibility of reporting in the Republic of Armenia.
Read also
The report reads: “Armenian journalists’ groups reported that the media’s political independence and capacity to report freely on important issues in the campaign, including allegations of corruption, were seriously hampered by pressures for self-censorship.”
The report also mentions personal threats and violence against journalists, saying that “they reached the exceptionally high number of 33 between January and September 2011, and in
the first five months of 2012, 3 physical assaults on journalists were recorded, including two during the parliamentary elections.”
As for the 2010 Television and Radio Act, which gave regulators new powers, the delegate writes that it has intensified the pressure on broadcasters to avoid or tone down criticism of those in authority. www.aravot.am inquired of Ashot Melikyan, the chairman of the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee, whether the Armenian reality was presented objectively in the PACE delegate’s report. He replied: “I must say that there were three cases of violence during the parliamentary election. The information regarding the year 2011 is not accurate either. When they talk about 33 cases, they are talking about different kinds of pressure on journalists, including lawsuits against them. Our research shows that during the nine months of 2011, there were only three cases of physical violence. Perhaps, the PACE delegate didn’t gather information thoroughly and used inaccurate information, or he misunderstood something. According to our research, the number of cases regarding physical violence against journalists in Armenia has decreased; it is another matter that the year 2011 was unprecedented in terms of lawsuits against journalists and the mass media. The number of cases has decreased this year, but the situation is still worrisome.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
