Yesterday Samvel Alexanyan, a Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP, announced about his decision to open a new website, in order to “bash” those who criticize him. www.aravot.am inquired during a conversation with representatives of the journalistic community whether they were concerned about this fact and what the reason for the fact that the mass media were basically a tool of “bashing” in our country was. Boris Navasardyan, the head of Yerevan Press Club, said in this regard: “First of all, the reason for this is that all the main resources in our country are concentrated in the hands of a small group of people. For example, if the government supports the given political party, it has prospects; otherwise, the party cannot function without any resources. The same thing applies to the mass media. Rich people, leading politicians are interested in having an information agency and exert political influence on society through their channels. Therefore, such information agencies exist to bash or praise, not to meet the public demand. Opening such information agencies is for these two purposes.” We inquired how the journalistic community could leave such information agencies out of competition. B. Navasardyan replied: “It is difficult, since the only way to do that is to have the consumer as the source of financing, and the mass consumer doesn’t have such resources in the Republic of Armenia due to the socio-economic situation to provide for an information agency with its investment or being an active consumer of advertisements. Or if we have such a situation, in which rich people don’t have political orientation or, at least, have multifold political orientation, so that they don’t rally only to the government or to another oligarch’s party that is a shadow government. If the Republic of Armenia actually – not only on paper – lives up to the arrangements and obligations that it has undertaken within the framework of the European integration, for example, under the Association Agreement or the Free Trade
Agreement, then it will be able to use specific mechanisms of separating business from politics that are there.” Armine Ohanyan, the editor-in-chief of Hraparak, a daily newspaper, expressed the following idea in response to the same question: “Different people perceive the mass media differently and associate them with different things. To someone, it is a tool of bashing; to someone else, it is a tool of expressing ideas, intriguing, undermining the opponents. Everyone perceives the role and significance of the mass media in our society through the prism of his system of values. We, journalists, should do what is necessary to prevent one-day suspicious information agencies from taking root, so that they die out as quickly as they emerge. What will they do after a few occurrences of bashing? It is hard to keep an information agency and meet the public demand, and we do that thanks to our devotion, our day-and-night work. It seems to Samvel Alexanyan that opening and keeping an information agency is a game, doesn’t it? Let him open and let us see how many days his bashing information agency will work? On the one hand, this is a result of the temptation caused by the internet and manifold websites; on the other hand, our society has changed dramatically, which is a result of the state’s, the government’s policy. At the end of the day, the state should clear, elevate the public, not maintain base passions in it. Those are different links of the same chain.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
