The experience of “Aravot” shows that the desire of our law enforcement agencies to find out the source awakens when it comes to the former Syunik Governor Suren Khachatryan. The investigation service of Defense Ministry had already interrogated two of Aravot.am employees, requesting to disclose the source of information in our publications about Surik Khachatryan. Recently, we received a letter signed by the Head of Goris Police Department of RA Police, police colonel A. G. Hovhannisyan, which was sent to “Aravot” on May 30. The letter particularly reads, “Under the necessity of the materials prepared at the Goris Police Department, please provide us with the information about the sources of information available in the article “Stabbing in Goris. Again Surik Khachatryan’s relatives” (26.05.2014) published in your website.” We have already sent a letter to the police with the same answer, which we had informed verbally during the previous two interrogations.
That is, according to the Law of the Republic of Armenia on Dissemination of Mass Information, Article 5, “1. The persons implementing media activity and the journalists shall not be obliged to disclose their sources of information, with the exception of the cases set forth in the 2nd part of this Article. 2. The implementer of media activity or a journalist can be obliged to disclose the source of information by the court decision, in the course of a criminal proceeding with the aim of revealing heavy or most heavy crimes, if societal interest in law enforcement overweighs the societal interest in protecting the sources of information, and all other means to protect public interest are exhausted. In such cases, at the petition of the journalist, the court proceedings can be held in camera.” At the request of disclosing our source of information, accordingly, you can apply to the court.” In addition, the requests for disclosing the sources of information became more frequent after George Kostanyan’s taking office as a Prosecutor General. The prosecutor’s office had published its attitude afterwards, which particularly reads, “By the instruction of the RA Prosecutor General, the supervising prosecutors shall initiate criminal and judicial influencing measures defined by law for each case of publications in the mass media about the evidences obtained during the pre-investigation, or the circumstances subject to checking, to ensure identification of circumstances and sources of these information that have become known to the media, as well as the implementation of investigative and judicial actions necessary with this regard. The culprit will be punished by the law.” We find it proper to mention that whenever we will be requested to disclose the source of information, we will refer to the same provision of the law. Thus, we call the law enforcement to apply to court without wasting time on documentation.
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Anna ISRAELYAN
