In this year’s report by the organization “Reporters Without Borders”, Armenia ranks the 78th. According to this organization, we are ahead of Georgia (84th place), Azerbaijan (160th), Turkey (154th), Iran (173th) and Russia (147th) by the index of Press Freedom. By this classification, the top three are Finland, the Netherlands and Norway. The United States is not in the list of the leading ones (46th place).
It is noteworthy that this year our country has climbed down its position by four points. The scoring seems to me objective, both with regard to other countries and Armenia. Particularly, it is natural that Armenia’s indicators are deteriorated. There are two main reasons for it. First, the verdicts by two instances of Armenia, which obliges the two media (ilur.am and “Hraparak”) to disclose their sources of information, although the need for it is not substantiated in any way. The matter is neither about national security nor terrorism. The General Prosecutor has made a small household episode into a more dangerous crime, but not to identify the legality of actions by the police officers involved in the incident, but to exert pressure on the media. The demand to disclose the source is a blow not only to the specific media but the entire media, because it creates distrust between journalists and their sources, and without this trust, journalism is not possible at all. The objectives of the General Prosecution and the courts, so to speak, are tailored with white threads and are not a secret to anyone.
The second reason for falling back by the Press Freedom index are more frequent attacks on the journalists by police officers. The attacks are not so much dangerous as the stubborn desire by relevant bodies to conceal them. The incidents with Ani Gevorgyan and Marine Khachatryan are another proof that the police, security officers, investigators and the courts are a “team up” with each other.
These two issues are added to our freedom of expression-related “chronic diseases”, and as a result we obtained deterioration in rating. Of course, we can take comfort that we have a better rating than, let’s say, Azerbaijan, and even though our situation pertaining to press freedom worsens, it “will not reach” Azerbaijan’s index. But, followed by this logic, Eritrea ranked the last, the 180th place. We have a lot of place to deteriorate the situation and take a pride that we are ahead of Eritrea.
Read also
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
