Today is the Day of Armenian Press, and it’s a good opportunity to make a few notes about our media. In the beginning about the bad: violence against journalists Ani Grigoryan, Marine Khachatryan and Taguhi Hovhannisyan were left unpunished, the law enforcement want to conceal these cases. The two court instances breaking the existing laws of Armenia requested “Hraparak” and ilur to identify the sources of information, it’s the first incident in the history of Armenian press.
And now about relatively good. I remember the times of independent Armenia, when there was one, the public TV station, where the access of opposition was almost forbidden. I also remember the times when, in April 2002, after closing of “A1 +” TV station, there were 17 TV stations, which were behaving just like the public TV station. Today, the situation is fundamentally different. The three non-government political parties: PAP, ARF and Rule of Law, have their own TV stations, where they can advocate their ideas and the so-called “anti-advocate” the government. (The discussion as to what extent it is opposition is beyond the subject of this material). The potential audience of these TV stations exceeds the websites and newspapers by 100 times.
In addition to the above 3 TV stations, others have no desire to interfere in “government-opposition” battles, and thus, in fact, the situation is different of the 2002-2008 year, when every opposition rally was accompanied by, I cannot find a better word, barbaric yelps by all TV stations, and it, of course, was done by Baghramyan-26 instruction. As for the remaining media, some newspapers and websites are fighting against the government, some – against the opposition, and the forces here are roughly equal.
Thus, we have three potential political “fighters” in the television and the rest that are more in number, but refrain from internal political topics, which creates certain balance in the TV broadcasts. Pertaining to the remaining sections of the media, there are reciprocal “knockers” who “neutralize each other.” There are also a few like us who are neither from the side of the “reds” (revolutionists), nor from the side of the “white” (anti-revolutionists) and are trying to cover the events comprehensively.
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The situation is not ideal. In particular, the existence of partisan television is not the best solution. But, on the other hand, the situation is much better than even 3-4 years ago, because today the oppositions’ voice sounds clearly on the air, which allows the citizens to compare the approaches on different public matters.
But this situation will last forever. According to one of the well-known laws of Murphy, there is no situation that cannot be deteriorated. We, Armenians, are great experts in it.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
