Albania’s football team has bribed Armenia’s national team paying two million euros so that our football players would lose the Albanians on Sunday. Do you have the videos, recordings, photographs, documents that prove it? Do you have the confession of the briber and the bribe-taker? It seems, not. The why do you present the assumption, suspicion and the hypothesis as a “disclosed fact.” There are Serbian media assumptions, but the Serbian national team is an interested party. There are also assumptions based on the allegations of the Armenian media, and here, there is also an interest, firstly, to disseminate a sensation, secondly, once again to weep over what a terrible country we are living in.
Certainly, the bribe is not ruled out, although I do not think that our team is playing so well now that could not lose “spontaneously” in the case of complete lack of motivation. UEFA promised to investigate, and if it finds evidence, then it will be a revelation. In the meantime, it’s just an assumption. If the social network users or a politician takes the assumption for the fact, it is up to them. When it is done by the media, then there is a problem of professional qualifications.
Generally, the ambition of appearing a hero and brave from scratch is manifested everywhere. The Internet has changed not only the quality of journalistic professionalism but also the political debate. Once, I was attending a few seminars organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the opinions, indeed, were very different, people were arguing with each other, but I do not recall that personal insults and curses were ever voiced. Earlier, these, in my understanding, rather academic events are not attended by young party members (let’s call things by their proper nameс) to abuse the speakers in the form of a “question”. The purpose, apparently, is that one will say the other after the debate, “Ooh, what a hero! Well done!” Of course, also receiving “likes” on the Facebook.
But times have changed, as well as media and political fields, the level goes down. Hopefully, these changes are irreversible. Otherwise, 10 years later, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation speakers will come out to the ring with boxing gloves.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
