When the President’s or Prime Minister’s Administration invites 4, 6 or 10 journalists for an interview, the reaction of the remaining journalists is known, “Those who are invited are sold, those who are not invited (meaning, us) are not sold. Well, if we were there, we would have asked such crushing questions that the President and the Prime Minister would have resigned immediately.” My personal approach is as follows: 1/ I have never asked anyone to invite me. If you do not invite me, I promise I will not be upset and would not say and even would not think that I am better or worse of someone. 2/ The duties of the journalist are not “killing” with questions, his mission, I think, is to present the view of the interlocutor to the reader and TV viewer. 3/ The Prime Minister, recently, has invited several dozens of media representatives and has answered all the questions and did not resign afterward.
The format of the President’s and intellectuals’ meeting is a slightly different, here the invitees were asking their own questions rather than the questions of their readers and TV viewers as in the case of the journalists. In the remaining sense, the scheme is the same. In 1993 or 1992, the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan met with intellectuals in the Aram Khachaturian House-Museum Hall. A talented journalist and a good friend of mine, Gregory Babayan, (who unfortunately is not with us now) wrote a crushing article in the opposition “Yerkir” newspaper. The article was entitled “President – intellectuals 0:0”, meaning that neither the intellectuals asked reasonable questions nor the president gave a serious answer.
Not much has been changed afterward. Reproaches are the same: why they have met, why only they are invited, why they asked this question but not that question. “Eh, if I were there.” “Well, why you did not curse the president.” “They are not intellectuals, they are intellectuals with one “l” (people who say so probably hint that they are intelligent with two “ll”).” “No intellectual is left in Armenia” (they mean except them). “In general, what is an intellectual, there is no such a thing?” And so on.
Where does this aggressive self-confidence come from, this hasty judgment and the mania of making a verdict? Any person, including an official, invites people to a conversation with whom he wants to talk. Every invitee has the right to accept or decline the invitation. Each of the invitees can talk about the problems of his own concern. I, for example, do not think that rabiz music is number one problem in Armenia. This, however, does not mean that I have to accuse Hovhannes Chekidjian of why he has raised this question. And most importantly, the rest who are not invited have the opportunity to raise their opinions, their criticisms and even curses in various platforms, first of all, on Internet. There are numerous opportunities to demonstrate your civil courage and braveness.
Read also
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
