What to ask Samvel Aleksanyan, if you are a journalist, you suddenly meet him at an event, and you are not prepared for that meeting at all? “Is it true that you’re rich?”, “How much is your tie, suit, and car?”. It is clear that with these “profound” questions and Aleksanyan’s answers you can come up with an article, because that deputy knows how to answer such questions very well, and the level of responses is very adequate to the level of questions.
What to ask Ruben Hayrapetyan, when you again suddenly “face” him”, you have no idea about football, haven’t watched any matches of Armenian national team or any other club, haven’t even read anything on that topic, and you have only heard Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s name? “Aren’t you going to resign from the post of the President of the Football Federation of Armenia?”. This question definitely will bring to an “interview”, even to a better article, since Ruben Hayrapetyan, unlike Samvel Aleksanyan, is not able to control his nerves and very likely he will give a rough answer.
What to ask the Prime Minister (by the way, any Prime Minister in the history of independent Armenia, up to next April) if you have access to no economic index, and you don’t even want to read any sentence on that? “So, when will you be fired?”, or more gently, “When will you resign?”. It usually does not turn to an “interview” because the Prime Minister’s answers are short, monosyllabic, and do not contain any essence. Of course, Karen Karapetyan also sometimes “bursts” and it becomes interesting. If journalists fail, there are still some “reserves” left to create an article on Prime Minister, since the conversation can be carried on in the following two directions: “Is it true that you have disagreements with the president?”, “Will you remain on your post after April 2018?”. And these questions probably interest certain segments of society, “Will Serzh or Karen be the king?”. Just it seems to me that often we, journalists, ourselves are creating that lumpen level of interest.
The same is with “analytics”. “The relations between the President and the Prime Minister are extremely strained”. “Serzh Sargsyan is mysteriously silent on this issue”. Or vice versa, “The president said that there is no such problem. Then why did you say if there was no such problem? If there was no problem, he wouldn’t say anything”.
So, this can endlessly be “analyzed”. This reminds me of Zhvanetsky’s sketch about big and small crayfish respectively with 5 and 3 roubles.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
