Sometimes I read articles that talk about how media outlets are not happy with the current authorities. They complain about suppression and more. I don’t know, perhaps some of my colleagues have a basis for their complaints. But since my name or “Aravot” are sometimes listed as “complainers,” I want to explain myself once more. I have never expressed anything negative regarding these issues over the past 24 years, first because presenting myself as a sufferer, victim, and as someone being hunted down is deeply foreign to me.
Secondly, I’ve never had serious problems that would make me suffer. Maybe I can speak about two instances where I have seen a serious destruction of freedom of speech, and both instances are tied to the current “big democrat” and “tireless warrior fighting against tyranny,” Robert Kocharyan. The first was when he took “A1+” off the air in 2002, and the second was when he ordered that news outlets were only allowed to write articles from official standpoints about the situation on March 2, 2008. Whether it was then, before then, after, or now, having respect towards both official and unofficial standpoints, we couldn’t publish the opinion of only one side; that was against our beliefs. Due to this, the majority of newspapers didn’t publish anything for 20 days. If the problem only had to do with me, I wouldn’t have written about it, since I have a habit of deleting the “file” containing bad memories and never referring to them again, but this was in reference to Kocharyan’s, in my opinion, wrong decisions that damaged not only the state, but also many media outlets. (By the way, during this popular case, I think it’s worth finding out the legality of the second president’s orders and especially their points referring to media sources).
At the moment, I don’t have any basis for complaining about pressure. Though, the situation isn’t ideal overall; let’s take the incident with “Yerevan Today,” for example. Let’s hope that that was an episode that will be overcome.
All the complaints, as far as I understood, aren’t so much about pressure as they are about online posts that are mostly unmannered. They’re emotional, one-sided, and illogical. To say that the government has nothing to do with this isn’t completely right either. For example, when the prime minister threatens to “throw so-and-so at a wall,” overall, it raises the level of aggression in society. But, overall, the mood of society is then expressed in a vulgar and one-sided way, showing hatred towards Kocharyan, Sargsyan, and the RPA and love towards the current authorities. There is no pressure here. Perhaps the mission of the media isn’t to “feed” hatred, but to calm down people’s emotions, to bring that energy to a reasonable and constructive area.
Aram Abrahamyan
