From 1997 to 2015, the executive director of Public Radio was Armen Amiryan, who during that time was “not suspected” of having sympathy for any political force. When Kocharian’s “Haylur” was “all the rage” in the early 2000s, Public Radio generally maintained its neutrality. In 2017-18, the same position was held by Mark Grigoryan, who is also a “non-political professional.”
Now, it seems, that tradition is being broken, and Garegin Khumaryan, an “unoriented towards the government” specialist, will be replaced by a “oriented” one. The Public Broadcaster Council, which replaced the independent competition commission, plays a purely “technical” role here.
It is clear that today the structure of the media field is different, and the questions that were acute 10 or 20 years ago have somewhat lost their relevance. The Commission of Television and Radio did not allow “A1+” to be aired during Kocharyan’s and Sargsyan’s time, and it is the same now. However, there are now hundreds of media platforms that the government cannot control even if it wants to, and in many cases, these platforms are more influential than the “official” media. (Why this is so, and whether it is good or bad, is a separate topic of discussion.)
If Garegin Khumaryan continues to run Public Radio, it will not pose any threat to the government. I think the initiative to change the PR director stems from Pashinyan’s personal vendetta. On February 1, the Prime Minister gave an interview to Public Radio, and Khumaryan publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the work of his journalist, who, in his opinion, did not delve into the essence of the problems. (Let me remind you, in particular, it was about changing the Constitution “in order not to provoke the bulls with a red cloth”).
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But Pashinyan probably considered it a personal insult and ordered to replace Khumaryan with a person whose loyalty is beyond doubt. Here’s the whole story.
Aram Abrahamyan
