2+ - TO LORI TV IN VANADZOR, 3 – TO ANKYUN+3 IN ALAVERDI

The representatives of the Vanadzor media and NGO discussed the mass media role during the campaign, particularly covering the parliamentary elections by the Vanadzor media.The discussion had been organized by the committee on the protection of freedom of speech. The committee of the chairman Ashot Melikyan and Arthur Sakunts, the head of the Helsinki Civil Assembly (HCA) Vanadzor office, evaluated the activities of Lori TV Company in Vanadzor as 2+, based on the 5-mark system. Arthur Sakunts evaluated the activities of Ankyun+3 TV Company in Alaverdi as 3.

Mesrop Harutyunyan, an expert at the Yerevan Press Club, and Ashot Melikyan, the chairman of the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee were surprised at the policy adopted by the regional TV companies during this campaign. Among the 7 local TV stations in the region of Lori, only Ankyun+3 in Alaverdi had announced the rates of political ads.
“Private TV companies always want to make money,” Ashot Melikyan noticed. However, among the reasons for not announcing the rates, he sees hidden censorship, political pressures and taboos.
According to the assessment of Arthur Sakunts, the head of the HCA Vanadzor office, the fact of not announcing the rates did not impede the regional TV companies to actively cover the elections. AS he noticed, they rather covered the campaigns of majoritarian candidates than the course of the elections.
Mesrop Harutyunyan covered the pre-election activities of the national mass media. The expert of the Yerevan Press Club conditionally divides the pre-election period into two approximately equal parts. He defines the first part as a period of paying attention to all the parties taking part in the campaigns when you could see both AAM and CofL on the air.
“In the second part, the coverage of the activities of oppositional parties approached the zero level, and they could use only free airtime,” Mesrop Harutyunyan noted.
Mesrop Harutyunyan noted that this time airtime had been open for the oppositionists, meanwhile evaluating the attitude towards Heritage, New Times, and Republic parties as discriminative. According to the experts, they seemed to be in an information blockade.
Ashot Melikyan presented the assessment of the activities of the mass media by the parties that had taken part in the campaigns. As compared to the previous elections, they have qualified the mass media work as active and balanced. 11 out of the 23 political forces having taken part in the elections on May 12 have evaluated the work of the mass media as medium, 5 of them - as good, and 6 of them – as unsatisfactory. Marxist Davit Hakobyan has evaluated the mass media work as excellent.
Naira Bulghadaryan, Vanadzor
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