OSCE CONSIDERS OBJECTIVITY OF ARMENIAN MEDIA OUTLETS
Panorama.am
14:16 23/09/06
OSCE Yerevan Office decided to educate the Armenian media outlets
to objectivity and advised to develop and use self-regulating
mechanisms. Yerevan Press Club and the Public TV joined OSCE in
this initiative.
Blanka Hanchilova, democracy development program head, mentioned that
not everything is possible to regulate with laws because they do not
fully reflect the reality and often are not implemented correctly. At
the doors of elections, OSCE wants to raise the importance of
self-regulating mechanisms.
It should be mentioned that Public TV heads are going to deliver most
speeches. Thus, the leaders of those media outlets which are funded
by the state and often reflect the authorities’ dispositions are going
to speak about objectivity and freedom of speech. "A news media should
not be funded by the state to the level that it has preference against
others in the market, thus violating the principle of competition,"
Yerevan Press Club Chairman Boris Navasardyan said.
Public TV has appeared in such a situation and its heads should have
been concerned with that. But the executive director of the Public TV,
Alexander Arzumanyan, and Public TV board chairman, Alexan Harutunyan,
were more concerned with the outmoded microphones of the company.
Speaking about the necessity of such seminar, the head of Yerevan Press
Club indicated that the recent incidents of attacks on journalists,
the upcoming elections and some disputes between reporters and other
institutions have brought them to this idea.
Navasardyan pointed out to several self-regulating mechanisms and
said there should be ombudsman in the area.