ARMENIAN TV COMES UNDER PRESSURE FOR GIVING AIRTIME TO OPPOSITION LEADERS
by Nune Arevshatyan

Aravot
Oct 23 2007
Armenia

According to Vahan Khachatryan, founder of the independent TV company,
the reason is the airing of programmes that featured the republic’s
first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, and the chief editor of the
Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper, Nikol Pashinyan.

Several agencies, including the National Security Service, the Tax
Inspectorate, the Commission on Radio and TV, and even the [Shirak
Region] governor’s office have been instructed to "call to order"
the Gala TV. As the employees of the TV company joke, everybody but
the water company and the sanitary service are trying to lecture them.

In recent days, officials from the capital have visited the company
and telephoned it for so many times that Gala TV’s founder Vahan
Khachatryan has decided to answer everybody at once by issuing a
statement yesterday [22 October].

"Dear fellow residents [of Gyumri, Armenia’s second city]. What the
owner of a TV has to do first is to realize that a TV company is not
a property of an individual but that of society in the first place. A
media outlet’s job is to present public processes impartially and
thoroughly. It should present to the public the entire spectrum of
political processes equally leaving it to people to make their own
conclusions. The independent media channel of Gyumri was founded
on these very principles and has stuck to those principles during
the years of its operation. I wish to underline that the Gala TV’s
position will not change in the future and I – as the owner of the
company – will not allow any attempt of intervention by any agency
or individual."

Khachatryan said that he had not been pressurized but simply asked
to not show unwanted people on his TV. But he refused the request,
putting an end to the unpleasant conversation.

"Our TV company’s name includes the word ‘independent’. We have
honoured this principle for the past two years. Nevertheless, any
politician who has something to say will be given an opportunity
to speak. I allow my reporters to work freely. I do not instruct
them how to do their reporting, first of all, because I am not a
professional, I am not a journalist, and also, I want reporters in
this small company to be free and independent," Khachatryan says.

Businessman Khachatryan says that some people from the capital’s tax
authorities have even tried to take over his business because of the
TV company [as given].