TENDENCY ON TV CHANNELS AND PUBLIC RADIO PERSISTS

Lragir, Armenia
Dec 10 2007

Yerevan Press Club, Team Research and the Open Society Institute
Assistance Foundation continue to monitor the Armenian television
and radio before the election campaign. On December 10 at the Friday
Club they presented the results of the monitoring in November which
does not differ much from the results of October.

In November the political activists who were not nominated for the
presidential election were also monitored. However, it does not
affect the general picture because the hero of the TV channels is
Serge Sargsyan, and of 944 reports only 14 were negative. 162 were
positive, 768 were neutral. Levon Ter-Petrosyan is the next, but of
499 reports 293 are negative, 196 are neutral and only 10 are positive.

The third is Gagik Tsarukyan. There are no negative reports on him,
only positive or neutral. Vahan Hovanisyan, Vardan Oskanyan, Vazgen
Manukyan and Arthur Baghdasaryan rank 5 to 8. Reports on them were
mainly neutral.

We say nothing about Tigran Karapetyan who, according to the
monitoring, is the first by the number of reports. However, the
president of Yerevan Press Club Boris Navasardyan says if the TV
channel he own provided as much airtime to him as all the other TV
channels, Karapetyan would rank 13. Boris Navasardyan also reported
the Public Radio mentioning Levon Ter-Petrosyan compared with October,
but 83 of 110 reports were negative.