OSCE DEPLORES ‘EXCESSIVE’ TV COVERAGE OF SARKISIAN
By Emil Danielyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Jan 30 2008
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe criticized Armenia’s leading broadcasters on Wednesday for
what they described as a tendentious coverage of the presidential
election campaign favoring Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.
They said most major local TV channels provided disproportionate
amounts of airtime to Sarkisian and showed strong bias against one
of his eight challengers, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, in
the week preceding the official start of campaigning for the February
19 election.
The criticism was contained in the first interim report issued by
the election observation mission deployed by the OSCE’s Warsaw-based
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
"During the monitoring period before the start of the official
campaign (11-20 January), most of the broadcast media including public
television demonstrated a clear imbalance in their coverage of the
prospective candidates," read the report.
"The amount of time received by Mr. Sarkisian, on privately owned
H2, Kentron, Shant and Armenia TV, even taking into account the
execution of his official duties, exceeded what could be reasonably
considered appropriate," it said, referring to the country’s four
largest private networks.
"The other eight candidates received some coverage on most of the
TV stations monitored," added the OSCE/ODIHR mission. "However,
in contrast to the almost exclusively positive or neutral coverage
afforded to Serzh Sarkisian, Levon Ter-Petrosian was regularly
portrayed in a negative light."
The report echoed the findings of similar monitoring conducted by the
Yerevan Press Club, a local media freedom watchdog, in recent months.
The YPS has faulted the government-controlled electronic media for
aggressively promoting Sarkisian’s presidential bid and showing
"unprecedented" bias against Ter-Petrosian. The broadcasters have
dismissed the criticism.
The OSCE observers said the state-run Armenian Public Radio was "more
balanced" than the TV channels in its coverage of the presidential
race. They also noted that daily Armenian-language news programs of
RFE/RL "included greater diversity in their coverage of the nominees,
including presenting Serzh Sarkisian and Levon Ter-Petrosian in
positive, negative and neutral tones."