TV COVERAGE OF SARKISIAN RALLIES RAISES QUESTIONS
By Emil Danielyan and Ruzanna Khachatrian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Feb 13 2008
Armenia’s electronic media have long been loyal to the government,
and there is nothing unusual about their highly positive coverage of
Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian’s election campaign. What is unusual
is the fact that Armenian state television and the more than a dozen
national private networks take one day to prepare and broadcast
reports on his campaign rallies.
This apparently coordinated policy has left media watchers scratching
their heads and sparked opposition allegations that TV reports on
Sarkisian rallies are censored and even doctored before being aired.
The supposedly competing broadcasters strongly deny this, saying that
the prime minister usually meets voters late in the afternoon or
in the evening and that their journalists are physically unable to
report on those high-profile events in depth on the same day. Such
explanations are less than convincing, though, considering the fact
the TV channels inform viewers about other events taking place in
Armenia in a far more timely manner.
"The prime minister’s meetings take place in the afternoon and in order
to be able to ensure the principle of equality [of all presidential
candidates] we air reports the next day," said Shavarsh Gevorgian,
head of the news service of H2, Armenia’s most accessible private TV
channel. "And this is true not only for Serzh Sarkisian’s meetings."
"Please, don’t look for anything suspicious here, especially
in relation to our TV company because we don’t cover Serzh
Sarkisian’s campaign every day," said Gegham Manukian, chairman of
the Yerkir-Media channel controlled by the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnaktsutyun).
Manukian claimed that even some campaign rallies held by
Dashnaktsutyun’s presidential candidate, Vahan Hovannisian, were
shown on Yerkir-Media the next day. He insisted that Dashnaktsutyun
and its broadcasting arm did not cut any deals with a government
which Hovannisian regularly criticizes in his campaign speeches.
Sarkisian’s campaign team and the governing Republican Party of Armenia
(HHK) also defend the one-day time lag. "I think there is a technical
problem involved because our meetings in remote regions take place
late in the evening and I think it’s not quite possible to report on
them the same day," Eduard Sharmazanov, the HHK spokesman, told RFE/RL.
Sarkisian’s rallies usually take place before 4 p.m. local time. In
Yerevan, prime minister campaigned earlier in the afternoon, giving
TV journalists enough time to prepare their reports before evening
news programs.
Opposition representatives, meanwhile, claim that Sarkisian-related TV
reports are censored by the authorities. Ruzan Khachatrian, a former TV
journalist and spokeswoman for the opposition People’s Party supporting
former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, went further last week, alleging
that the Sarkisian campaign itself produces those reports and sends
them to the numerous local broadcasters. She said the authorities
are anxious to demonstrate a high degree of popular support for the
election favorite and hide the fact that many teachers, doctors and
other public sector employees are forced to attend his gatherings.
The Yerevan Press Club (YPC), an independent media watchdog closely
monitoring the election coverage, believes that the censorship claims
are not necessarily wide of the mark even if there is no compelling
evidence to substantiate them. "The identical coverage of the election
campaign by the seven TV channels [monitored by the YPC] is enough
of a reason to suspect some sort of a guidance or hidden censorship,"
the YPC chairman, Boris Navasardian, told RFE/RL.
"We too have noticed the existence of such a phenomenon and will try
to see if it that kind of coverage is really a pattern in the next
few days," he said. "And if it is a pattern, then we definitely have
a problem."
The YPC repeatedly criticized the Armenian TV stations for presenting
Sarkisian in an exclusively positive light and showing "unprecedented"
bias against Ter-Petrosian.