EIGHT ARMENIAN TV COMPANIES MOST OF ALL AND ALMOST ONLY NEGATIVELY PRESENT LEVON TER-PETROSIAN

Noyan Tapan
Feb 14, 2008

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 14, NOYAN TAPAN. In the period from January 31 to
February 9, the balance of coverage of the RA presidential candidates
has been kept by the H1, ALM, Armenia, H2, Yerkir Media, Kentron, Shant
TV Companies, and by Public Radio. Boris Navasardian, the Chairman of
Yerevan Press Club (YPC), reported at the February 14 press conference
presenting the results of the third stage of monitoring of coverage
of presidential elections by broadcast media. The monitoring is held
by YPC with the participation of the Team Research Center and with
the financial assistance of the Open Society Institute.

According to B. Navasardian, the election campaign of first RA
President Levon Ter-Petrosian was most of all covered in that period
(37 016 seconds) and the campaign of Aram Haroutiunian, the Chairman
of the National Accord party, least of all (8 725 seconds).

After L. Ter-Petrosian the above mentioned media payed most attention
to RA Prime Minister Serge Sargsian (32 786 seconds). According to
B. Navasardian, if the coverage of S. Sargsian’s official activity
is excluded from the total airtime allocated to the candidates, in
terms of aggregate airtime Serge Sargsian would fall behind three more
candidates, Artur Baghdasarian (29 963 seconds), Tigran Karapetian
(25 706 seconds), and Vahan Hovhannisian (25 601 seconds).

B. Navasardian said that a polarized attitude to S. Sargsian and
L. Ter-Petrosian is noticed in materials broadcast by the above
mentioned media. Thus, 83 out of 107 connotation references to Serge
Sargsian were positive, 24 negative, and as for L. Ter-Petrosian, 143
were negative and 3 positive. The YPC Chairman said that the Kentron
TV Company distinguishes itself by negative coverages dedicated to
the first RA President, at that, 30 of references fall to the program
"What do the newspapers write?"

According to B. Navasardian, only candidates enjoying support of the
"power" or leading TV companies or those being owners of a TV channel
have a positive balance.

According to the monitoring results, the index of presidential
candidates’ participation in disputes broadcast by TV is also
low. In spite of the active period of election campaign, within
ten days observed in eight TV companies the candidates or their
representatives only 28 times took part in such broadcasts. As
B. Navasardian estimated, this is evidence that they are not ready
for a public dialogue.