Aravot, Armenia
Feb 15 2008

Levon Ter-Petrosyan is leading: The word is about negative coverage,
according to the monitoring by the Yerevan Press Club

by Eva Hakopyan

The chairman of the Yerevan Press Club (YPC), Boris Navasardyan,
presented in the Urbat [Friday] discussion club yesterday the results
of the monitoring of eight Armenian broadcast media’s coverage of the
Armenian presidential election. The monitoring was carried out by the
YPC and the TIM research centre in the period 31 January-9 February.
Armenian Public TV, ALM TV, Armenia TV, the Second Armenian TV
Channel, Yerkir Media TV, Kentron TV, Shant TV and Public Radio were
monitored.

Navasardyan said that apart from the candidates who received the most
attention [former President] Levon Ter-Petrosyan and [Prime Minister]
Serzh Sargsyan, the mass media also paid attention to Artur
Baghdasaryan [leader of the Orinats Yerkir (Law-Governed Country)
Party], Vahan Hovhannesyan [the presidential candidate from the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun], Tigran
Karapetyan [owner of the ALM Holding and the leader of the People’s
Party], Vazgen Manukyan [leader of the National Democratic Union] and
Artashes Geghamyan [leader of the National Unity Party], while Arman
Melikyan [former aide to the president of the unrecognized republic
of Nagornyy Karabakh], who was self-nominated, and Aram Harutyunyan
[leader of the National Solidarity Party] lagged behind in this
regard.

According to the results of the monitoring, Ter-Petrosyan received
the most attention in the eight media outlets, and only then Serzh
Sargsyan. If we discount Serzh Sargsyan’s status as prime minister
and coverage in this format, then his total airtime is behind that of
Artur Baghdasaryan (29,963 seconds), Tigran Karapetyan (25,706
seconds) and Vahan Hovhannesyan (25,601 seconds).

According to the results of the monitoring, Ter-Petrosyan also
continued to be the leader for the number of negative mentions (143
times). In comparison to the first president [Ter-Petrosyan],
Sargsyan received only 24 negative mentions. The YPC chairman said
that the polarization in coverage of these two candidates was most
pronounced on Kentron TV, where Sargsyan was mentioned 19 times and
only positively, and Ter-Petrosyan was mentioned 44 times and only
negatively. The monitoring group also identified that the seven TV
channels had the same policy for campaign coverage. They broadcast
reports on Serzh Sargsyan’s election campaign on the following day,
and those of the other candidates on the same day. The monitors
believe that it emerges that most of the mass media cover the
election campaign in a coordinated or directed way.

Navasardyan also said that the level of participation of presidential
candidates in debate programmes on the monitored media remains low.

Touching upon election adverts, the monitors stated that all the
candidates use their free airtime on Armenian Public TV, and
according to the results of the 20-day monitoring, Vahan Hovhannesyan
was the leader for the total volume of election adverts in the eight
media outlets. Comparing the current election campaign to the
[presidential] campaign in 1996, Navasardyan said: The campaigning
period in 1996 made a worse impression. On the other hand, however,
the two or three months ahead of the 1996 election were a rather
quiet period. The current election campaign is distinguished by the
fact that a tough political struggle started from September [when
Ter-Petrosyan returned to politics]. I think that we should have
become a slightly more civilized country in the period from 1996 up
to the present, but it did not happen.