Two-day international conference on media freedom problems in the
South Caucasus, Ukraine and Moldova is over in Tbilisi

2010-04-17 17:58:00

ArmInfo. The two-day international conference on media freedom
problems in the South Caucasus, Ukraine and Moldova was over in
Tbilisi on Friday. The event was organized by the Council of Europe
within the frames of chairmanship of Switzerland.

Mark Thompson, a representative of the Open Society Institute, made an
interesting report on the key international trends of mass media
development. He also touched upon the main problems in the media
freedom sphere in each of the conference participant countries. When
speaking of Armenia, he pointed out the situation with the
oppositional A1+ TV channel, as well as the cases of attacks on
journalists, which have not been disclosed so far.

Georgian and Ukrainian parliamentarians Magdalina Anikashvili and
Andrey Shevchenko pointed out that there are quite a lot of problems
with media freedom in Georgia and Ukraine. For instance, the Ukrainian
parliamentarian said that after the presidential election the
opposition’s access to air and the control over media has been
stiffened, and the new president has even no press secretary.

>From the Armenian side, Director of the Yerevan Press Club Boris
Navasardyan and journalist of Aravot (Morning) Newspaper Anna
Israyelyan presented the main problems and challenges in the media
freedom sphere in Armenia.

It is noteworthy that representatives of international organizations,
particularly, CoE and OSCE, as well as members of various
non-governmental orgabnizations also attended the conference. The OSCE
delegation was headed by Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on
Freedom of the Media.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress