Armenian TV companies sign ethical charter – website

BBC Monitoring Trans Caucasus Unit
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
April 22, 2010 Thursday

Excerpt from report by Armenian website A1+ on 21 April

Heads of 11 existing Armenian TV companies signed the "Charter –
Principles of Ethics of Television and Radio Broadcasting in Armenia"
on 21 April. The Armenia, TV5, Armnews, H2 and ALM TV companies did
not sign [the charter].

The head of Armenian Public TV, Armen Amiryan, said: "I believe they
will sign it," answering A1plus’s question as to why the mentioned TV
companies had not signed this document.

A news analyst of Kentron TV, Petros Kazaryan, emphasized the
implementation of the document rather than its signing when talking to
A1plus.

"It is written not badly; its content proceeds from the Constitution
and should be put into practice. However I am sure that until there is
no adequate environment, it cannot work, and this is rather an attempt
to create such an environment rather than that us having a new
constitution or Bible starting from tomorrow and us starting to work
guided by it," he said.

Kazaryan does not believe that the Charter is an attempt to restrict
TV companies: "When they say that this is allegedly an attempt to put
pressure on the mass media, I do not believe it, because there are so
many tools for this that there is no need to create a new one."

He also said that the concept of "ethical norm" was kind of
generalization, which involved the truth and nice speech: "If you talk
nicely, but are lying, then this is not an ethical norm."

Will the TV companies start working in compliance with the rules of
the charter from tomorrow? "No, of course, not. Nothing will change no
matter we sign it or not. However, this is a statement of our wishes,
because it is correct to have at least a benchmark, so that we know
that this one has passed it, and this one has failed," Kazaryan said.

Source: A1+, Yerevan, in Russian 21 Apr 10