YEREVAN PRESS CLUB WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
JUNE 12-18, 2009
HIGHLIGHTS:
PERSPECTIVE
THE UNACCOMPLISHED REFORM OR STRASBOURG IS HAPPY WITH US
"ARTICLE 27: THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" – NEW CYCLE ON "YERKIR
MEDIA" TV
SENTENCE UPHELD
PERSPECTIVE
THE UNACCOMPLISHED REFORM OR STRASBOURG IS HAPPY WITH US
The ratification of legislative amendments on television and radio as signed
by the RA President on May 20, 2009, marked the completion of the formation
of Armenian broadcast legislation – a process that had lasted for more than
12 years. One can state it responsibly that the practice of total control
exercised by the power structures over the broadcast sphere received the
complete legislative backing they wished so much, with the blessing of the
Council of Europe experts and the parliamentary opposition.
Why is it we speak about a 12-year process? Because in March 1997 the first
version of the draft law on television and radio went through the first
hearing at the parliament. Having been criticized then by the journalistic
associations, including Yerevan Press Club, as well as the representatives
of the Council of Europe, foreign experts, this version was revoked. The
three-year work on the draft that ensued did resemble a lot the situation of
the past year: YPC, Internews and their partners were invited to debates, we
were asked for ideas and proposals, yet only those of them were taken into
account that did not impede the main goal – to eliminate every chance for
the independence of the broadcast regulating bodies, to keep the
uncontrolled TV and radio companies out of air.
Both at that stage and now the work on the drafts improved the appearance,
yet the essence never changed. As a result, even with 50 TV channels
available in the country, the Armenian public, political forces, experts,
the TV viewers are extremely unhappy with what they see on the air. The lack
of real pluralism, the violations of legal and ethical norms that receive no
due response, the open manipulation of public opinion to the benefit of
private interest, neglect of the cultural, education, information functions
– these are the specifics of the present-day broadcasting, including the
public service broadcasting.
The list of these vices, due, among other things, to the ineffective
legislative framework, was expanded in September 2008 to include an
innovation with a hilarious justification – a ban on broadcast licensing
competitions. Thus, for two years’ time (and the authors of the idea obvious
intend this period to become infinite) even the technical opportunity to get
some competition in TV and radio industry is made impossible.
A radical broadcasting reform was necessary to get rid from this bunch of
problems, its first step being the improvement of the legislative framework.
Still the new package of amendments that came into force has not eradicated
any of the issues constantly raised by the media community of Armenia and
international organizations.
Firstly, the mechanisms prescribed by the amended legislation, by their
definition cannot enhance the independence of the National Commission on
Television and Radio (NCTR), the body that regulates the activities of TV
and radio companies.
Secondly, the amendments enforced do not in any way contribute to the real
reform of the Public TV and Radio Company, its inclusion into the legal
regulation field, to the enactments of its responsibility and public
accountability principles. In other words, Armenia to this day does not have
a true public service broadcaster, the establishment of which was assumed as
a commitment of the country to the Council of Europe.
Thirdly, the adopted package of draft laws does not solve the task of
forming legal conditions for holding impartial and transparent broadcast
licensing competitions. It does not contain any guarantees against the
arbitrary decisions of the National Commission and does not call for a
justification to be given by the members for the selection made.
Fourthly and finally, despite the growing and obvious weakness of arguments
to support the moratorium on frequency distribution under an invented
pretext of broadcast digitalization, the provision on freezing the
competitions remains intact. This cannot be interpreted otherwise than as
the reluctance of authorities to allow on air any broadcaster out of their
political control, unreadiness to draw conclusions from the judgment of the
European Court of Human Rights upon the suit of "Meltex" LLC (the founder of
"A1+" TV company) of June 17, 2008, and to implement the Resolution 1620
(2008) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The legislative amendments that do not entail the basic solution of the
issues above can only be seen as cosmetic, as an imitation of reforms that
do not in any way contribute to the improvement of the situation on the TV
and radio air of Armenia. The coverage of municipal elections in Yerevan,
held on May 31, 2009, confirmed that the main negative trends of the
broadcasting are still in place, that the choir of TV voices obeys the will
of one single conductor. Whatever the TV journalists did during this period
– whether negative or positive – was prescribed from "above". And if this
time the Yerevan Press Club monitoring recorded a certain improvement in the
coverage, as compared to the presidential elections of 2008, this does not
in any way mean that in future the prescription from "above" will not change
and the behavior pattern of broadcast media would not again deteriorate to
the level of 2008 or even below than that.
The adoption of the new draft law package could have been viewed more
calmly; after all, not everything is lost and the law can always be amended.
Yet this is the very problem, there are no more incentives or commitments
for the Armenian MPs to address the broadcasting legislation, and hardly any
will come up in the nearest future. Today they are entitled to state that
the long-lasting process of harmonizing this part of the legislation with
the Constitution, amended in 2005, is more or less complete. The
media-related provisions of the Main Law, strongly protested by the
journalistic association at the time of their developments, did fulfill
their mission, as intended by the authors: they became the convenient
justification to limit the possibilities for forming the truly independent
broadcast regulatory bodies. It did take the lawmakers of today a certain
demagogical effort in interpreting the constitutional provisions to fully
exclude the chance for having independent regulation. However, the amended
Constitution is no longer a pretext to address the broadcast legislation,
and the chances that the Government or the parliament will today revisit the
principal issued of TV and radio regulation are nil today.
Another factor that induced the Armenian authorities to occasionally
remember the legislative regulation of broadcasting were the commitments to
the Council of Europe and the criticism coming from international
organizations. However the authors of the new package of amendments managed
to get the assessment from the Council of Europe expert that they have every
reason to treat as positive. Therefore, the task can be considered as
fulfilled and for the first time in the 12-year history of the Armenian
broadcast law the members of Armenian parliament are free from their
commitment to the CoE partners to think about new changes. Moreover, the
positive assessment of the Council of Europe expert today plays the role of
a certain shield from the criticism of other international and local
organizations: Strasbourg is happy with us; the rest is of little
importance!
The content of the assessment itself raises a number of issues, voiced, in
particular, in the statement of journalistic organizations of April 9, 2009.
The Council of Europe expert that reviewed the package of the draft laws on
regulating the broadcasting, did not take into account the recommendations
made in the PACE Resolutions 1532 (2007), 1609 (2008), 1620 (2008) and 1643
(2009). Referring to Armenia’s implementation of its commitments to the CoE
and the functioning of democratic institutions in the country, these
Resolutions define the current reform agenda, also in media. The
recommendations raise the problems of independence of the regulatory body,
the transparency of broadcast licensing competitions, the possible
participation of "A1+" TV company in them, the moratorium on frequency
distribution. While considering the package of the drafts without taking
into account the four last PACE recommendations on Armenia, the Council of
Europe expert, on the one hand, bypassed some questionable clauses of the
legislation in force (firstly, the introduced ban on the frequency
distribution), on the other, she assessed a whole range of legislative
innovations out of the context of existing problems in the recent practice
(lack of transparency and impartiality of broadcast licensing competitions,
lack of any forms of accountability of the Public TV and Radio Company to
the society, etc.).
The expert welcomes the amendments to Article 50 of the RA Law "On
Television and Radio" that stipulates the provision of "full justification"
of competition participants that were refused a license, referring to the
appropriate clause in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of
June 17, 2008 on "A1+" case. Yet in essence nothing new in terms of
justifying the refusal of the license is proposed by the new draft, there
are still no mechanisms top define the selection criteria for NCTR members.
One could quote many examples of the insufficiently profound analysis of the
draft law package by the CoE expert. Yet the problem lies not in the
particulars, but in the method through which the media legislation is formed
in Armenia, and the role of international expert assessment in the process.
Despite the fact that a working group has been established at the
specialized Standing Committee of the RA National Assembly, involving local
experts, the recent drafts were only discussed by this group twice, and only
on the stages when the discussions could not have any significant influence
on the content of the drafts. The first debate centered on general issues
and was purely formal in nature, and the second one was summoned a few days
before the second hearing of the package, when the authors were already
adamant in their approach. In between international experts met and
discussed the drafts only with the MPs interested in their advancement.
Objections, comment, explanations of the problems regarding the practical
implementation of a certain clause that representatives of Armenian media
community could share, public debates are of no interest to anyone any more.
Such a closed process of legislation formation can bear no other fruit than
what we have today. In other words, the civil society institutes are deprive
of any real chance to influence the principal decision-making in the
legislation.
Participation in such imitations, membership in various boards and groups
set up for the sake of appearances only has always been contrary to the
principles of Yerevan Press Club, and, as it has already been stated,
representatives of our organization will no longer participate in the
working group on media legislation at the RA NA Standing Committee on
Science, Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Issues. This decision can only
be reconsidered in case of a dramatic change in the attitude that the
Armenian MPs have to lawmaking.
Meanwhile, we so far observe a reverse process. Another proof of that is one
of the earliest efforts to institutionalize the Public Council, formed
recently by presidential decree, in the renewed broadcast legislation.
Having given this structure, seen as nothing more but a showoff substitute
for the civil society, a role in forming the broadcast regulatory bodies,
the Armenian legislators made another step towards replacing the true
democratic processes by the imitation.
Finally, the proactive and principled stance of the opposition – yet another
factor (along with the political will of the authorities, competent
involvement of international organizations, attention to the proposals of
local NGOs and expert community) that could contribute to the healthy and
constructive lawmaking, based on the competition of ideas and approaches –
failed to work in the case of broadcast legislation amendments enforced in
May 2009, either. How does the consensus of "Heritage" faction with the
ruling coalition on the issue go hand in hand with its criticism of the
situation in broadcasting and demands to get "A1+" TV company back on the
air, remains a mystery.
The new opportunity to break down the blockade of Armenian air should
apparently be expected only when those who could but did not wish to display
principles at this stage of legislative reforms face new problems in
broadcasting. And these, judging from the attitude towards the freedom of
expression issues in Armenia, will hardly take long in coming…
Boris NAVASARDIAN
"ARTICLE 27: THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" – NEW CYCLE ON "YERKIR
MEDIA" TV
On June 13 the first program of the cycle "Article 27: the Right to Freedom
of Expression" went on the air of "Yerkir Media" TV company. The new cycle
is produced by Eurasia Partnership Foundation under a project, supported by
British Embassy in Armenia and USAID. The discussion of the talk-show
participants is preceded by a documentary. The films, shot by Armenian or
foreign directors, deal with different dimensions of freedom of expression.
The program host is Boris Navasardian, President of Yerevan Press Club.
The cycle "Article 27: the Right to Freedom of Expression" is aired on
"Yerkir Media" every Saturday at 16.45 (rerun on Mondays at 15.00). The
talk-show is also broadcast by a number of regional companies, joined into
"Hamaspyur" TV network.
SENTENCE UPHELD
On June 15 the RA Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the sentence, passed by
court of general jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash communities of
Yerevan on April 17, 2009 on the case of free-lance journalist Gagik
Shamshian, returned guilty by Part 3 of Article 343 of RA Criminal Code
("Disrespect to Court"). As it has been reported, Gagik Shamshian was
sentenced to a fine in the amount of 350,000 AMD, or about $ 950 (see YPC
Weekly Newsletter, 17-23 April, 2009).
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Editor of YPC Newsletter – Elina POGHOSBEKIAN
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
