The legal team of the Library of Congress of the US has released a report addressing restrictions on media coverage in some two dozen countries, including Armenia, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Voice of America (VOA) Armenian Service reported.
In an interview with VOA Armenian Service, Peter Ruddick, a representative of the legal team of the Library of Congress, stated that the measures taken by the authorities to strengthen media control in virtually all aforementioned countries were criticized by their public and the media, and similar developments were reported in Armenia, too.
In its section on Armenia, the report also referred to the government’s initiative to amend the Freedom of Information Law, and which would allow the government to refrain from disclosing environmental information if it would have a negative impact on the environment. The report states that if adopted, these amendments will allow the authorities to leave unanswered the journalists’ and civil society’s inquiries on environmental issues.
The report points also to Armenia’s new law on audio and video broadcasting, stressing that it restricts the entry of foreign broadcasters into the Armenian media field, making further broadcasting conditional on international agreements.
However, according to Ruddick, Armenia is not the only country that has adopted laws restricting the media field, and the Armenian authorities’ law amendments in this domain fully reflect and correspond to the current trend in the region in the context of fighting the pandemic.