GOVERNMENT POLICY TO SUBSIDIZE THE PRINT MEDIA IS WASTEFUL AND POINTLESS
Sara Petrosyan
hetq
17:51, October 18, 2012
The annual cost to run one daily newspaper in Armenia is more than
the 48 million AMD government 2012 subsidy to over 80 non-governmental
news outlets.
This “humanitarian” government program was launched in 1998, when
struggling news outlet representatives petitioned the government to
lift the burdensome VAT. The government decided to subsidize the media
instead; including the regional, literary, children’s and national
minority media.
Years later the list was expanded further to include everything but
the periodic press. The subsidy list included professional magazines
with a very restricted target audience, whose publishers were NGOs or
state agencies, the organs of regional and compatriotic organizations,
literary-cultural papers, etc.
You can only reach one conclusion by looking at the list – whoever
has a contact at the Ministry of Culture has been able to get their
publication included in the subsidy list. The allocated amount wasn’t
increased but was split amongst the registered names.
Directors of news outlets imagined the state assistance differently.
The decades old argument between publishers and media distributors
was never resolved and the government offered no help in this regard.
Locations of the print media were not freely privatized and handed
over to the publishers.
Furthermore, locations and print houses were seized, and today, we
have not one periodical approaching 100 years of operation that can
celebrate that anniversary in appropriate style. In a word, the policy
of state assistance is a policy of cajoling and gaining favour. The
government wants to create the impression that, on the one hand,
it is guaranteeing media diversity and diversity of opinion and,
on the other, whilst they haven’t solved an essential issue, with
that list we can achieve the reputation of being a nation of lovers
of reading within a circle of the uninformed.
Due to this policy, the print media is free today but it has sacrificed
its influence in return. National papers have regressed to becoming
regional ones due to their limited circulation, mostly being sold
in the capital. Regional papers, in turn, have become community
papers. People’s worldview has been restricted to the confines of
the community and neighbourhood.
You can’t retain the media by spending 300-500,000 AMD annually,
even though the majority receiving subsidies state that they survive
because of the financial assistance. They just don’t want to lose
that assistance. The assistance allocated by the government works out
to just one month’s expenses for those papers. Most of them confess
that they have no readers and that they distribute the papers and
magazines for free. They have no sales or subscribers, except in
cases when they force pensioners to buy papers with their pensions
or when they are able to force a few community leaders to buy them.
“To maintain papers in the regions, an administrative method is
applied. There’s no other way possible. In other words, the regional
governor must contact the village mayor and say that he or she must
subscribe to such and such a paper; for example 5-10 copies. If a paper
has 5-6 subscribers in each village it can survive. But there are 6
papers. Which one should a regional governor put in a good word for?”
The above is a portion of an interview given to Hetq two years ago
by Kanteghn Aragatzi Editor Artavazd Nazaryan (April 23, 2010). What
issues can a newspaper, kept afloat by administrative methods and sold
via the intercession of a regional governor, raise in its pages without
meeting with the disapproval of said regional governor. In fact, given
such self-censored content, can such papers and magazines be in demand?
Given this manner of publishing the print media, we are also, perhaps,
unique in the world – a subsidized press is published so that it can
be distributed free of charge. There are well-known foreign papers
that are distributed free of charge. They are unique to countries
with a strong economy. They attract a great amount of advertising
and their sales revenues aren’t all that decisive. But what issues
can be resolved with papers that are published a few times a year or
quarterly magazines. What is their social-political significance? It’s
incomprehensible.
Many news outlets included in the government subsidy list are one
man/woman operations. The editor is also the reporter, proof reader,
and computer operator and delivery person. There are newspapers that
have no office or are family operations. (I won’t call them businesses
because a paper that costs 135 AMD to produce has been selling at
100 AMD for the past 18 years). These are produced in someone’s home,
like lavash or some other household item. Here, we should the words of
one of our talented reporters Valerie Aydinyan – “Beer bottle labels
are also printed in the millions, but it isn’t the press”
A newspaper is the creation of collective work, where each contributes
his/her small part. The editorial office is a defined environment
which, especially in the regions, must bring together a certain
intellectual and political potential. An editor and the staff must
enjoy a respect and gravitas in the public sphere so that citizens
can entrust them with their problems and concerns.
The situation of many papers today reminds one of the private
commercial banks of 15 years ago in which there were those with
permission to expand the activities of the bank; those for whom the
“bank” was their hand bag. The banker would meet with clients in a
park somewhere, jot down numbers on a slip of paper about the thousands
of dollars the client had deposited, and leave. The citizens, who had
just entrusted the bank with thousands of dollars, wouldn’t ask about
the bank’s capital reserves or if the deposit was insured. Later,
when the bank “went under”, thousands of scammed depositors would
create a civic movement of “defrauded depositors”.
They would protest but get back nothing financially.
In these days of crisis for the print media, when the print runs of
the most influential and widely read papers are being cut, must we
prolong the lives of papers, whose links with readers have long been
cut, by providing artificial intravenous nourishment? Must government
assistance to the press be restricted to such a method?
In each province of Armenia, in each sector, there are 5-6 media that
are being subsidized. Based on the amount of the allocated amount,
500,000 AMD annually, we can state that this isn’t being done to make
information accessible to the populace.
Most of these papers play no role in public life. They have no editors
or editorial staff and residents have long forgotten about their
existence. It’s worthwhile to develop the regional media but based
on a well drafted set of standards in order to at least transform
one into a truly regional paper and not solely on a community level.
Naturally, nothing can be accomplished with the paltry amounts now
being allocated.
In Europe they wanted to preserve the impact of the media through
subsidies, given that their newspapers play a role in social and
political life and they assisted with the business plans of established
papers in order not to decrease the role of the media.
In Armenia, there are only two factors necessary for government
subsidies – that a paper be published once a month and that it print
at least 500 copies.
Such a policy is wasteful and pointless.