Institute for War & Peace Reporting, UK
IWPR CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 640
May 9, 2012
ARMENIAN ELECTION COVERAGE IMPROVES
Internet sources add balance to traditional broadcasters.
By Anna Barseghyan
Media experts in Armenia say the broadcast media have covered the
parliamentary election campaign more fairly than in previous years,
while opposition parties have used the internet to get around the
ruling parties’ dominance of the television and radio airwaves.
The Yerevan Press Club and the National Commission for Television and
Radio, NCTR, have been monitoring broadcast output in Armenia to see
how far the various outlets have abided by their obligation to give
fair access to all parties.
`Our media have managed to provide conditions for the candidates and
political forces taking part in the election. I don’t think they have
lacked airtime to get their ideas across to the public,’ Grigor
Amalyan, head of the NCTR, said. `Proof of this is that the free
airtime [allotted to candidates] hasn’t been fully taken up.’
After assessing the amount of paid and free political advertising used
by the candidates and parties, as well as the amount of airtime they
got during news programming, the NCTR found that channels with links
to particular parties tended to favour them over others.
That is where the internet comes in, experts say. When Armenia last
held a national election, for the presidency in 2008, under eight per
cent of people had internet access. Today the figure is 50 per cent.
`The influence of the internet has risen qualitatively and
quantitatively , so that now the electronic media play a more
significant role than the press ,’ Samvel Martirosyan, a lecturer at
the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, said. `Over the year, a lot of new
sources of news have appeared, offering many-sided coverage of the
election. The down side is that most of these resources are used as
campaigning instruments for specific parties.’
Martirosyan said the video sharing site Youtube and the Facebook
social network had become the most influential resources.
`Youtube has been used as the main tool for the campaign, and Facebook
as the main arena for it, since Facebook users are the most
politically active,’ he said. `What’s most important is that all
political forces are using social media. Youth movements have
circulated campaign literature and taken part in discussions. Famous
political figures have turned up as users to add a more human face to
their political force.’
Martirosyan said the opposition Heritage Party had made the most
successful use of the internet, though its popularity was still
lagging behind the Armenian National Congress, another opposition
party, and also behind Prosperous Armenia and the Republican Party,
both of which are in the current ruling coalition.
The Republicans and Prosperous Armenia benefited from generous amounts
of TV airtime. In the first week of official campaigning, the Armenia
and Armnews TV stations gave over a disproportionately large amount of
space to the former.
The Yerevan Press Club’s monitoring showed that the h2 channel gave
the fairest access to all political parties, while apart from Kentron
and Yerkir – which favoured political factions associated with them-
the rest gave most coverage to the Republican Party. Even on h2, the
three ruling coalition members – the Republican Party, Prosperous
Armenia and Rule of Law – got the most airtime.
Kentron TV, which is owned by Gagik Tsarukyan, head of Prosperous
Armenia and one of Armenia’s richest men, devoted most of its
campaign-related airtime to that party.
Arthur Azaryan, head of news programming at Kentron, said the only
reason Prosperous Armenia got more coverage was that it did more
campaigning than other parties.
`We adopted an equal approach to everyone and actively covered the
activities of all parties. Prosperous Armenia… had a little more
airtime because the party visited several towns at once,’ he said.
Yerkir Media, which has links to the opposition Dashnaktsutyun party,
also favoured its own side. Gegham Manukyan, head of news at Yerkir,
denied any bias, and said the imbalance happened because other
political groups refused to take part in programmes on his channel.
`Nine parties were sent official invitations in writing, but only two
accepted them,’ he said, adding that the station had worked out how
much time each would get if they had taken up the offer.
Media monitoring is likely to continue right through the election. A
number of websites have been created – ,
and – which invite members of the public to report any
electoral violations they spot.
Separately, was created by the Public Journalism Club.
It has 17 citizen journalists who have been trained to report on the
polls.
Anna Barseghyan is a journalist with , a project of
Internews Armenia.
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