Seminar on “Mass Media, Legislation and Elections”
00:00, October 17, 2006 | News | Electoral Rights, Freedom of Information and Speech
On October 14 th , 2006 a seminar on “Mass Media, Legislation and Elections”, was held in the office of HCA Vanadzor. It was initiated by the Yerevan Press Club with support from OSI. During the seminar lessons highlighting the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2003, as well as the referendum of 2005 were presented.
Elina Poghosbekyan, the editor of the bulletin of the Yerevan Press Club, held a presentation on the results of media monitoring, showing that the media coverage on the pre-electoral processes was neither unbiased nor sufficient. Overall, more attention was given to the current president and he was portrayed more positively than the other candidates during the first phase of the 2003 presidential elections by the media, which are controlled by authorities.
During the 2 nd phase of the presidential elections more airtime was given to Stepan Demirchyan, R. Kocharyan’s rival, but in a negative way. The coordinator of HCA Vanadzor, Arthur Sakunts presented the results of the elections of 2003-2005. It was mentioned that the monitoring of local media showed that the current president, R. Kocharyan, received more airtime more than all of the opposition candidates together. At the same time, many facts and phenomena of the pre-electoral period – about which voters are aware – are not presented on media, something that deprives voters from the opportunity to form a full picture and to make an informed choice. The head of the Yerevan Press Club, Boris Navasardyan, presented the projects that will be implemented by them on the parliamentary elections of 2007. He said that importance would be given to the pre-electoral programs of candidates and political parties. They plan to inform society about how parties implemented the programs that they promised during the previous parliamentary elections.
During the coming parliamentary elections the Yerevan Press Club plans to monitor the media, a program in which their regional partners will participate. An expert of the Yerevan Press Club, Mesrop Harutyunyan, presented the latest suggestions made by RA government for changing RA legislation regulating the activities of mass media. He pointed out that the proposed changes were not approved by the National Assembly. The main problem is that the proposed changes could allow authorities to have more control over electronic media. The Yerevan Press Club initiated discussions on the aforementioned legislation changes with the aim of formulating suggestions focusing on the provision on independence of the media.