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REPUBLICANS ABUSED ADMINISTRATIVE RESOURCE

Politics

Yerevan Press Club and the Team Survey Center conducted monitoring of 14 Armenian TV channels and radio channels through the election campaign and the preceding period and found out that between April 8 and May 10 there was 1.177 million seconds of reporting on the election, including 25 percent or 275.6 thousand seconds on the Republican Party, about 20 percent or 217.8 thousand seconds on the Prosperous Armenia Party, 15 percent or 175.9 thousand seconds on the ARF Dashnaktsutyun. In other words, 60 percent of election reporting was devoted to these three parties, whereas the other 20 political parties running in the election had to be happy with 40 percent. The picture of separate TV channels is not reassuring either.

It became clear during the campaign that the “TV stars” of the coverage of the major political event were the Republican Party, the Prosperous Armenia Party and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun. The chair of Yerevan Press Club Boris Navasardyan said the outcome of the election and the coverage correspond by 70-80 percent: those who appeared on TV often won the election. And since the same picture was in almost all the broadcast media, i.e. great love for the Republican Party, the Prosperous Armenia Party and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun, non-warm attitude towards the New Times Party, the Republic Party and the Impeachment, the authors of the monitoring say it is the use of the administrative resource. To reduce the effect of the administrative resource, in normal countries the official meetings are reduced. In our country, “the frequency of official meetings and events grows.”

“As the day of the voting was drawing nearer, and the political competition was growing tenser, the balance of the reporting on the Republican Party, the Prosperous Armenia Party and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun was positive. On May 10 half of the parties running in the election were not mentioned on separate channels at all. The Republican Party got 13 788 seconds, the Prosperous Armenia Party got 9 675 seconds, the ARF Dashnaktsutyun got 9 044 seconds,” the monitoring concluded.

Armenia TV and Armnews were the most passive of the monitored channels. At the beginning of the year Armenia TV closed some information and political programs. As to Armnews, “the small volume of reporting on parties does not fit with the idea of a 24-hour information channel. In fact, Armnews did little to raise awareness among viewers, especially considering that 17 102 seconds of the “party” airtime was reports repeated for a number of times.”

In 33 days the Public channel spoke about the Social Democratic Henchak Party for 2 seconds against 14 542 seconds of the Republican Party and 6663 seconds of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun. Yerkir Media provided 175 357 seconds for election reporting, including 89 425 or 50 percent on the ARF Dashnaktsutyun. Kentron provided 141 518 seconds, including 40 425 or over 30 percent on the Prosperous Armenia Party. In 33 days H2 channel spoke about the Republican Party 3500 times more than the Henchak Party and 77 times more than the Impeachment Alliance. On Shant TV, 63 167 out of 75 260 seconds or 83 percent of reporting was on the Republican Party, the Prosperous Armenia Party and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun.

In the period of the election campaign and the preceding period all the parties had an opportunity to address the public on TV, there was political pluralism. However, “for the parties the access to television could not compensate for the extremely limited attention of the broadcast media towards the opposition over the lasting period preceding the election,” concluded Yerevan Press Club and the Team Survey Centre.