Epress.am News from Armenia
Armenian air carrier Armavia has filed a lawsuit against local daily Chorrord Inqnishkhanutyun (“Fourth Self-Authority”) for publishing news that it says harmed its business reputation. The airline company is asking for 2 million drams ($5,300 USD) in damages.
The newspaper in its issue today notes that Armavia is suing the paper for an article titled “Armavia is supplying weapons to Libya’; however, the headline was, in fact, “Is Armavia supplying weapons to Libya?” thereby placing into doubt the actual fact of the matter.
Chorrord Inqnishkhanutyun, or “ChI” as it’s commonly known, also points out that the news was reprinted from Epress.am, which then refuted the news the following day. This retraction was also reprinted by ChI.
“Every sentence in the article published in our paper has a specific source, but Armavia, for some unknown reason, is not suing any of them. Our sole ‘initiative’ was to publish a photo of one of Armavia’s planes [alongside the article]. So Armavia’s business reputation was tainted by a photo of one of its own planes?” asks the daily.
Recall, an article previously published by Epress.am noted that Commander of the National Army and Chief of General Staff of Moldova’s Armed Forces, Brigadier General Iurie Dominic said that a IL-76 aircraft that arrived in Moldova from Libya, with the aim of picking up a regular shipment of arms (and it is presumed will go back), belongs to “an Armenian civil air carrier.” [Note, the statement was originally published by the Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) radio station as well as Interfax news agency.]
Epress.am then sought comment from Armenian Department of Civil Aviation press secretary Nelly Cherchinyan, who said that “only [Armenian national air carrier] Armavia can comment on this matter.” However, Armavia’s press office did not respond to calls at the time.
Later, Armavia press secretary Nana Avetisova informed Epress.am that Armavia has never had a IL-76 aircraft and only transports passengers and not cargo.
Later, on Sept. 16, Armavia employees and others who had come to support company owner Mikhail Baghdasarov were protesting outside the editorial office of local newspaper Chorrord Inqnishkhanutyun.
Chorrord Inqnishkhanutyun reporter Gohar Veziryan, speaking with Epress.am on Friday, said that nearly no one gathered outside their office yesterday knew why they had come. “Only a few knew; the rest were simply ensuring the numbers.”
“They were making statements of a damning nature; they were accusing us of disseminating false information. They were declaring, ‘We’ll crush and incinerate the editorial offices — what do you want from the guy, that man is a benefactor [referring to Mikhail Baghdasarov].’ We were trying as much as possible to explain that we weren’t the original source, that we republished [the story] from Epress.am, but they didn’t want to understand anything — they only threatened and cursed [at us],” said the journalist.
“They initially blamed us, saying we didn’t republish the information identically, but when the police came and ensured our safe entrance into the building, one of the women [from the group of protestors] got in with us and I showed her both the paper’s publication and [the article] published on the Epress.am website.”
In a recent turn of events, Moldovan Brigadier General Iurie Dominic was recently fired — allegedly in connection with this scandal.