{"id":92005,"date":"2011-05-03T15:05:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T10:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=92005"},"modified":"2011-05-03T15:08:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T10:08:43","slug":"media-in-armenia-mainly-serve-the-political-system-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/05\/03\/media-in-armenia-mainly-serve-the-political-system-opinion.html","title":{"rendered":"Media in Armenia Mainly Serve the Political System: Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Freedom of expression in Armenia is on the threshold of moving from partly free to not free, said representatives of the country&#8217;s media sector, speaking to journalists today on World Press Freedom Day.<\/p>\n<p>Head of the Yerevan-based <a href=\"http:\/\/khosq.am\/en\/\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression<\/strong><\/span><\/a> Ashot Melikyan said there&#8217;s been both upsurges and regress in the work of news outlets in the post-Soviet period; however, in recent times, regressive trends are observed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In particular, the outstanding representatives of political circles have been taking active steps against the print media,&#8221; he said, adding that with such moves, they want news outlets to be more controllable and they prove that they don&#8217;t accept criticism.<\/p>\n<p>President of Investigative Journalists NGO and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hetq.am\/eng\/\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Hetq Online<\/strong><\/span><\/a>&#8216;s chief editor Edik Baghdasaryan, also present at today&#8217;s press conference, said no one defines the limits of freedom.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That is in each journalist and everyone decides for himself the limits of his freedom, and no one can oblige a journalist to write a piece,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Baghdasaryan considered it a serious issue that the doors of state agencies, of the government are closed to news outlets and they can&#8217;t receive information, for example, about corruption. The other problem, said Baghdasaryan, is the issue of placing ads in the media, which again is mainly done as a result of a political decision.<\/p>\n<p>The most serious problem for the journalistic community today, continued the Hetq Online chief editor, is that the vast majority of news outlets have become a part of the political system and serve various political circles.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freedom of expression in Armenia is on the threshold of moving from partly free to not free, said representatives of&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16879,25879,16941,11400,11397,25880],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}