Armenia: Bloggers Love Media – Media Love Blogs, But Who Loves More? · Global Voices
Artur Papyan

Armenian blogs have always been attentive towards the mass media although you can't really call it love because in part there's not much to like about the Armenian media these days. As to the recent courtship of bloggers by the media, Ahousekeeper [AM] has very rightly noted:
“Aravot” newspaper has discovered the Armenian Blogosphere. Talking to Uzogh [RU], and later searching through our journals, they have come to the conclusion that Armenian Bloggers “don't like political games and disdain homosexuals”. So now you know what questions journalists are most interested in, don't you?
And while some Bloggers appreciate the fact that the Armenian media has finally entered the 21st century, others are wondering [RU] why of all issues discussed in the Blogosphere the Aravot journalist was so interested only in the attitude of bloggers towards homosexuals? At any rate, despite the strange conclusions made by the journalist and the obviously “provocative” headline, it was a pretty good article, the Armenian News Blog [AM] concluded. It's also worth pointing out again that two media outlets, A1+ and Radio Hay, not only love bloggers more, but appreciated them earlier and also set up their own blogs.
The A1+ blog is located at http://a1plus.blogsome.com [AM], and the Radio Hay blog is at http://www.radiohay.am [AM].
Regarding the “reciprocal” love of bloggers for the Armenian media, here's what Ogostos’ [RU] journal says about about ALM, a TV company widely regarded by the more educated young part of the population in Armenia as disgraceful TV channel which only be regarded as a joke.
The “ALM” channel went on air on metric frequency, which means – it was broadcast all over Armenia.
A most incredible TV channel was thus created in the world. Different from all others. Television, who's owner has the right to do everything. He can broadcast 24 hours of a party held at the “ALM” for New year if he likes. Or, if he likes, he can show a boy singing 24 hours of traditional Yezidi songs. He can talk politics 24 hours in the most awkward key… if he likes. And if he likes, he can announce to the whole wide world “darned Yezdis, I invite them here to sing, and in return, they don't vote for me! this means, they won't sing on my channel any more!”.
Another interesting discussion on the mass media in Armenia was started on Uzogh's [RU] blog. The blogger had placed a news video from the Haylur news program of Public TV of Armenia covering the recent pre-election meeting of Levon Ter-Petrossian with voters in the town of Talin, during which a man from the crowd was beaten up by the supporters of the presidential candidate in response to his yelling, “Talin people are not supporting you!”.
The blogger asked other Armenian Bloggers working in the sphere of media what they thought about the news item and whether it was ethical or not. In response, Mark Grigoryan [RU] came up with a detailed analysis pointing out that:
Generally speaking, the material could have been done much more professionally. I think, that the Public TV of Armenia, undoubtedly, should provide news coverage of much higher quality than that.
The other respondents to Uzogh's[RU] inquiry also noted, that the news item wasn't balanced enough.
To conclude, we can state that while the Armenian mass media are taking the first steps towards discovering the Armenian Blogosphere, Bloggers have been already been analyzing, assessing and criticizing the media for quite some time now. Looking at recent trends during the media coverage of the pre-election period in the country it looks like they'll have much more to dwell upon in the coming week or two as well.
The audio version of this article [AM] will be broadcast on Radio Hay FM 104.1 on Saturday, 11:00
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