Armenian journalists stated authorities' unwillingness to investigate violence applied against media people

Most of mass media in Armenia are controlled by the authorities and used as instruments of informational influence on the society. Cases of violence against journalists are investigated reluctantly and fail to reach the courts, said public and media activists in the debate on the status of mass media in Armenia.

Apart from traditional media – the radio and television – authorities pay high attention to the possibilities of Internet-based media, said Suren Degeryan, the chairman of the NGO "Journalists for the Future".

According to his version, information favourable to the authorities is spread over the Internet; and it distracts attention of social networks' users from acute topics.

As noted by Levon Barsegyan, the chairman of the board of the journalists' club "Asparez", the problem of violence against media workers has reached a depressing scale. He said that in 2014 they registered nine such cases; however, no proper investigation was ever held; and the perpetrators remained unpunished.

The journalist added that out about 200 such cases registered in the last 15 years, only four episodes were investigated.

The female journalist Ani Gevorkyan, who suffered from police violence on February 12 in Yerevan, said that in Armenia the criminal cases dealing with violence against journalists fail to reach the court.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.