Only induction and deduction for the future

What is happening

It’s sad, of course, but sometimes we have to answer simple questions. First, because sometimes we don’t write about the obvious in the present tense, and the future looks different from afar, then when we start from the “middle” we often rely on perceptions, which up to that point only seemed to be uniform.

So what is happening? Many, even Gagik Tsarukyan, describe the July 16 sitting dedicated to depriving him of his parliamentary immunity as a declaration of war. Some even a third world war.

Against whom or against what? The Crowned Virus. Mankind is at war with the epidemic. Including in the field of media. Whether the whole media should have been involved in protecting people with cognitive materials, because the crowned virus … doesn’t have his own media, it’s just an infection. But lo and behold, no. So, some media outlets are serving the infection, they have become voluntary “crowned viruses.”

Before referring to the conflicting parties, let’s try to assess the state of this war.

A retrospective review

Before the 2018 revolution, there were many cases of violence against journalists in Armenia, and polling stations and private houses of officials and oligarchs, which were often the same, were a danger zone for them.

Media Initiative Center’s “Lratun” project “Without Censorship: The 8 fateful Mediamoney of 1988, 1998, 2008, 2018” the interviews and materials I brought together during the preparations for the exhibition brought out a rather gloomy picture.

The resistance of the administrative and financial pressures of the pre-revolutionary government had yielded results only in rare cases. Like the glorious fundraising in favor of Gala TV. The extensive coverage of Leon Barseghyan’s video on this topic, especially for “Lratan,” will be posted on lratun.am in the near future.

The trick of the “Fourth Power” newspaper was very clever, the editorial board of which immediately published a new newspaper called “Fourth Power” in response to the bankruptcy attempt, and the regime found itself in a legal deadlock.

In those years, international organizations assessed the state of the media in Armenia as partially free. We knew that this meant that television channels were completely under the control of the regime, but there were newspapers and websites that criticized the government quite harshly.

Has the media really been revolutionized?

In the weeks following the revolution, Hraparak, 168 Zham, Hayeli and a number of other newspapers and websites radically changed their position. It became clear that these media outlets were forming an opposition (or were in opposition, but it was difficult to hunt down which political wing they stood by).

The fragile or perhaps imagined balance that existed in the press and on the Internet was broken in favor of the pre-revolutionary government.

It maintained its television coverage at the expense of the expanded “5th Channel,” which after the change of ownership became a fan of Kocharyan/counter-revolutionary, as well as the previously faceless “ArmNews,” whose post-revolutionary owners are four Republicans.

The only loss was the control over the Public TV channel, where some of the leaders and journalists who were stooges of the former government powers were replaced with new ones.

It can be generalized that the media was counter-revolutionized.

Today, the media outlets are defending the crowned virus (more or less openly), considering the danger exaggerated and a bluff.

Hayeli, who often invited the opposition during the reign of the previous government (I myself was hosted by both the club of the same name and the program of “Kentron”), on May 29, when putting on a mask became widespread in the world, found a doctor who preaches the opposite.

The “5th Channel,” whose arrested director is an open supporter of Robert Kocharyan, invites Armen Ayvazyan for an interview, who considers that “THE RING AROUND ARMENIA IS TIGHTENING. AN ACCIDENT IS AHEAD, “as the WTO threatens us with “THE DESTRUCTION OF ARMENIAN SELF-DETERMINATION by concealing with a fake coronavirus and a state of emergency.” By the way, he is also a doctor, of political science.

“Hraparak” provides a microphone to the former member of the Yerevan Council, who considers the “myth” of the coronavirus to have been “deliberately created.”

The examples can go on, but from the point of view of the content image of our media, it is very interesting whether the “crowned viruses” have other similarities, apart from the fact that they are the defenders of the former government.

Just as the crowned virus is expressed not by a single symptom, but almost a dozen: shortness of breath, fever, cough, headache, loss of taste and smell, diarrhea, chills.

And thus suffocation. It is comparable, perhaps, with the conspiracy theory. Those who suffer from these symptoms declare that they are plotting against us from four sides, there is no more air to breathe.

In the last exhibition of “Lratan” we presented the Armenian pioneers of this craft.

Today, fresh faces have descended on the arena. The “Agenda” program of “ArmNews” TV seems to be balanced, the host does not motivate the guest to certain answers, like several other TV shows and talk shows.

I am not an epidemiologist or a doctor, and without any preconceptions, I listened to Shahen Khachatryan, President of the Armenian Association of Vascular Cardiology, who was recently hosted by the program. Until the moment when the doctor summed up his arguments against putting on a mask. “Moreover: The mask creates the mass depressive state … given by the world government to bring people to the point where everyone agrees on, say, vaccination” (video from 24:35).

This is where the journalist had to show his impartiality and ask what kind of “world government,” doctor, tell us about that government. But he was silent.

Vahram Martirosyan
To be continued

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.