Armenia’s online news media yesterday was awash with videos of a reception at a ceremony of the consecration of the church in Abovyan. When the clergy and the political elite present at the consecration ceremony left the church grounds, locals on the other side of the cordon were allowed to approach the long table full of food. What followed was a jostle and onrush for whatever people could get their hands on. Some were quickly eating what they procured, while others filled their bags. 

It was a degrading and unbearable scene, which various news outlets covered (except for broadcast television, which limited itself to the ceremony itself) almost in its entirety — until the tables were completely empty. 

Of course, free food is always tempting and, in some sense, misleading — gatherings with large crowds of people are not generally known for preserving the rules of etiquette. It’s enough to recall the daily onrush and demasement one experiences when boarding a public transportation mini-bus. We have witnessed and will continue to witness such scenes, but this was the first time that images of mass humiliation were disseminated so widely. 

The availability of various recording devices allowed online news outlets to quickly, without editing and even without thinking, broadcast this extremely ambiguous expression of hospitality.

The scene, with which viewers were cruelly confronted, evoked many questions, beginning from journalistic expediency or appropriateness and ending with the danger of harming ordinary people who unwittingly became the “stars” of this incident.  

Is showing a segment of this public revelry out of context, without a back story, and without confronting contrasting realities really justified? Could people’s faces perhaps be shown from a distance, and could journalists, eliciting spontaneous interviews from attendees, heighten the public’s bewilderment toward them? And how justified is this set-up of public hospitality — perhaps the organizers, who had invited thousands of people, could’ve come up with a better way of distributing the food?

These questions were raised and thoroughly discussed on Facebook [RU and AM] and other platforms. 

The media reports and video footage of the “attack” on the tables had record high viewings, while the conduct of people unconcerned about dignity and used to tacitly serving the elite for years became an object of negligent treatment, ridicule, and condemnation. 

Few journalists were able to get out of this chaotic situation with dignity; many became hostage to the scandalous material they had acquired. To publish or not? And if to publish, what to emphasize, and, at the end of the day, to emphasize those in the name of what? These questions need explanations by editors of reputable news outlets.

The May 14 consecration ceremony and reception is best depicted by this photograph, which shows the chasm between the layers of society without additional comment required.

Nune Hakhverdyan