The number of defamation lawsuits against news outlets in Armenia has dropped.

According to Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression (CPFE) President Ashot Meliqyan, the reason is a 2011 decision by the Constitutional Court of Armenia, with which the Constitutional Court determined several important legal interpretations and indicated that in deciding the legitimacy of compensation, the news outlet’s income should be taken into account and a disproportionately heavy financial burden that will have a crucial negative financial impact on its activities should not be set.

“A lot has changed since defamation was decriminalized in 2010. In 2010, there were 17 lawsuits against news outlets; in 2011, this number was 37. After the Constitutional Court decision, the tide turned: there were 22 lawsuits against news outlets in 2014, and only 9 in the first six months of 2015,” says Meliqyan. 

The CPFE estimates that after the decriminalization of defamation, there have been 126 lawsuits against news outlets and journalists overall.

 

“The majority of these lawsuits, in our opinion, were attempts to put pressure on, silence, or clamp down on the critical efforts of news outlets,” says the CPFE president.

According to lawyer Ara Ghazaryan, the practice of legal enforcement drastically changed after the Constitutional Court decision.

“We see that those who were enthusiastic to file lawsuits no longer have the enthusiasm [to do so] because they will no longer gain 2–3 million [AMD, about $4,120 – $6,184 USD]. It was the principle of proportionality that worked. The reason is that the courts, even if they make a violation in the records, set the compensation amount extremely low,” says Ghazaryan.

In the attorney’s opinion, event the abundant lawsuits haven’t obstructed the supply of information to news consumers.

“I don’t think any news outlet has reduced its newsfeed because of the lawsuits. Even violence against journalists, which significantly increased recently, haven’t decreased. The only thing that can significantly influence the flow of information is the disclosure of sources,” says Ghazaryan.

According to him, there is a number of challenges in the media industry today that needs to be overcome.

“It became clear in Lilit Hovhannisyan v. Blognews.am [AM] that lawsuits can be filed only against legal entities, but what constitutes a ‘legal entity’ still remains unclear. Hovhannes Galajyan’s ‘black list’ was considered a value judgment, which was very strange because it was a call for segregation, hate speech, which is established by domestic and international [legal] norms. The defense minister’s wife’s lawsuit against Hraprak newspaper [AM] raised the issue of intolerance of news stories critical of public figures’ family members. These are approaches that endanger journalistic freedom,” says Ghazaryan.

 

 

Anna Barseghyan