Public Television\u2019s news service has been working without a board since June 19. The Director of Media Service, Harutyun Harutyunyan and Head of the news program Agenda (Orakarg), Artak Herikyan, applied for a dismissal.<\/p>\n
Host-journalists Taron Kokhlikyan and Lara Arakelyan also left with them.<\/p>\n
In recent months, Public Television\u2019s News department has often been criticized for their coverage of the My Step movement, for not having covering it fairly.<\/p>\n
News of the dismissal of news directors also coincided with the call made by the leader of the My Step movement, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in a Facebook post where he wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cSome TV companies have, in effect, taken advantage of the opportunity for freedom of speech, and decided to implement anti-government propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately after this post with an unclear addressee, Artak Herikyan and Harutyun Harutyunyan left the TV company at the suggestion of the Public Television Head. <\/p>\n
Artak Herikyan told media.am \u201cMy application has nothing to do with Nikol Pashinyan\u2019s post, which, in my opinion, is not an attempt to suppress freedom of speech, but simply a hint of danger and concern from a former colleague. I have submitted my resignation by the recommendation of Public Television\u2019s Administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harutyun Harutyunyan said in an interview<\/a> with media.am a few days ago, \u201c I love my job and, as a rule, do not want to leave that which I love to do\u2026 of course, I am ready to work, since I went to the Public Television Company with the goal of having my own imagined television company.\u201d<\/p>\n Artak Herikyan said that the first few days of the My Step movement didn\u2019t get air time because the movement had not yet received a public sound. \u201cYes, we didn\u2019t cover the hike starting from Gyumri, but we aired the very first rallies that collected a substantial amount of people in Yerevan. I admit that we didn\u2019t respond proportionally, but I think that very few people thought that the movement would lead to serious public changes. It\u2019s not a matter of justification, just a fact.\u201d<\/p>\n Harutyun Harutyunyan said that now \u201cthere are exceptionally good conditions for journalism that have long since been broken in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n For Artak Herikyan, these two months were a \u201cjournalistic eruption,\u201d when there was an opportunity to recall important professional qualities.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that it\u2019s no secret that television has never been fully independent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He spoke of how his generation went to television to break Soviet stereotypes. \u201cMaybe we didn\u2019t manage to, or we didn\u2019t want to fight and resist, choosing instead the path of compromises. We didn\u2019t even understand that even we came close to the same Soviet style.\u201d<\/p>\n The Public Television Company\u2019s policy, work style, perspectives and accountability are carefully considered by the public.<\/p>\n An open discussion of media issues is more than relevant.<\/p>\n Nune Hakhverdyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Public Television\u2019s news service has been working without a board since June 19. The Director of Media Service, Harutyun Harutyunyan and Head of the news program Agenda (Orakarg), Artak Herikyan, applied for a dismissal. Host-journalists Taron Kokhlikyan and Lara Arakelyan also left with them. In recent months, Public Television\u2019s News department has often been criticized Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","author_posts-nune-hakhverdyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}