Journalism is a striking, interesting profession. The distant mission, the constant chase after sensational news, and the endless meetings with new people become a regular thing for journalists. Of course, there are also unusual, even funny situations at work. April 1st is a good opportunity to remember such incidents.<\/p>\n
The female camera operator of then-Hay TV (present-day Channel 12) was filming MP Samvel Aleksanyan during a National Assembly meeting once, when he asked her: “Dear, what television are you from?” \u2014 to which, without missing a beat, she replied, “Color”.<\/p>\n
Here’s another story. A female minister we all know enters Zvartnots International Airport all breathless and to the first citizen she comes across, a journalist as it becomes known later, asks: “Where is the Czech Republic?” (naturally, she wants to know where the check-in desk is for Yerevan\u2013Prague flights). “Next to Slovakia,” responds the quick-witted journalist, all innocent. <\/p>\n
This next incident happened with me. In 1995, I had the honor of participating in the ceremony dedicated to the second bloc of the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant resuming operations. Present were all of the country’s high-ranking officials, led by then-president Levon Ter-Petrossian. Among other highly esteemed guests, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, His Holiness Karekin I made a welcoming speech and gave a blessing. During his long speech, the Catholicos also mentioned the nuclear plant builders who also made a contribution.<\/p>\n
“Glory and honor also to our glorious builders,” said His Holiness, directing his gaze to me. To tell the truth, initially I didn’t understand why our religious leader looked particularly at me at that moment. A journalist standing next to me, trying to suppress a laugh, advised me to remove the helmet on my head which had been gifted to all the journalists covering the event. It’s just that I had forgotten to remove the headpiece on time and the Catholicos had mistaken me for a builder.<\/p>\n
There are quite a few funny stories connected to the mispronunciation of the names of well-known people from abroad. For example, out of excitement or anxiety, one journalist in Yerevan called then Secretary General of the UN Boutros Boutros-Ghali esteemed Mr. Batros Ghali. <\/p>\n
One time, former Yerevan State University Rector Radik Martirosyan, presenting NATO’s Secretary General to several students, faculty members, and journalists gathered at the university, said: “I now give the mic over to Robert Johnson\u2026” He meant George Robertson, of course.<\/p>\n
Of course, there are several such funny stories, which journalist colleagues constantly remember and tell each other, for example, to make the time go by on the way to a job. <\/p>\n
If you remember funny journalism stories, please share them in the comments section below.<\/p>\n
Tigran Hovhannisyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Journalism is a striking, interesting profession. The distant mission, the constant chase after sensational news, and the endless meetings with new people become a regular thing for journalists. Of course, there are also unusual, even funny situations at work. April 1st is a good opportunity to remember such incidents.<\/p>\n The female camera operator of then-Hay TV (present-day Channel 12) was filming MP Samvel Aleksanyan during a National Assembly meeting once, when he asked her: “Dear, what television are you from?” \u2014 to which, without missing a beat, she replied, “Color”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","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=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}