{"id":7987,"date":"2017-04-20T19:57:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T19:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/3-questions-for-zaruhi-postanjyan-and-petros-ghazaryan\/"},"modified":"2017-04-20T19:57:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T19:57:25","slug":"3-questions-for-zaruhi-postanjyan-and-petros-ghazaryan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/critique\/2017\/04\/20\/7987\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Questions for Zaruhi Postanjyan and Petros Ghazaryan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yerkir Tsirani (Land of Apricots) party leader Zaruhi Postanjyan has accused Petros Ghazaryan, the producer and host of the talk show Urvagits<\/em> on Kentron TV, of a violation of ethics.<\/p>\n

On the April 17 broadcast of the show, Postanjyan wanted to leave the studio. She didn\u2019t like Ghazaryan\u2019s questions on the ELQ political party and Nikol Pashinyan (ELQ and Yerkir Tsirani are competing parties in the Yerevan municipal elections).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, no, I\u2019m going, I didn\u2019t come that Pashinyan\u2019s\u2026 I asked you not to ask questions about Pashinyan,\u201d said Postanjyan in the studio, standing up and trying to remove the lavalier mic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFine, we\u2019ve moved on from Pashinyan,\u201d said Ghazaran.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, let\u2019s go. You do it again and I\u2019ll leave,\u201d retorted Postanjyan.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that certain segments of this filming weren\u2019t aired, since the transition to the next part of the conversation is bumpy. Ghazaryan repeats, \u201cFine, we\u2019ve moved on from Pashinyan.\u201d \u201cWe didn\u2019t move on from Pashinyan, we\u2019re doing it again. We\u2019re beginning again\u2026 from Pashinyan voobshche<\/em> [at all]. And don\u2019t ask questions of ELQ either voobshche<\/em>,\u201d says Postanjyan.<\/p>\n

Ghazaryan\u2019s following question is about the Yerevan municipal elections. \u201cWhat city development programs are you going to propose?\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 18, during a meeting with journalists in Erebuni, Postanjyan addressed this incident and accused Ghazaryan of not being professional. If they give the same question in the same broadcast several times, it\u2019s both a violation of ethics and a lack of professionalism. And I said, yes, please don\u2019t ask that question anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, Ghazaryan responded to Postanjyan in a Facebook post. \u201cInstead of complaining of journalists, our politicians must learn that the questions they dislike will likewise be raised and to be somewhat prepared of them before going on air. In this case, first, the same question is not repeated, and second, if the question is not answered, I can ask the same question 10 times. Professionalism and ethics have nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what Postanjyan and Ghazaryan agreed in the studio about this segment of the broadcast. Did Ghazaryan promise that questions about ELQ and Nikol Pashinyan and the line \u201cFine, we\u2019ve moved on from Pashinyan\u201d wouldn\u2019t be aired? But there are three points on professionalism and ethics that I must mention.<\/p>\n

\n

Promise is a journalist\u2019s weapon<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If Ghazaryan promised not to air the segment with the incident with Postanjyan and he aired it, then yes, there\u2019s an ethical issue here.<\/p>\n

\n

Questions don\u2019t have a limit<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Postanjyan can recall the number of times in parliament that she\u2019s been forced to ask the government or the Republican Party of Armenia elite in the National Assembly the same question in order to get an answer. And she was right to do so.<\/p>\n

There are questions that must be raised \u2014 and the questions about ELQ at the Urvagits studio are among them. So, there\u2019s no question of professionalism here. On the contrary, Ghazaryan was being professional by asking those questions.<\/p>\n

\n

Equal treatment of all guests<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If a journalist has principles, he has them always. Perhaps Ghazaryan is trying to be the same professional in all cases and with all guests. But it\u2019s interesting: if instead of Postanjyan, there was another, let\u2019s say, \u201cinviolable\u201d politician, would unpleasant questions be asked of him? Or would the attention-grabbing bizarre behavior of the guest be broadcast?<\/p>\n

Gegham Vardanyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yerkir Tsirani (Land of Apricots) party leader Zaruhi Postanjyan has accused Petros Ghazaryan, the producer and host of the talk show Urvagits on Kentron TV, of a violation of ethics. On the April 17 broadcast of the show, Postanjyan wanted to leave the studio. She didn\u2019t like Ghazaryan\u2019s questions on the ELQ political party and Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7981,"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-7987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","author_posts-gegham-vardanyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987","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=7987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}