Armenia Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
April 7, 2013
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Europe & Eurasia MSI in 2001.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download the Complete Armenia MSI Chapter (PDF): 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001
MSI Armenia - 2013 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.12
The main political events developed around the 2012 parliamentary elections and the presidential elections of February 18, 2013. In the parliamentary poll, President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party won the majority of seats, with a comfortable lead over Prosperous Armenia and other parties. Sarkisian won the presidential election after his two most serious rivals withdrew prior to the poll, claiming fraud. A long-shot candidate registered a surprising 37 percent of the vote and placed second.
International observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described the parliamentary elections as “a vibrant and largely peaceful campaign, with overall balanced media coverage,” and noted that the media “fulfilled their obligations to provide balanced coverage, and all candidates took advantage of free airtime” during the presidential election. OSCE observers were more skeptical about the fairness of the polls, citing pressure on voters, flawed complaints processes, and misuse of state resources by the ruling party and its allies—all of which undermined confidence in both elections.
Panelist Edgar Vardanyan of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies noted that television stations have become a bit more open politically. Compared with the coverage of previous elections, the television reporting on the parliamentary poll was more balanced. He underscored that the improvement is a result of a government policy that allows some venting of discontent, so as not to permit anger to accumulate and spark public unrest—as occurred during the previous presidential elections. The result has been positive, with the once-closed rostrum now partially open. “I wouldn’t dare say that these changes are irreversible, but restrictions at the previous levels are not likely to recur. The setback cannot be of that scale,” Vardanyan said.
Armenia improved on every objective for the 2013 MSI, though improvements were slight in most cases. Important gains were made in freedom of speech rights and enforcement, though the decriminalization of libel from 2010 has shown more harm than good in the short term. Numerous civil libel lawsuits erupted following the decriminalization, forcing some media outlets to face the possibility of extinction due to enormous fines. However, the situation has calmed, with the number of such lawsuits down by one-third from 2011. Public media independence, private media ownership transparency, and meaningful trade associations remain key constraints to further improvements in media sustainability.
Ethics and bias concerns somewhat countered improvements in broader news coverage. All panelists agreed that the dramatic expansion of online media has damaged the field overall, flooding it with a new generation of unprofessional editors and journalists. They lamented the proliferation of poor-quality, unverified reporting.
“A great number of websites have emerged that work under the government,” said Edik Baghdasaryan, editor-in-chief of online periodical Hetq.am and president of the Armenian Association of Investigative Journalists. “The government has thus gained a larger audience, and greater leverage mechanisms. They are doing so many projects on the Internet that sometimes you just want to give up.”
