Neither news agencies, nor interested parties or experts have maintained neutrality when addressing the issue of Yerevan cafes

The “Media Advocate” initiative will also focus on civil and political issues of public interest.

This time, we focused on events regarding the cafes around the Opera house. From 13 to 15 March, 2019, the “Media Advocate” initiative followed the online media coverage on dismantling of cafes. 35 leading Armenian news agencies have been monitored.

During the specified period, 1386 articles were declared 523 of which were negative, 507 were positive, 356 were neutral.

From the outcomes of the monitoring it becomes clear that neither news agencies, nor interested parties or experts have maintained neutrality: only few cases had reference to the legitimacy of the issue, emotional interpretations prevailed instead.

It is noteworthy that the human rights activists, who have been active and precise when referring such issues in the past, have been silent and showed indifference this time.