From June 21 to 30, 2019, the “Media Advocate” Initiative followed online media reports on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s personality and activities. 5 news agencies were monitored: aravot.am, armlur.am, azatutyun.am, yerkir.am and a1plus.am.
According to the monitoring, 213 articles were published on 5 selected websites regarding Nikol Pashinyan. 48 articles of which are negative, 10 are positive and 155 are neutral. During this ten-day period the news agencies mainly focused on the Armenian-Russian relations and the latest CC Board elections. In his interview Konstantin Zatulin criticized Nikol Pashinyan’s team policy related to Russia. “Zharangutyun” (Heritage) Party considers Nikol Pashinyan’s one-year government ineffective. Issues in the media are raised in relation to the business sector.
It turns out that as in their own political team, Nikol Pashinyan’s government is criticized also in external and internal political spheres.
From 62 articles published in Aravot.am, 20 were negative, 2 were positive and 40 were neutral.
The news agencies actually touched on almost all the issues that criticized Nikol Pashinyan’s government for this ten-day period. During one of the interviews, lawyer Arayik Papikyan noted, “During Serzh Sargsyan’s time, there was a steady bad situation and then it turned to a controlled chaos, now we are in an uncontrollable chaos.”
From 49 articles published in Armlur.am, 7 were negative, 5 were positive and 37 were neutral.
In fact, Nikol Pashinyan is also criticized by his own teammate’s news agency. The news agency conducted various interviews with different politicians, who in their turn criticized Pashinyan’s economic and foreign policy.
From 43 articles published in A1plus.am, 4 were negative, 1 was positive and 38 were neutral.
The news outlet touched upon Nikol Pashinyan’s one-year bad government’s the so called “Heritage” thesis and re-published Sharmazanov’s criticism directed against Nikol Pashinyan. It should be noted that the news agency did not create its own content.
From 38 articles published in Yerkir.am, 16 were negative, 0 was positive and 22 were neutral.
It’s already the second time that the news outlet does not see any positive step undertaken by Nikol Pashinyan’s government. Some consider this as a political decision: “Media Advocate” urges to maintain journalistic ethics.
From 21 articles published in Azatutyun.am, 1 was negative, 2 were positive, 18 were neutral.
The website has published the statement of the Republican Party regarding Robert Kocharyan’s detention. The statement notes that it is a political revenge. The platform was also provided to the Romanian ambassador to Armenia, who highly appreciated the Armenian-Romanian relations and added that the velvet revolution had a positive impact on Armenian-Romanian relations.
We have a situation when one of the news agencies adopted an absolute oppositional stance, and the team site has started to criticize Pashinyan more. Considering the uncertainty inside the CC team, about which the media outlets write for a long time, Pashinyan should review his actions and collaboration with his own team members.
