On September 14, Petros Ghazaryan’s guest on Public TV was Ani Samsonyan, NA MP from the “Bright Armenia” fraction. The discussion on educational standards turned into a dispute. Petros Ghazaryan regularly interrupted the guest, and the latter accused him of not being impartial, reminded that Petros Ghazaryan’s wife works in the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports. The host got angry, saying: “What does it matter if she is my wife, let it be my cousin.” Samsonyan called him emotional and noted: “Your aggressive attitude proves that you are biased.” Ani Samsonyan regularly addressed Petros Ghazaryan as Mr. Petrosyan, which also angered the host: “It’s Mr. Ghazaryan, I corrected seven times.”
Ani Samsonyan, in her turn, told the host who regularly interrupted her the following: “Mr. Ghazaryan, will you let me speak? Are you my guest or am I yours?”, to which Petros Ghazaryan responded: “No, I will not let you talk, you are making a wrong claim.” The standards were in the host’s hand, and he began to read them point by point. Ani Samsonyan said: “When you were working at Kentron TV, you used to agree with Gagik Tsarukyan, now you agree with the government. Whenever we have television station and we are in power, you will agree with us.”
“Media Advocate” initiative considers such kind of quality discussion, when the guest is not given the opportunity to fully express his or her point of view, and the host is not neutral, unacceptable. No matter how unacceptable the guest’s point of view is, even if the host does not agree with it, he is obliged not to interrupt and listen to the speaker’s opinion, as he has invited and provided him/her with airtime. The reason for the dispute was that Ani Samsonyan insisted that the Armenian history should start from the Armenian highlands, that the historical chronicle is broken, the knowledge is not given well arranged. Petros Ghazaryan contradicted that the presented arguments are false. He read the standards out and accused Ani Samsonyan of demagoguery.
