On February 25, 2003 Yerevan Press Club disseminated a summary of Armenian media monitoring results on February 18-19, 2003.
The monitoring of Yerevan Press Club is made under the project supported by the Open Society Institute. Assistance in the YPC monitoring was provided by "Asparez" Journalists’ Club of Gyumri, the Vanadzor branch of Helsinki Citizens Assembly and Internews Armenia public organization.
Herein the findings of the quantitative monitoring of February 18-19 are summarized (for TV and radio channels – till 20.00 on the ballot day) – the period when the pre-election promotion is prohibited by the law. During these two days the monitoring group studied all the news and political programs of 9 TV and 1 radio channels and the whole space of 17 newspapers. The monitoring was aimed at calculation of the volume (air time/newspaper space), allocated to the presidency candidates to express attitudes, opinions and judgments, as well as for narrations about them made by other individuals – including pieces pertaining to editorial coverage, free and paid political advertising. Along with this, the mentionings of candidates were counted, with a specification of the contexts – positive, negative and neutral.
1. The media in general displayed respect for the legislative ban on promotion and political advertising on the ballot day and the pay prior to it. This is especially true for the print media. A number of newspapers under study were not issued on these days at all and others (in particular, "Azg", "Aravot", "Golos Armenii") in the issues of February 18 and 19 made no or very few mentionings of the candidates. This largely helped the voters to think the situation over and make a deliberate choice. This media behavior was all the more important, as on the days directly preceding February 18 and 19 the whole media spectrum started an intense attack on the voters’ mind.
2. Similarly to the last days of pre-election campaign, the attention of the broadcast media on February 18 and 19 was focused on five candidates who eventually gained most of the votes – Robert Kocharyan, Stepan Demirchyan, Artashes Geghamyan, Aram Karapetyan and Vazgen Manukyan. An exception to this is constituted by "Kentron" TV company only, where the biggest proportion of editorial coverage was allocated to Ruben Avagyan, the candidate nominated by "United Armenians" party.
3. Five out of the six TV channels noted in the previous reports as the most active ones in the course of the election campaign (Public Television of Armenia, "Prometheus", "Armenia", "Shant" and "ALM") revealed a similar approach to the election subject coverage on February 18-19. They mostly avoided the extensive coverage of the candidates, however, the disbalance in the attention to them was retained. Thus, the incumbent President Robert Kocharyan received 2,378 seconds on all these TV companies in total, Artashes Geghamyan – 912 seconds, Vazgen Manukyan – 664 seconds, Stepan Demirchyan – 355 seconds, Aram Karapetyan – 198 seconds, totaling for all of them at 4,507 seconds. (For comparison: only "Armenia" TV company only on one day – February 17 – allocated 12,381 seconds of editorial air time to the incumbent President.) The sixth among most active TV companies, "Kentron", made a more uniform distribution of its time among the candidates, and by the air time allocated Robert Kocharyan found itself only on the fourth place among the candidates. Yet, here, too, Stepan Demirchyan was behind the incumbent (209 and 175 seconds, respectively).
4. The Public Radio of Armenia, similarly to the pre-election campaign period, gave most balanced coverage of all the broadcast media to the events of February 18-19. Robert Kocharyan received the biggest volume of editorial coverage (405 seconds), however, 6 other candidates were quite closely placed, having been allocated a range of 140-310 seconds. Stepan Demirchyan was actually the closest to Robert Kocharyan in terms of number of mentionings (11 and 12, respectively, the mentionings of Demirchyan being purely neutral while Kocharyan has two negative mentionings).
5. The regional media seldom addressed the subject of elections on February 18-19.
6. In the vast majority of cases the candidates were mentioned in neutral context, and on February 19 the broadcast media mostly spoke of them as voters who have come to precincts. Besides the Public Radio of Armenia, the connotationally colored mentionings of the incumbent, this time positive, were recorded on the Public Television of Armenia and “Tsayg” TV channel. “Shirak” TV company made a positive mentioning of Vazgen Manukyan, while negative mentionings of Robert Kocharyan were present in "Iravunk" and "Orran" newspapers. In the opinion of the monitoring group, this coverage during the period, when the pre-election promotion is prohibited, is undesirable.
