On April 6-7 at the RA National Assembly an international conference “Fighting
Corruption in Armenia. Strengthening of Cooperation between the RA National
Assembly, Civil Society and the Media” was held. The event was organized by
RA NA, Eurasia Foundation, OSCE, UN Development Program.
On the first day of the conference during the panel sessions the issues of
cooperation between the parliament and the civil society, the role of state
and public oversight bodies and media in the anticorruption activities were
discussed. On the second day debates were held in three working groups. The
working group “Role of the Press in Fighting Corruption” (coordinated by the
President of Yerevan Press Club Boris Navasardian) produced a set of recommendations,
presented below.
The first group of recommendations (items 1 and 2) referred to the enhancement
of the media role, the second group (items 3-5) – to the establishment of most
favorable conditions for media and journalists to assist this enhancement, the
third group (items 6-8) – exclusion of corruption in the information environment
itself.
1. To form a public expert council at the RA NA to assess all the legislative
initiatives on media. To ensure the interaction of NA, the civil society and
media in the process of harmonization of media legislation with the renewed
Constitution.
2. To envisage a periodical TV program cycle on investigating corruption cases
using public information and material resources and implementing public and
expert oversight of the professionalism and objectivity of these programs.
3. To strengthen the guarantees of legal protection and security of media and
journalists on duty. To eliminate the differences in the punishments stipulated
for the insult of state officials and ordinary citizens, to abolish imprisonment
as punishment for libel. To improve the legislation on freedom of information
and protection of sources, to ensure its application, eliminating the controversies
existing in various laws.
4. To assist the training and retraining of journalists specialized in corruption
reporting and journalistic investigations, to create voluntary structures of
media self-regulation and their public accountability.
5. To assist the protection of journalists’ labor rights, the application of
principles of professional and editorial independence, establishment of legal
mechanisms in the relations between the owners (employers) and the media professionals.
6. To improve the mechanisms of public oversight of the effectiveness and targeted
use of public and budget funds. To assist the implementation of antitrust legislation
in media system, ensuring the transparency of ownership.
7. To take steps to ensure real independence of bodies that regulates and manages
the broadcasting sphere. To apply in practice the provisions of the RA Law “On
Television and Radio”, stipulating the possibility of involving public experts
in the conductance of broadcast licensing competitions.
8. To remove from the RA Law “On Postal Communication” and the draft law “On
introducing amendments and additions to the RA Law ‘On Advertising’ ” the provisions
that contain risks of monopoly and corruption.
At the panel session on the first day of the conference one of the foreign
participants asked the NA deputies present in the room to raise their hands.
Not a single hand went up. The Armenian MPs did not honor the media working
group with their presence either. Yet, the main purpose of the conference was
the search for possible ways of cooperation between the National Assembly and
the civil society (as confirmed by the event title, too). In reality, everything
was confined to the discussion of anticorruption issues between the representatives
of the “fourth estate” and the “third sector” – who have sufficient joint debates
at various events with different subject matter, including the corruption. In
this regard one cannot help asking: why did the conference have to be hosted
at the National Assembly? For the participants to have to go through the security
barriers and undergo the quite unpleasant personal examination procedure?
