On April 28, RA National Assembly in the second hearing and finally passed
a package of amendments and supplements to the RA Laws “On Television and Radio”,
“Statutes of the RA National Commission on Television and Radio”, “Statutes
of the RA National Assembly”, “On State Duty”. As it has been reported, the
amendments to the broadcast legislation provoked the strong critics of a number
of journalistic associations: Yerevan Press Club, Internews Media Support NGO,
Media Diversity Institute-Armenia, Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression,
“Asparez” Journalist’s Club and Vanadzor Press Club. On February 3, the professional
organizations made a statement in which the package of amendments was considered
to be “nonsense”. Meanwhile, on February 26 it was adopted in the first hearing
(see details in YPC Weekly Newsletter,
January 30 – February 5, 2009 and February
20-26, 2009). On April 9, another statement was released. It, particularly,
noted that “despite the few improvements against the previous version of the
package” the document remains to be “far from the demands of the time” (see
details in YPC Weekly Newsletter, April 3-9, 2009).
The journalistic associations have presented their proposals to the National
Assembly specialized standing commission. Nevertheless, despite the assurances
of the amendments authors, none of the proposals were reflected in the document
presented for second hearing. After the final text of the package is released,
the professional organizations are intended to come up with a statement.
