Report on Armenian broadcast media coverage of parliamentary elections published

 Yerevan Press Club released interim report on monitoring of Armenian broadcast media coverage of parliamentary elections. The survey phase covers April 18-27 period.

The monitoring includes 7 national TV channels – Public TV Channel, Television of Armenia (h1), “Shoghakat” (which is also a part of Public TV and Radio Company), “Armenia”, “Yerkir Media”, “Kentron”, Second Armenian TV Channel (h2), “Shant”; 1 Yerevan TV channel - “ArmNews” (the only broadcaster in Armenia which has a specific license of a news channel); as well as Public Radio of Armenia.

According to the survey results the highest degree of interest to political forces, running in the elections, during the second ten days of the pre-election promotion, as in the first ten days, was displayed by “ArmNews.”
Moreover, on ArmNews, as well as on Public Radio, the airtime allocated to parties/bloc was distributed in a more balanced way than on other channels. Besides, “ArmNews” had the lowest share of connotation references.

As during the previous ten-day period, the closest to “ArmNews” in terms of attention to political forces were “Kentron” and “Yerkir Media”. On “Kentron” the volume of “election airtime” was to some extent larger than on “Yerkir Media”, while “Yerkir Media” was somewhat ahead with regard to frequency of references to parties/bloc (in terms of this indicator “Kentron” was also behind Public Radio). However, in terms of balanced attention, the picture on these two TV channels is different compared to “ArmNews”. On “Kentron” “Prosperous Armenia” party received more than one third of the total airtime allocated to all 9 political forces, running in the elections. On “Yerkir Media” the gap between the leader who received the most airtime, Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun, and the other parties, was not so large.

The same broadcasters also had the highest share of connotation references: 7.5% on “Yerkir Media” and 7.3% on “Kentron”. Moreover, on “Kentron” 23 out of 24 positive references were received by “Prosperous Armenia”. On “Yerkir Media” all 25 positive references were distributed among two parties: ARF-Dashnaktsutyun (12 positive and no negative references) and “Prosperous Armenia” (13 positive and two negative references). At the same time, the balance of positive and negative references to the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) was 0 and 9 on “Kentron”, and 0 and 6 on “Yerkir Media”.

“By the way, for the first time, during all phases of the monitoring of Armenian broadcast media coverage of elections to RA National Assembly in 2012, RPA has an overall negative balance in terms of the aggregate number of connotation references on all studied channels: 14 positive against 30 negative references,” said the report.