Mesrop Harutyunyan, while speaking about pending legislative reforms regarding news outlets in Armenia, sarcastically stated that the upcoming elections in 2012 would take place ‘quite normally’ since there won’t be any media left to monitor the voting. "If the pending changes to the Armenian Civil Code are adopted, then we’ll have ‘first-rate’ elections in 2012 and there won’t be any violations because there’ll be no news outlets to register such violations...just like Armenia’s TV stations today don’t cover election fraud. I ask you, did anyone see anything on TV regarding the violations that took place in the District 10 parliamentary by-election?" he asked rhetorically.

Meanwhile, Ashot Melikyan, President of the Freedom of Speech Defense Committee, labelled the pending changes as ‘regressive’ since they would seriously damage news gathering and reportage in Armenia. "These bills will not lead to an improvement in the mass media field. Rather than freeing up the media, these changes will only further impose restrictions," stated Mr. Melikyan, arguing that TV in Armenia is gradually being transformed into an arm of the political system. "Every broadcaster already knows what his or her job is; what can and cannot be covered. The situation has reached the point where all it takes is a directive from above for TV stations to black-out any news regarding a given political figure or activist organization seen as ‘undesirable’. The airwaves in Armenia are now under near total monitoring," he stated.