Of course, I expected that the President of Yerevan Press Club (YPC) Boris Navasardyan would respond to my “Monarchy on Information Disputes” column, published on May 10.

But I should admit that the style of Mr. Navasardyan’s answer was a surprise for me. I tried to be as proper as possible, did not go ad hominem and did not shift the angles from the direct topic of the discussion. Instead, YPC President, a big specialist of journalism ethics, used “ethical” expressions, such as “pasquinade”, “caricatural” and “fraud”, in his response, and the very tone of the narration reminded a reproof of a strict teacher to a negligent student. If Mr. Navasardyan confused something, I should remind him that fortunately I had completely different teachers. 

YPC President devoted a greater part of his response not to the subject of the dispute, but to facts of my biography, which, as I believes, is not a subject of public interest.

I will try to respond to Mr. Navasardyan in essence. The explanations of YPC President and the response of the Council on Information Disputes (CID) do not seem convincing to me. By the way, YPC President writes:
“the agency’s web-site published the official refutation of the Council on Information Disputes (CID), concerning the allegations made”. I should invite Mr. Navasardyan’s attention to the fact that our website had published the response of CID, not the “refutation”. Maybe, YPC President did not carefully read the document that was sent to Mediamax by the Council?

It is not completely clear what Mr. Navasardyan implies, when he says “official proposal”? He notes that CID was officially founded on May 1. The proposal to Mediamax Editor-in-Chief was received before that. Can a structure, which has not been founded yet, make an “official proposal”? Can a structure, yet not founded, have a Secretary? Secondly, if the Secretary of CID made a proposal to Mediamax Editor-in-Chief without coordinating it with her colleagues from the Council, those are the issues of the Council’s “ins and outs”, which are better to be decided upon among themselves. Thirdly, it becomes obvious from Boris Navasardyan’s response that he was not even going to discuss David Alaverdyan’s candidacy at the session of the Council, and here the discrepancy as compared to what was written in CID response is obvious.

Now I will make a transition to the remaining fragments of YPC President’s response and comment on them one by one.

1. Why does Boris Navasardyan speak on behalf of the other members of the Council? The response, published by us, was signed by the Council, and this means that all 5 members of the Council are in accord with the stance, presented in it. I believe if, for instance, “Aravot” newspaper Editor-in-Chief Aram Abramyan had anything to tell me individually, he would do that in person.

2. In his response, Boris Navasardyan presents the stance of the Ombudsman as well. Why, Karen Andreasyan has a new spokesman now? If not, then the fact that YPC President speaks on behalf of the Ombudsman seems at least strange. Karen Andreasyan had the chance to familiarize with both my column and the response of CID and in case of necessity he had plenty of chances to voice his stance. I prefer to hear the remarks of the Ombudsman directly from the Ombudsman, and not from the member of CID.

3. Boris Navasardyan writes that I “also shoulder the responsible position of the head of the NATO Information Center in Armenia”. And this is really true. I have been heading the Information Center on NATO in Armenia for the past few years. Moreover, the Center was established on my initiative, approved by NATO HQ and the Government of Armenia. The center functions very successfully and perfectly cooperates with Armenian media outlets. It is not clear, though, what does the fact that I head this Center have to do with CID?

4. Boris Navasardyan writes that “people guided by this agency as an information source are hardly to be envied”.  But, why should the public take interest in who YPC President envies or does not? Since when has the head of this public organization become ultimate truth and a criterion of journalism quality in Armenia? Why does Mr. Navasardyan believe that he has the right to give instructions as to how to prepare journalism materials, or as to what is professional and ethical? And if YPC President still thinks that after his response our subscribers, let’s say EU Delegation to Armenia, the Embassies of the USA or the Embassy of Great Britain, will stop perceiving Mediamax as a source of professional and reliable information, let me cast a doubt on that, to put it mildly.

5. Boris Navasardyan for some reason was very much dismayed by the fact that we “Yet the agency for some reason furnished the refutation of the Council on Information Disputes with photographs of Shushan Doydoyan and Boris Navasardian”. I will repeat. We did not publish a “refutation”. “What was the message conveyed by this “creative” trick, why other members of the Council were not equally “honored”, remains open for conjectures. Such ambiguity makes the publication of photographs even more unacceptable in terms of journalistic ethics”, YPC President writes. Since Mr. Navasardyan did not share his guesses with us, I can only remind him of the parable on the uselessness of searching a black cat in a dark room, when there is no cat there. Everything is extremely clear: my column concerned the fact that YPC President did not agree to the candidacy of our Editor-in-Chief; the response of CID read about the offer, made to David Alaverdyan by CID Secretary Shushan Doydoyan. This is why the photos of B. Navasardyan and Sh. Doydoyan were chosen as illustrations to the response of CID. If YBC President sees any “secret meaning” in this, or if he does not like, for some reason, to be portrayed next to a colleague from the Council, maybe, YPC should issue a new manual, called “Dos and Don’ts for Illustration to Publications, Mentioning YPC President”?

6. In his response, Mr. Navasardyan twice mentions the fact that in the course of 10 years I have been the member of the National Committee for TV and Radio (NCTVR). Yes, this is a commonly known fact. I was a member of that Committee and made decisions, for which I do not feel ashamed. But again, what does the fact that I was a member of that Committee have to do with the topic of the dispute? If Mr. Navasardyan is seeking additional arguments in order to justify the fact of blocking the candidacy of Mediamax Editor-in-Chief, let him say it directly.

7. Boris Navasardyan mentioned in his response the project of Media Monitoring in pre-election period, in which “Mediabrand Impex” Company participated in 2008 (3 years ago) as a subcontractor of British ‘Echo Research” Company basing on the order of the European Foundation for Democracy. Yes, I am the co-founder and the Director of “Mediabrand Impex” Company, which worked with the above-mentioned organizations in February, 2008, and received EUR 8.550 for its services.

Boris Navasardyan writes that he had been searching for a record about the monitoring at the website of the European Foundation for Democracy, but he did not find it. It turns out that the fact of absence or presence of particular information at the website of the European non-governmental organization has direct relation to the topic of our discussion! To console, I should inform Mr. Navasardyan that he can easily find a record about the project at the website of “Mediabrand Impex” in Russian and English:

http://www.mediabrand.am/rus/projects/echo.html
http://www.mediabrand.am/projects/echo.html

There Mr. Navasardyan and everyone, who takes interest in the issue, can read that “in February, 2008, MediaBrand Agency was the local partner of well-known British ECHO Research Company in realization of monitoring of Armenian electronic and print media outlets for the first week of the pre-election campaign. Experts of Echo Research analyzed 743 TV reports, radio reports and newspaper articles, uploaded by the specialists of MediaBrand on the ftp-server in London, and came to the conclusion that 630 of them were impartial”. 

Back 3 years ago, Director of ECHO Research Department Karen Prichard commented on the statement on unreliability of the report and Boris Navasardyan’s words: “We have repeatedly stated that newspapers are far less subject to pressure of the authorities, than electronic media, and one cannot compare these two completely different types of media. This is the same as to confuse oranges with pears.

"Radio, TV and printed press are different - but they are all forms of media. Our brief was to look at freedom of media and we reported on what we found; i.e. that in our opinion a high degree of freedom existed in the printed press, but that the TV appeared to be more influenced by government. If we had looked at blog (electronic) reporting I'm sure we would have found something different again. We pointed out several times that 7 days (in fact only 5 for printed press) was a short period for the study and was in fact a snapshot, however the fact that the media were able to print certain highly critical articles, despite
the 'self censorship' that we hear exists, indicated to us that freedom of expression in the media was possible. We feel we have an excellent methodology for global media analysis and are viewed as expert witnesses in the UK", Karen Prichard was saying then.

It is difficult to understand why Boris Navasardyan recalled this project of three years old. Again, there was the need of arguments in order to justify the fact of blocking David Alaverdyan’s candidacy? But if he had complaints against “Mediabrand Impex”, why was he waiting for three years? Because of “kind-heartedness”? I can hardly believe that. And if YPC President still has complaints against ECHO Research and he openly describes their product as “fraud”, here are the contacts: http://www.echoresearch.com. But what do Mediamax, its Editor-in-Chief and the Council for Information Disputes have to do with that? Or, maybe over the past three years Mr. Navasardyan cannot “digest” the fact that someone dared to cast a doubt on the “axiom” that objective monitoring of media in pre-election period in Armenia is carried out exceptionally by YPC?

8. In his postscript, YPC President writes that I offered him to become our columnist. Indeed, I did. But we failed to come to agreement concerning the following: YPC President suggested that as his columns we should publish materials, which will earlier appear in YPC blog at the official website of Yerevan Press Club. In response I said that we want to offer our readers unique content, and we will hardly be comfortable with the proposed format of cooperation. That was the end. And now it turns out that in reality YPC President “wanted to observe it for some time”.

9. I get the impression that Boris Navasardyan has not completely clearly understood the motive of my column. Basically, I wanted to invite the attention of the readers to the fact that the Council on Information Disputes is not coming into being in transparent conditions, according to me. Moreover, it turned out that one of the members of the newly-established structure prefers not to dispute in essence, but tries to find “sins” in the biography of the opponent. Mr. Navasardyan, we all have sins, but I am in harmony with myself, I know very well what I do and what I strive for in my life. Wish you the same thing.

Ara Tadevosyan is the Director of Mediamax.