The political forces running for the Yerevan City Council in the May 31 elections are mainly dissatisfied with the quality and way of coverage of their campaigns in print media. While they consider that television stations are mostly neutral in their reports involving candidates and their campaigns, they see a division in print and online media into two parts – pro-governing and pro-opposition that are openly engaged in smear campaigns against the opposite camp.

Seven TV companies were monitored to see how balanced they are in their coverage of the election campaign. Among them one is public (Armenian Public Television H1) and six are private (H2, ALM, ArmNews, Yerkir Media, Kentron and Shant).

According to the data of the first and second stages of TV monitoring published by the Yerevan Press Club, most references to the six political parties and one bloc contesting the City Council elections were neutral.

No monitoring of campaign coverage in print and online media has been conducted for these elections. But political parties participating in the race already have their own observations.

Heghine Bisharyan, who heads the Orinats Yerkir ticket, believes that newspapers are mainly engaged in “foisting their own opinions on readers.”

“I have not met a professional analysis yet. The press does not manage to present properly how important these elections are,” Bisharyan says.

Naira Zohrabyan, who runs the Prosperous Armenia Party campaign, says readers like “easily digestible food” and only specialists read analytical articles. She thinks that the press fails to educate readers on the significance of these elections.

“Newspapers are divided into two main groups – pro-opposition and pro-governing. The pro-government press has become a crowbar threatening to smite the opposition’s head, and vice versa – the opposition press is a crowbar for hitting the government. Because of lack of professionalism the press has been trammeled into politics and thus moved away from its main mission,” says Zohrabyan, who worked on a daily newspaper before becoming a member of parliament with Prosperous Armenia in 2007.

Tigran Karapetyan, the top candidate on the People’s Party ticket, has not met serious analytical articles, either. He says neither pro-opposition nor pro-government newspapers write about him and his party.

“I think that the opposition and pro-government press does not write about us because both of them are afraid of me,” says Karapetyan. “While supporting one, the press ignores another. So I have to make speeches on my TV Company – ALM,” he adds.

The opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) that runs for the Yerevan City Council as a bloc, on the contrary, is pleased with the work of the printed press. ANC spokesman Arman Musinyan thinks that both newspapers and online publications have diversity and clash of different ideas, which he says TV lacks.

“TV companies are mainly trying to avoid sharp angles and that’s why public activeness in the elections does not rise,” Musinyan says.

Artashes Shahbazyan, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Dashnaktsutyun campaign manager, thinks that the press is too much politicized, and instead of covering one event or another, it executes a political order.

Musinyan, meanwhile, does not share this viewpoint; he believes that there is no political order, simply the authorities with the help of pro-government press present that everything is fine; and the opposition press shows what, in fact, exists.

Movses Shahverdyan, who leads the Labor Socialist Party of Armenia in the elections, thinks that the press is very motley. He is not satisfied with the professional level of the press and the culture of information.

“The reason is probably that the press does not have independent funding, so it is mainly one-sided, and it does not manage to stand above the domestic level and properly present the importance of these elections,” Shahverdyan contends.

He is not satisfied with the attitude of the press towards his party in the pre-election period, because, as he believes, they are not included in the scenarios of either the opposition and pro-establishment parties.

“Maybe this is the reason why there is a negative attitude towards us in the press. May be they believe that we are an undesirable participant and are trying to sideline us,” he says.