I had been wondering why the Armenian state ( public) tv broadcast has been so appalling recently. Programming has taken a huge turn for the worse. Although this season has seen some (poor) attempts at targetting diasporan programming, a language learning programme and history lectures, for example, all of these are very low budget and often painful to view.

It seems viewers in Armenia are getting an even worse deal:

This is an excerpt from tommorows schedule. As you can see its a patchwork of Haylur and imported serials.

The public television had been making gains recently with a number of in house productions in entertainment, soap opera, and feature film. I wonder if this years budget has been mishandled, or whether they spent too much on those fire blowers for Sirusho at Eurovision…so we all have to endure bad tv for a year?

On a serious note though, I have heard rumours that there are big changes planned at h1. Lets hope. Meanwhile, I’m missing that serial…..

Mediamax: Armenian Prime Minister and president-elect Serzh Sargsyan has assured representatives of the American administration that the government would do whatever it takes to avoid violence and restore order and stability.

The government press service said today that Sargsyan said this in a telephone conversation with Daniel Fried, an aide to the US secretary of state, and Matthew Bryza, the US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Wow,Finally Their patience ended. I think they were waiting for Arthur’s return to the government. Armenia liberty also says Levon is under house arrest which if true isn’t surprising.
Artmika in his weblog follows the news. Armenian observer also has a post about it,there are always interesting comments.

Update 1: Seems A1+ building is being surrounded by police forces.

Update 2: ItarTass: The opposition will use all legal means to continue the struggle against Armenia’s authorities, first Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan said. He said opposition had warned ambassadors of EU countries and the U.S. ambassador about the events in Yerevan.

Economist starts its report on Armenian election with this “ELECTIONS in former Soviet republics rarely yield surprises. The incumbent wins; the opposition cries foul; it takes to the streets.”
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A leading Turkish university based in Istanbul has started offering classes in Armenian language as part of its course load. Following approval by the Bosphorus University’s senate, three new classes in Armenian language are set to enter the curriculum.
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From time to time i check You tube for Armenian stuffs and today i saw this animation. I liked it, It is not like pixar animation but its fine to me.

The most Interesting Issue in the past weeks, regarding the Armenian genocide issue, has been how the American media behaved.
Washington post to my idea completely was against the resolution. it published an editorial which was mentioned during the committee hearing and it clearly asked the congress committee to vote against resolution. Washington post even a few days ago published another story called Armenians Who Need Help Today from Editor of Editorial page and criticized the Armenian diaspora for their effort on genocide issue.
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George Bush today after a phone talk with Turkish Prime Minister again opposed to the resolution in Congress to recognize 1915 killings as Genocide. The reason as usual is the strategic importance of Turkey(for possible attack and pressure on Iran?).
I don’t understand this sentence of president Bush: “the events constitute a genocide should be a matter for historical inquiry, not legislation.”

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It seems Turkish lobby has succeeded to have the backing of 8 former U.S secretary of states. These secretaries served both democrat and republican governments and names such as Madeline Allbright and henry Kissinger and Collin Powell are among them. This time Armenian foreign ministry also came forward and criticized the move. The battle on the congress resolution on Armenian genocide is heating up more and more. you can read the story here.

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Barev and Hello everybody. I am Armen and a newcomer and will be writing here from now on. i am Armenian,but been to Armenia just once in 2000 Christmas. i am living in London for the moment.
The other day i met Matt here and we talked about Blogrel, Armenia and it was raining,typical i guess in London.
Happy to write here,its exciting i guess. so till the next post,tata.

Unexpectedly, the Armenian parliament failed to push a change to the law on state tv radio which would have placed limits on foreign broadcasters using the state media Airtime. This could ( and was suspected to) have meant that Radio Free Europe, which currently broadcasts it’s programs on Armenian State Radio, would have been effectively denied airtime. Radio liberty as its known, is financed by the US Government and is seen as one of the most balanced in Armenia, for internal affairs at least.

It was worrying many that the country’s last remaining relatively balanced mass media would have been closed down effectively in a very clever attempt by the Armenian government. What happened was a surprise, many pro government parties boycotted the vote today, and as a result it wasnt passed. Victor Dallakian , a leading opposition figure, is claiming this as his initative.

It is not clear if the package will be pushed through again, but for now, at least, Radio Free Europe still has it’s liberty.

The Armenian Public Broadcaster, H1 today launched it’s long overdue version of the popular “Haylur” news program, aimed specifically at the Diaspora.

The newscast will air everyday at midnight on the Satellite schedule of the broadcaster, and is completely in the Western Armenian language. This should help address the problem of difficulty in understanding the current broadcasts, which are very speedy and use new/soviet emergences of Eastern Armenian, often resulting in difficulty with understanding. It will also feature news from Armenian communities around the world.

I ( and I’m sure many other Armenians in the diaspora) have been wondering why there was no such broadcast for many years, and this should hopefully help to bridge the information gap. The program is sponsored by the All Armenian Fund

The year started up bad for journalists in Armenia - even worse than the previous year, here’s a troubling list of some of the recent events:

1. “…The three-and-a-half year jail sentence handed to the editor of “Zhamanak Yerevan” - Arman Babajanian…” RFE/RL.
2. “…The Toyota Prado belonging to Suren Baghdasarian of the “Football Plus” weekly and parked in a garage outside his central Yerevan apartment was completely destroyed by fire…” RFE/RL.
3. “…Arson attack on an expensive SUV belonging to Ara Saghatelian, the owner and editor of the “Im Iravunke” weekly…” (The photo and the quotes above all taken from the web site of RFE/RL).

Without going into much discussion as to who, why and how caused all these problems for the Armenian journalists (which was my initial intention when starting this post), I want to call on everyone in the Armenian public, to protect the journalists, even the very bad ones, and especially the good ones, as the authorities are clearly not doing their job of protecting journalists - those people so much necessary to scrutinize power in a democratic system. I could suggest, that on the contrary, the state is incouraging violence against the journalists if I only had facts, but as I don’t - I’m not going to say that. I am only going to limit myself to appeal to the public and say: protect the journalists - from everyone, and especially from the state, for who will ask the questions when they’re gone?

PS: I visited the newsroom of the Daily Telegraph yesterday and my reaction was WOW! No wonder these journalists are so dedicated to their work - they are a power in UK - real economic, political, social power… whearas fire and jail are the best reward for the best journalists in Armenia. Guess who will be more inclined to provide quality journalism to their readers?

Wednesday night we ended up watching American Idol’s L.A. auditions on the Fox network. Last night’s program finally televised an Armenian American from Southern California. I really don’t have the nerve to describe what I saw as this performance was beyond anything I have ever seen on national television. Check out Martik Manoukian’s unusual American Idol audition now posted on YouTube. Let us know what you think. Hey, good performance or bad, Martik was fresh and entertaining.

A video grab released by Turkish police shows an image of a man suspected of killing journalist Hrant Dink, one of Turkey’s most prominent ethnic Armenians, as the government came under fire for failing to protect him despite nationalist threats.(AFP/HO)

According to a recent AP news release, Turkish Police detained a suspect early today in the slaying of Hrant Dink, acting on a tip from the boy’s father after his pictures were broadcasted on Turkish television. According to press information provided by the Turkish Police, the suspect’s name is Ogun Samast, a 17 years old caught on a bus in the Black Sea city of Samsun. Samast was apparently on his way from Istanbul back to his hometown of Trabzon.

Reporter Benjamin Harvey of the Associated Press also notes that Dink’s secretary had also identified the young man in the photograph as the same person who had requested a meeting with Dink the day he was killed. The man said he was a student at Ankara University. The request was refused, and the secretary said she saw him waiting in front of a bank about an hour before Dink was killed.

It would be interesting to find out if this teen acted alone or had ties to a group. I doubt we will ever know the authentic truth.

It’s been a very difficult news event for me to follow and reflect upon. From what I can gather, this man was very much loved and respected by not only community ethnic Armenians but by the activist/progressive Turkish community.

The most significant memory I have of Dink was in last years American-PBS documentary film on Genocide where I think Dink describes Turks as being a kind (pari) people. I may be wrong with my recollection of what he specifically stated, but his intentions gave me impression that he was a unifier and not a divider. It is important to remember what Hrant Dink stood for, what he fought for and what he achieved for both Turkey and her minority Armenian community.

Shocking news of the murder of Hrant Dink, journalist, editor of Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos:

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Journalist Hrant Dink, one of the most prominent voices of Turkey’s shrinking Armenian community, was killed by a gunman Friday at the entrance to his newspaper’s offices, police said.

Hrant Dink, a 53-year-old Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, had gone on trial numerous times for speaking out about the mass killings of Armenians by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. He had also received threats from nationalists, who viewed him as a traitor.

Other sources: BBC: Turkish-Armenian writer shot dead | ArmeniaNow: Hrant Dink Murdered: Turkish-Armenian journalist shot dead in Istanbul | A1plus: “DISGUSTING CRIME” ; OSCE APPALLED BY MURDER OF HRANT DINK | iArarat: Armenian Journalist Hrant Dink Murdered in Turkey | Oneworld Multimedia: Hrant Dink Shot Dead in Istanbul

“Some things never change in this world” - the advanced internet user of today might think looking at the website of some major Armenian media outlets, like that of AZG daily Armenpress, Arminfo, and a number of others. Many of these guys have been going with the same interface for AGES (3 or more years). I mean - come on! In this world of rapidly changing internet technologies you don’t do that! more…

I remember reading that one and only issue of Forbes Armenian version and thinking: just how could this happen? How could a company like “Forbes” allow such unprofessional publication: bad layout, low quality print - but worst of all: extreemly biased reporting. It wasn’t even close to journalism - although Petros Ghazarian, then the Editor In-Chief was one of the well-known Armenian journlists. So when I read this report in the Yerevan Press Club’s weekly newsletter, I felt that finally things are straigthening up! So - let’s wait and see what happens… more…

Had to do a round of introductions today on issues in Democracy for an international group of people representing various countries with similar or worse democratic problems than those of ARmenia. As we had 12 presenters, the speaches had to be done in 5 minutes max, and had to include our vision of Democracy in the UK and Democracy Problems in our countries. Really really tight - isn’t it? I had to choose carefully what to say and how to convey a more or less general picture. As we didn’t really have time to prepare the little impromptu speech I made was rather one sided, still, I guess I ought to publish it here - for public shame and comments… more…

As I ‘m sure many of you guessed, a1 plus ( the only functioning ‘opposition’ media outlet) were denied a frequency by the commision for licenses today. This time for a radio frequency. It came as no surprise but is once again a testimony to the fact that under the current government, the existence of impartial reporting is threatened. This is over the tenth competition they’ve taken part in, and have lost 2 radio frequencies to obscure new companies. The reason being - apparently, the “Ulyss” media company will pay their staff higher wages…what has that got to do with anything? I guess we can’t complain, the commision is just a puppet. They are just doing as they’re told. More on a1plus.am