Public Broadcaster's Council Responds to Garegin Khumaryan

The Public Broadcaster's Council reveals the content of the 'pressures'. Former director of Public Radio Garegin Khumaryan recently made a number of statements claiming that he faced pressures from the government and received an 'indecent proposal' from the Public Broadcaster's Council. However, Khumaryan does not specify who the pressures were from or how they manifested, only indicating that they were related to 'coverage of the government's work, life in border villages, invited experts, and radio staff posts on social media.'

The Public Broadcaster's Council decided to publicize a document and reveal the 'indecent proposal' that most likely served as the basis for Khumaryan's statements. The document is the Council's conclusion regarding the editorial policy of Public Radio's 'Radiolur' news program. It was sent from the Council Chair Ara Shirinian's work email directly to Garegin Khumaryan's work email on December 17, 2021.

The Public Broadcasters' Council examined the news broadcasts of the Radiolur news program from September 2021 to mid-December 2021, as well as videos and reports posted on the official website, and reached the following conclusion: Individual reports and journalistic comments from Radiolur do not meet the objectives of the public broadcaster, which are enshrined in international standards, particularly to support public solidarity and national unity.

The conclusion is based on the following observations:

1. When covering government activities, Radiolur's commentators often disregard the public broadcaster's mandate, which requires the accurate and comprehensive presentation of state body initiatives, avoiding personal assessments.
2. Reports from border villages presented by Radiolur depict the situation created by Azerbaijani aggression and the steps taken by state bodies. However, the main emphases and despairing accounts of the reports (even if objectively presented from the journalist's perspective) practically create panic and a sense of ungovernability. This artificially exacerbates the domestic political situation in Yerevan, undermining public stability and weakening the resilience of the border population.
3. The Council also notes that the aforementioned reports from Radiolur become occasions for political maneuverings on social networks, allowing various party supporters to insult each other and spread hate speech.
4. The disproportionate amount of Radiolur's reports on 'scandalous political topics' and the unchanged composition of 'experts' featured in the reports provide grounds to state that Radiolur mechanically reproduces manipulative queries arising in the political field, ignoring the public's need for quality information.
5. From an ethical perspective, the Council finds the inappropriate expressions made by Public Radio journalists regarding state and political figures on social networks unacceptable.

The Public Broadcaster's Council proposes that the director of Public Radio, Garegin Khumaryan, implement staff changes in the Radiolur news department within 10 days to eliminate the aforementioned shortcomings and violations of journalistic ethics.

Council Chair Ara Shirinian, December 17, 2021. The document has not been published on the website or elsewhere. According to points 9 and 13 of Article 27 of the RA Law on Audiovisual Media, the Council regularly approves the program policies of companies and 'studies cases of violations of professional conduct by journalists at its own initiative and adopts advisory conclusions.'

Although Garegin Khumaryan claims today to have rejected this advisory document, at that time he assured the Council members that he would take appropriate measures and indeed did implement some staff changes. The Council assessed that the proposed changes were considered, and the situation significantly improved within a short period.

During Garegin Khumaryan's five years in office, the Public Broadcaster's Council prepared three conclusions regarding Public Radio. The other two were published in 2023 on the Council's website under the Self-Regulation and Ethics section.

It is regrettable that we only learned about the 'pressures and the Council's 'indecent proposal' three years later, after Garegin Khumaryan was not reappointed to the position of director of Public Radio.

PUBLIC BROADCASTERS' COUNCIL