Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has told senior Armenian officials to sue media outlets “falsely” accusing them of illicit enrichment, saying that such reports have contributed to a drop in Armenia’s position in a global corruption survey.
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Armenia Slides In Press Freedom Rankings
Մայիս 03, 2021
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The global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has slightly downgraded Armenia’s position in its annual survey of the freedom of speech around the world.
Armenia fell from 61
st to 63
rd place in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index covering 180 countries and territories. It was 80
th in the rankings when the current Armenian government took office in the 2018 “velvet revolution.”
“Media diversity has blossomed but the government that emerged from Armenia’s ‘velvet revolution’ in the spring of 2018 has failed to reduce the media’s polarization,” reads the latest report released by the Paris-based watchdog.
Few political leaders are as embattled as Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Many in the South Caucasus nation blame him for the humiliating defeat in last year’s war with neighbouring Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Thousands of protesters, top generals and political opponents urged him to resign, while thousands of grieving families of refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh flooded Armenia.
And resign he will.
The grey-bearded 44-year-old has said he would step down later in April.
In a March 18 Facebook post, after much pressure to do so, Pashinyan announced a snap parliamentary vote in June as the “best way out” of the crisis.
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In a bill criticized by press freedom groups, several pro-government members of Armenia’s parliament have proposed restrictions on the use of anonymous sources in news stories reported by the Armenian media.
The bill publicized this week would specifically ban broadcasters, newspapers and online publications from citing websites and social media accounts belonging to unknown individuals.
In an explanatory note attached to the proposed amendments to an Armenian law on mass media, the lawmakers affiliated with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step bloc say that disseminating information from “sources of unknown origin” could endanger the country’s national security.