There is clearly imbalanced media coverage on most broadcast media, including public television, before the official campaign period. The criticism was contained in the first interim report issued by the election observation mission deployed by the OSCE’s Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). According to the report during the monitoring period before the start of the official campaign (11-20 January), most of the broadcast media including public television demonstrated a clear imbalance in their coverage of the prospective candidates. They said most major local TV channels provided disproportionate amounts of airtime to Sargsyan and showed strong bias against one of his eight challengers, former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, in the week preceding the official start of campaigning for the February 19 election. “The amount of time received by Mr. Sargsyan, on privately owned H2, Kentron, Shant and Armenia TV, even taking into account the execution of his official duties, exceeded what could be reasonably considered appropriate,” reads the report. “The other eight candidates received some coverage on most of the TV stations monitored,” added the OSCE/ODIHR mission. “However, in contrast to the almost exclusively positive or neutral coverage afforded to Serzh Sargsyan, Levon Ter-Petrosyan was regularly portrayed in a negative light.” The OSCE observers said the state-run Armenian Public Radio was “more balanced” than the TV channels in its coverage of the presidential race. They also noted that daily Armenian-language news programs of RFE/RL “included greater diversity in their coverage of the nominees, including presenting Serzh Sargsyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan in positive, negative and neutral tones.”
