Today, it’s simply a matter of technique to make billions of people see a predictable approach through the spread of information. As for us Armenians, with a 3 million population, hearing what Russian ORT channel’s program host Katya has to say is enough to be convinced. Currently, as we are trying to understand the line of conduct of our Armenian state officials besides the mourning of the victims’ relatives after the “Armavia” A-320 plane crash, the first thing that pops up in our minds is Ambassador to Armenia in Russia Armen Smbatyan’s humble look on middle-class Russian workers and his every second word-“spasibo” (thank-you). I don’t think it’s necessary to mention how Armenians would react and what they would do if, let’s say, the plane crash happened in our neighboring country Turkey. But Armenian state officials, as a rule, forget about our national interests when interpreting any news about Russia. Even the minister of defense of Armenia, who was the first to go to Sochi after the crash, advised not to come up with versions and didn’t forget to thank the Russian workers out loud and quite often. Russian media denied the possibility of a terrorist act from the start (although some specialists say that the plane simply couldn’t be smashed to pieces by just one crash in the sea), they tried reasoning that the plane crashed due to the line of conduct of some top-state officials in the plane, but the major reason most talked about was the clumsiness of the commander of the plane. After all this, we can’t really take Serge Sargsyan’s advice to wait for the black boxes and not come up with anything. In that case, it would be logical to thank the Russians after taking the black boxes out, when it would be clear that the dispatchers (citizens of Russia) or any other organization were not to blame. But thanking one another already serves as a firm basis for coming up with versions. Today, there are many opportunities to create anti-Russian sentiments in Armenia and one of the major reasons for that is the attitude of Armenian state officials towards Russia, which Russia doesn’t understand. In order to refrain from different versions, perhaps it would be right to present the information in its entirety without editing and phoniness which, evidently, isn’t being done.
The authorities control the press in Armenia-mass media and especially electronic news coverage are under direct control of the government. But our government not only doesn’t protect the citizens of Armenia from receiving provocative information from abroad and the consequences, but also, it often finds itself in the center of the attention of the world and is considered to have a predictable line of conduct. Director of the Armenian strategic and national research center Stepan Safaryan, for example, is certain that Armenian public television sometimes shows provocative programs without knowing it. According to him, “HayLur” (Armenian News), for example, is very predictable. The broadcasted news is mainly about events taking place in Turkey and Azerbaijan. They use the Turkish and Azerbaijani sources to broadcast the information.
“So, if we are using those sources to spread information, it’s easy to use the same source to get us the information and the impression of that information can serve the interests of our neighboring countries.”
As an example, S. Safaryan recalled the time when Armenia found about the destruction of the cross-stones at the Old Jugha cemetery. That was in December 2005, before the Rambulle negotiations.
“Azerbaijani authorities needed to create some kind of predictability in Armenia before the Rambulle negotiations. In other words, it was necessary to have Armenia indirectly veto the settlement of the conflict.”
The people associated the destruction of the cross-stones in Old Jugha with the Karabagh conflict and it was already clear for the average Armenian TV viewer just how the Rambulle negotiations were going to fail. It turned out that Armenian society got agitated and got psychologically prepared for the failure of the Rambulle negotiations after hearing the information on television and the negative evaluations of some organizations.
According to S. Safaryan, “we must stand up and announce that the one to blame for the failure of the negotiations is Robert Kocharyan, and not Ilham Aliyev.”
Since no such news was broadcasted anywhere, “168 Hours” asked Mr. Safaryan to state his source of information. It turned out that he himself had recently participated in the Vilnius summit, where there was a discussion entitled “The failure of Rambulle” and Robert Kocharyan was pointed out as the one to blame. This was just what Azerbaijan wanted. These days, there are such psychological influences on society that people are subjected to following the methodology of becoming zombies, by coercing both the local product and symbols of national politics. Do Armenians have the conscience of freeing themselves from the provocation and wrong information? People are simply satisfied with receiving information from television rather than spending time actually finding it. But there is so much chaos in that field that there are small chances of analyzing that information. We can show the line of conduct, which this or that person with a polytechnic education points out. For example, let’s recall the big propaganda that was going on in the winter what with the bird flu threat. Specialists promised new bird flu cases in the spring. Well, now it’s spring but you won’t hear any information about the bird flu in any corner of the world. Five million dollars for fighting against the bird flu-this is the amount of money that the Armenian state functionaries received from the World Health Organization during this entire propaganda. But our Armenian authorities knew beforehand that this was all just a practical joke aimed towards lowering the sensitivity of people worldwide, showing apathetic sub-consciousness, uncertainty and a guiding line of conduct.
Powerful countries are not the only ones that have the opportunity to spread information and use it for their interests. Today, Armenia has the biggest resource-the Armenian Diaspora. But unfortunately, for over a decade, Armenia didn’t have a national security policy and the new one is only a declaration on paper. Whenever people talk about the information security in Armenia, they mean the information war with Turkey and Azerbaijan. This is strictly provincial. The country has to provide people with many sources of information in order to refrain from giving the people provocative information, provide alternative media. Alas, the only well-known alternative mass media in Armenia for the time being is ALM.