Since the appointment of Tigran Sargsyan in the prime-minister’s position the media coverage about the government has become very interesting. Even more, the government started to pay more attention to the media coverage about itself.
The media coverage about the government even became more because in the official press-releases about the government sessions a new section was added concerning the prime-minister’s introduction speech. One can always find interesting things in his speeches. Later they opened Tigran Sargsyan’s personal blog with the reasoning that the media was trying to reflect their opinion in the articles, that is why it would be better if the prime-minister and the society could stay in touch directly. Recently the government presented its new web-site and www.e-gov.am web-site. According to the government HR manager Davit Sargsyan, there were two reasons to change the www.gov.am web-site. The reasons are their willingness to have more dynamic and transparent web-sites.
The main change in the design of the site is the color; the red color of the previous site is changed with apricot color. We think that it is connected with the notion of a revolution, i.e. the inner revolution the PM has been speaking of since his appointment. David Sargsyan told us that there is no reason to go deep into details and said that it simply symbolizes the colors of our flag.
As this article is about the relations between the media and government, we will concentrate on a section in the new web-site. It is called “media about us” where one can find what the media writes about the government. We will try to understand what is to be posted in the section “media about us”. For example, in the publication of June 1 you can read that “Azg” and “Aravot” newspapers simultaneously inform that PA leader Gagik Tsarukyan had visited Croatia by the invitation of the president of Croatia. “An importance was attached to the cooperation between the businessmen of the two countries,” write the newspapers and add that the president of Croatia has appreciated Gagik Tsarukyan’s role in this process. Can anyone say what the hell the visit of Tsarukyan relates to the activities of our beloved government? Or, what is the relation of the publication of “Haik” newspaper that “Vardges Gaspar has made hunger strike in the Freedom square and proven that this action of strike is not dangerous for the country” with the government?
The titles of the publications are very strange too. For example, we saw a title “celebration which is not with the media today” with the following text: “that is why the media is full of social and prosaic information”.
To be honest, it covers the coverage of the media about the government as well. From this point of view, the name of our newspaper is often repeated in that section: the 168 Hours has focused the process of the economy diversification and has not found any positive sides. Furthermore, according to the author, even though many people know that the double-digit growth before the crisis was a “balloon” based on the sector of construction, the government still continues to encourage that field, but meanwhile works in the direction of diversifying the economy.
It is worth mentioning that sometimes they don’t write the main meaning the articles wanted to say. Babken Tunyan of the 168 Hours discusses “the far limit of thinking and forecasting” and through some examples comes to the conclusion that the predictions of NA MP Gagik Minasyan have never come true. First of all, Babken Tunyan is not “of the 168 Hours” but he is a journalist of the 168 Hours. Second, the goal of the mentioned article was not to reveal the predicting capabilities of Gagik Minasyan but to show the manipulation of economic figures by state officials. However, we can write about the economic predictions of Gagik Minasyan one more time.
In a word, we can also add the government’s web-site in the list of the favorites of news sites we are visiting every day. It is very interesting and is refreshed often. The most important thing is that we believe the quality and enthusiasm will never suffer because the authors of the publications will never interrupt the “signal” of wedding party cars again in their creative articles.