Interim Report
According to the Monitoring Data of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Speech
(April-July, 2013)
INTRODUCTION
Since April 2013 the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression, supported by the Open Society Foundations – Armenia, has been monitoring the Armenian mass media to identify hate speech in their publications. According to the group having conducted the monitoring, this report allows identifying the number and nature of expressions containing hate speech and may assist the Armenian media in reducing considerably or elim.inating hate speech.
In order to improve the methodology of the monitoring the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression held a pilot monitoring in the period of 18-31 March 2013. This was followed by the main monitoring. It is being held in two stages. The first covered the period of April-July 2013, while the second will be held in the period of August-December.
9 Armenian mass media were monitored: 3 TV companies (H1 Public Television, ‘Yerkir Media,’ ‘Kentron’), 3 print media (‘Azg,’ ‘HaykakanZhamanak,’ ‘HayotsAshkharh’), 3 online media (1in.am, 7or.am and tert.am). The objects of the monitoring of television companies were the materials of the main broadcasts of news programmes (‘Haylur’ in ‘H1,’ ‘YerkirnAysor’/ YerkriShabat’ in ‘Yerkir Media’ and ‘Epikentron’ in ‘Kentron’), as well as the analytical programmes following them (‘Tesankyun,’ ‘Yerkri Harts,’ ‘Ourvagits,’ respectively).
In case of print and online media all publications were registered and monitored, excluding the commercial, political, social publicity and announcements.
The publications/videomaterials of the mass media were monitored based on the thematic division according to the following categories: racial, national, political, social, linguistic, religious, sexual, etc. (different from those mentioned above). The following have also been considered: the existence of hate speech, what was the content of the expression (which thematic category it belongs to), what is the editor’s attitude to the expression (criticism, consent or neutral), who is the author of hate speech (journalist, politician/public official, scientist/expert, NGO representative/public figure, representative of an international/foreign organization, vox populi, religious figure, etc.) and what is the source of information containing hate speech (monitored mass media, local mass media, foreign mass media).
This report contains the results of the first stage.
