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There was no discrimination with regard to 6 out of 7 political forces taking part in the elections. “Arakelutyun” (“Mission”) party received significantly less attention from the media studied, chairman of Yerevan Press Club (YPC) Boris Navasardyan told today’s news conference during which the report on monitoring of Armenian broadcast media coverage of Yerevan Council of Elders elections was presented. 

The monitoring of Armenian broadcast media coverage of the 2013 elections of the Yerevan Council of Elders is carried out by Yerevan Press Club within the framework of a project on strengthening electoral processes in Armenia in line with international standards, implemented by the OSCE Office in Yerevan and financed by the European Union. The monitoring is conducted in three stages: the first stage covers the period from April 7 to May 3, 2013 (pre-election promotion); the second stage covers the period from May 4 to May 5, 2013 till 20.00 (the days, when pre-election promotion is prohibited by the electoral legislation); the third stage covers the period of May 5 from 20.00 to May 19, 2013 (coverage of the post-election situation).

The research included four national TV channels - First Channel of the Public Television of Armenia (h1), “Yerkir Media”, “Kentron”, Second Armenian TV Channel (h2); one Yerevan TV channel - “ArmNews”, as well as the Public Radio of Armenia and “ArmRadio FM 107” radio channel.

The highest level of activity in the coverage of the election campaign has been shown by “Kentron” TV channel, followed by "Yerkir Media". In terms of this indicator, volume of airtime, allocated to parties/bloc, “ArmNews” was the third, Boris Navasardyan said.

Of political forces participating in the elections of the Council of Elders, the most volume of coverage, in terms of aggregate data of all the media studied, was received by "Prosperous Armenia". However, if the indicators of the party bloc "Barev, Yerevan" ("Hello, Yerevan") are added to the coverage of the party "Zharangutyun" ("Heritage"), irrespective of its membership in the bloc and participation in the elections, their cumulative indicators in terms of airtime volume would be even higher, albeit not significantly, than those of "Prosperous Armenia".

The share of connotational references to political forces taking part in the elections of the Council of Elders was almost two times higher than during the parliamentary (2012) and presidential (2013) campaigns: it comprised 5.3% of the aggregate number of references on all the channels studied. This indicates an uncompromising struggle and confirms the claims by the opposition that it viewed Yerevan elections as decisive within the current electoral cycle.

The most unfavourable was the coverage of the ruling party (28 positive and 153 negative references), which was an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of elections in Armenia. Moreover, the balance of RPA was negative in all media studied. It was formed mostly due to the fact that opposition political forces to a large extent used the airtime they received to criticize the RPA and sometimes paid less attention to their own electoral programmes.