It was a very important seminar for the Armenian side. In addition to me, representatives of opposition factions were represented in the delegation, My Step MP Gayane Abrahamyan told reporters on Wednesday, summing up the participation of the Armenian delegation in the International Parliamentary Seminar on Media Freedom.
Abrahamyan noted that during the seminar the issues of ensuring the protection of media representatives were discussed, as well as the fight against fake news, which, according to the deputy, is already perceived throughout the world as a real and quite serious threat to national security and democracy.
The seminar, as Abrahamyan noted, was attended by representatives of the parliaments of Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Romania, Latvia, New Zealand, Serbia, Bahrain, Kenya, UK and Armenia.
“The participants in the seminar were not only deputies and senators, but also representatives of civil society, experts from the academic, journalistic, and legal sectors, who had quite rich, serious international experience. Among them were quite well-known journalists,” the MP noted.
As Abrahamyan admitted, this meeting had a rather positive impact on her, and now she is going to initiate a bill to amend the Law on Media Activities.
“A working group will be formed in the near future, since since 2003 the Law on Media Activities has not undergone any adjustments, and serious omissions were made in this regard. We have quite a lot of difficult work ahead of us,” the MP noted.
Abrahamyan noted that during the seminar she emphasized a rather important detail for herself: since 2018, the number of cases of violence against media representatives has almost doubled.
“Unfortunately, we are talking about an increase in the number of murders of journalists, which cannot but cause concern,” the parliamentarian said, adding that most often journalists are persecuted in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Hungary, where not only their professional is threatened activity and career, but also life.
At the same time, as the deputy noted, international colleagues especially emphasized that Armenia, in comparison with other countries, made a literally unthinkable breakthrough in the issue of ensuring appropriate conditions for the work of the media, as the representatives of UK testified.
“I can even quote thoroughly. According to them, no country has achieved such a major success over the past 10 years,” Abrahamyan noted.
