Politik.am violates Law on Mass Media

Politik.am has published a noteworthy article about Head of State Revenue Service David Ananyan, accusing him of embezzlement and use of his position for his personal well-being.

The author writes that though Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is strict and keeps the door of corruption and robbery from the budget closed, there will be public officials who will want to use their position for their personal welfare.

“A vivid example is the head of the SRC, David Ananyan,” continues the author, in fact bringing charges against the official, and citing anonymous sources as evidence.

“The point is that audit is implemented in the SRC every year and the related expenses have made up at least 75 million AMD each year. And according to circulating rumors, David Ananyan has increased the amount of required audit to the amount of up to 350 million AMD after his appointment, and has done his best to ensure that “PHP Audit” CJSC, registered under the name of his close friends, makes that procurement” the article reads.

Head of SRC personally responded to the publication by writing on his Facebook page that the material was slander and discredited his honor and dignity.

“The attached publication is slander, which, naturally, has nothing to do with reality and damages my honor and dignity. Therefore, I demand official denial by the media”:  Ananyan responded and invited the attention of law enforcement bodies.

According to Article 8 (1) of the Law on Mass Media, a person has the right to demand that a media practitioner refute actual inaccuracies violating his rights in the information disseminated by media practitioner if the latter does not prove the truth of those facts.

Part 4 of the same article stipulates that refutation of information shall be done within 24 hours. The refutation is also done under the headline “Refutation”.   With respect to location, layout, font size and type, as well as time of publication, the refutation shall not be inferior to the information to which it relates.

Instead, politik.am published another article with the headline “Ananyan offers lawyers to deal with media writing bad things about him”, which does not fulfill the legal requirements.

 

Rafael Afrikyan

 

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