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The authorities remained faithful to their obligations being the warrant of the freedom of speech and press. The studies, surveys made by the Commission on Television and Radio and the media specialists’ opinions witnessed that. The Commission Chairman Tigran Hakobyan said about that during the debate of the annual report on the Activity of the Commission on Television and Radio of 2021.

According to him, the year 2021 has been the hardest, the fullest and the responsible one. The Commission could do a great volume of work with small number of staff. 12 license competitions were held for the first time by live broadcasting, as well as 54 sittings.

According to the world indicator of freedom of press, compared with 2018, in 2021 Armenia improved its positions by 17 point, holding the 60^th place among 180 states. During the reporting period compared with 2020 Armenia gave way by two points, and its reason, according to the organization Journalists Without Borders, is connected with the increase of the judicial cases towards journalists. However, in the opinion of the Commission, often foreign organizations give their evaluations, based on the level of the legislative regulations, experience, traditions, civil society development of their countries and don’t take into consideration the peculiarities of the given country.

Tigran Hakobyan noted that after 44-day war the disinformation, the speech of hatred, the partiality, the threats, etc became an inseparable part of the content of some broadcasting media. “The transformation of those media into a campaigning tool of some political forces and financial-economic groupings was more noticeable before the snap parliamentary elections,” Tigran Hakobyan underlined.

During the reporting year the independence of the Commission’s activity and the decision making has been ensured. The state bodies, the political forces did not interfere in the regular work of the organization.

In the report The Evaluation of the Media Space Demands of Armenia prepared by the experts of the European Parliament it has been noted that the political leadership does not interfere into the settlement processes, and the Commission has a significant freedom of activity. According to the Chairman of the Commission, such evaluation has been voiced for the first time, which is very important.

In 2021, for the first time all the marzes had local televisions. The programmes in Armenian in the Armenian TV companies increased, making 81%.

The Head of the organization also spoke about the necessity of the amendments to a number of laws regulating the sphere.

Covering the agenda, the parliament ended the work of the regular sittings.