TV STATION “A1+” WINS FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION RULING

The website http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org today wrote an article about “A1+”. Following is the article in the original.
In April 2002, the Armenian government took A1+ off the air. The station was the most watched independent news channel at the time.
When the A1+ signal ended, thousands gathered on the streets of Yerevan to protest. Those protests lasted for more than a week.
It was a show of public support that convinced the A1+ director, Mesrop Movsesyan, that he must find other ways to continue delivering news to the people of Armenia.
"The sheer scale of the public protest, when ordinary people realized that freedom of expression was being attacked through the silencing of A1+, persuaded us that we had a duty to continue to operate as a news organization, even though our transmitters had been turned off," he said.
Movsesyan set up a news agency, a newspaper and websites in Armenian, Russian and English in order to continue to provide coverage of events in Yerevan and the rest of the country.
TV news reports continued to be produced by A1+, but instead of being broadcast from Yerevan, they were distributed to affiliates in every region of the small, landlocked country. The affiliate network was unaffected by the government ruling that silenced A1+.
Since it lost its license in 2002, A1+ has reapplied for a licence to broadcast a dozen times and each time it has been refused. In 2003, Movsesyan took the case to the European Court of Human Rights and a lengthy investigation followed.
During that investigation, the Armenian government said A1+ lost its licence because it presented a poor application when the competition to broadcast took place. Ministers in Yerevan submitted evidence to the European Court to support the decision to close the TV station.
Announcing the decision in favour of A1+, the Council of Europe Secretary General, Terry Davis, said it was "a victory for freedom of expression" which “should also serve as a lesson to all governments inclined to arbitrary interpretations of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees this essential freedom."
The Council of Europe’s Ministerial Committee will now monitor Armenia’s implementation of the court decision.
Movsesyan said the court decision merely provides grounds for the station to bid on available broadcast frequencies. A new tender is planned for the autumn, when the five-year license term for a number of TV companies expires.

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