The night of September 12 to the 13 of September, 2022, the internationally recognized sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia was subjected to military aggression by Azerbaijan. The Republic of Armenia is actually in a war situation. The armed forces fight to protect the territorial integrity of the state and the inviolability of the borders in an imposed war.
In this situation, the members of the Government, as well as some MPs of the majority of the National Assembly, regularly talk about information security, the activities of the mass media in accordance with the situation, but no clear steps have been taken in that direction so far, except for the partial blocking of the Tik-Tok social network.
Taking into consideration that the partial blocking of one separate social network cannot be of significant importance in preventing disinformation, inappropriate and false agendas circulating news streams and spreading important information about the problems arising from the situation, we call on the mass media to refrain from inappropriate and trifle events. , from the coverage of stories about the activities and personal lives of celebrities (including bloggers) on social networks, as well as from that of the military threat created in the country, any process not related to the actual war, distracting the public from important information.
As a result, the information that has nothing to do with the current situation will divert attention from the most important, dampening the public instinct of self-defense.
We call on all our partners in the mass media to act in strict compliance with the rules specific to this war situations, to spread exclusively reliable, multiple-checked information, guided by the principle and mission of not harming the combat capability of the armed forces under any circumstances. In these conditions, we should be pushed forward not by our profession, but by the success of the army and the armed forces and the ways of contributing it.
We also urge media representatives to use their professional and personal connections with their foreign colleagues in order to convey reliable and comprehensive information about the aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan to the foreign audience and to inform the international community about what is happening to our country.
THE UNION OF JOURNALIST OF ARMENIA