by David Stepanyan, Yerevan. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
In mid-November, Forbes released its first Armenian version. The magazine is published in 27 countries and distributed throughout 55. An attempt to publish Forbes magazines was made in Armenia in 2007, resulting in a total failure. This is why the second coming of the magazine should be analyzed with account of the first bitter attempt.
The monthly Forbes Armenia is published by a little-known company Media Partners and the www.forbes.am portal. There are plans to make special releases of Forbes Life and organization of business conferences. The names of publishers and the editor-in-chief of Forbes Armenia say nothing. The specifics of the magazine’s work speak for themselves. The magazine studies and publishes lists of billionaires, most influential and notable people of the world.
Despite the well-developed rating systems of Forbes, Armenian publishers will have to consider the peculiarities of the Armenian media market. One of them is the absolute inseparability of Armenian business billionaires and millionaires with all branches of the government and unification of Armenian capital and crime. The best confirmation of the statement is the latest exposures made by hetq.am. The agency found some very suspicious offshore accounts of Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and Archbishop of the Ararat Eparchy Navasard Kchoyan.
By the way, Sargsyan has recently been highlighted in another scandalous story. The Zhokhovurd paper, quoting reliable sources, accused the prime minister of bribing rating agencies. In particular, the prime minister’s godson, Minister for Finances David Sarkisyan, spent $217,000 on Fitch Ratings LD and $120,000 on Moody’s Investors Service for positive ratings which give no reflection of the real economic situation in Armenia.
Considering this, it is interesting to understand who is really behind the second coming of the US magazine to Armenia. The answer to this question would clarify who and how Forbes Armenia will manage to cover the quite complicated tangle of relations between business and government. Back to 2007. It is notable that the first release of Forbes in Armenia listed the names of the richest people starting with the then President Robert Kocharyan, the unsinkable head of the State Committee for Income Gagik Khachatryan and some businessmen affiliated with the government. Then, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Petros Kazaryan was called in for a conversation. Rumours say that Bagramyan characterized his first release of Forbes as a gag. It is still unclear why an authoritative magazine well-known all around the world made such a poor joke specially in Armenia, quite far from April 1. Nonetheless, the Forbes ‘joke’ ended up not as funny as expected, the magazine was closed down. Although, during the iron reign of the Kocharyan regime, such ‘impudence’ could not expect any other outcome.
Considering 60 years of Forbes’ experience, the ability of the magazine to calculate ratings of Armenia’s richest people using its system provokes doubts. Armenian oligarchic functionaries regularly register assets as property of wives, distant relatives and even mothers-in-law. Journalists will have to do a lot of work in their running after relatives of billionaire functionaries.
Thus, another appearance of Forbes in Armenia is probably a scheme of very serious people mistakenly viewed as the highest elite in the republic. In other words, competitors for power. If so, Forbes Armenia will turn into a powerful weapon to fight mudslinging between both active and ex-functionaries.
According to another explanation, Armenian discreet millionaires/billionaires could have become a target of foreign powers. In this case, everything will seem far from obvious because materials for mudslinging of foreign counterparts is what the Armenian government lacks. Anyway, the second coming of Forbes to Armenia looks promising and will doubtlessly be followed by very interesting information about national functionaries.
The Forbes Armenia team will fill the rate ranks of Armenian magazines doing serious journalist work in the light of the increasingly tabloid press. Tabloid popularity has become a global tendency but releases of pointless and blank information has become a typical phenomenon in Armenia. In the context of stupid headlines about love-related and anatomical peculiarities of US television personality of Armenian origin Kim Kardashian Armenian mass media are filled with, the news section has lost all real value. In this background of junky information space, Armenia feels a lack of reasonable and balanced comments, not to mention analysis.
Considering that emissions of senseless information are made purposefully by authorities of oligarch-owned sources of mass media, appearance of Forbes in Armenia, on condition that it is not under control of oligarchic functionaries, may become a bright spot on the junkyard called the Armenian information space.
