YEREVAN, DECEMBER 13, NOYAN TAPAN. The December 13 seminar on the subject "Current State and Prospects of Development of Cooperation between NGOs amd Mass Media" held on the initiative of the European Integration NGO was dedicated to cooperation between NGOs and mass media. According to Karen Bekarian, Chairman of the organization, cooperation between NGOs and mass media is one of the most important components of establishment of a democratic state. In his affirmation, the cooperation of these two layers of the society is a necessity on the way of building a civil society as the first of them actively reacts to the events taking place in the country and other contributes to analysis and solution of these problems. Aram Safarian, Deputy Direcor of H2 TV company, political analyst, mentioned that as regards their TV company, this cooperation is established there. The TV company has been cooperating with a number of NGOs since 2001. Thus, the TV company receives a bid from this or that NGO, which is implementing a program and has finances, a grant. This organization gives a part of this sum to the TV company, againt which it receives a right to speak on TV. According to Aram Safarian, they can't give a right to speak on TV to the NGOs that have no fianances no matter how interesting their program is for the society. According to the observation of Boris Navasardian, Chairman of Yerevan Press Club, cooperation between NGOs and mass media isn't established in Armenia. According to him, first of all division of financial resources impedes this cooperation. It's known that grants are accessible only for NGOs, which forms negative attitude among mass media. Besides, according to the speaker, the society doesn't yet realize well what NGO is and what mission is has. And mass media don't implement sufficient work in order to present the activity of the latters properly by now.

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