The media ethics monitoring body responded to the complaint against the “Blind World” TV series

The media ethics watchdog issued a statement against the TV series “Blind World” broadcast by “Armenia” TV, which was submitted in 2022 on September 9 by human rights defender Zaruhi Hovhannisyan.

Let’s remind that the TV series “Blind World” (script author: Diana Grigoryan) caused a great wave of ridicule and indignation among the public. The events that took place during the first night of marriage of the newlywed couple became a reason for a particularly heated discussion. The heroine of the series tells her lover that she is not a virgin on her wedding night, followed by scenes of rape and violence.

The “Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women” issued a statement regarding the “Blind World” series, condemning the violence shown in the series.

Recently, “Armenia” television company began to broadcast another series with a great sound, which continues the reproduction of the character models of men with clumsy vocabulary and orphaned, unhappy, gossiping, endlessly abused women…

It is unacceptable to make the subject of virginity again one of the most important, cornerstone values ​​of our society, which supposedly “justly” leads to systematic manifestations of violence against women. Of course, there are still harmful traditions preserved in different layers of our society, which make big differences between women and men and lead to discrimination and also to violence. However, the similar representation of these vicious phenomena through TV series is unacceptable and fraught with dangers,” the coalition’s statement said.

The public and experts expressed a united opinion that all this should be given a legal assessment and it should be controlled at the state level by the Television and Radio Commission.

However, the Chairman of the Commission, Tigran Hakobyan, in a conversation with Shabat.am, commenting on the steps expected from the commission, noted that “such issues are not part of the commission’s regulations, they must be settled with other tools, it is a long process in which the whole society must participate.”

The monitoring body also considers the actions, motivation, and speech style of the characters depicted in the “Blind World” TV series to be very worrying. They are mostly fixed in the viewer as “accepted” behavioral models and sometimes have a greater impact than the positive messages in the film’s script. According to the DM statute, the Monitoring Body investigates and records only violations of journalistic ethics and is not authorized to evaluate the quality of artistic work, the ethics of the used means of expression, directorial solutions, and acting

The monitoring body emphasizes that it does not refer to the general rejection of images of violence, cruel treatment and other sensitive topics and scenes. Simply, they should be presented with artistic rules and tricks, with such skill that there is no need to mechanically bring the violence to the screen.

Unfortunately, the Armenian TV series industry in general is rarely able to do this. The Monitoring Body of Media Ethics calls on broadcasting media to refrain from the temptation to ensure high viewership at any cost, to be guided solely by public interests and high artistic standards.

Full text in Armenian