Search conducted at Yerevan.Today website office 

Starting early morning of September 17, law enforcement bodies of Armenia conduct rummage in the editorial office of Yerevan.Today online media and at the house of its editor-in-chief.

According to the website representatives, searches are conducted on the basis that it allegedly published a record of the leaked conversation between the heads of the National Security Service and the Special Investigation Service two days earlier than the rest of the media did.

“The reason for this statement was Google search engine. It indicates September 11th as the date of publication of the conversation on our website which is two days earlier, when it was not even publicly posted yet. However, it does not correspond to the reality, as Yerevan.Today published the record at the same time as all other Armenian media outlets. In fact, there are obvious problems with the search engine”,- the editorial office informed. A similar situation was indicated about “Hraparak” daily online newspaper: the search engine “tells” the publication was done 5 days ago.

On the 12th of September, the Yerevan.Today office noticed the issue with the search engine and disseminated a refutation. “Even though kind of “evidence” is demonstrated, internet experts have already denied this, noting that the Google has bugs and crashes now. We are informed that the records were discovered by chance, on September 11, at around 2 p.m., which is the approximate timing when all our colleagues have posted it. We have published this link on our website at 3p.m. when it was already widely spread in the media”,- the media representatives state.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Union of Journalists of Armenia Satik Seyranyan tried to contact Sevak Hakobyan, who is the editor of the website. However, the representatives of the police and NSS forbade the editor to communicate with her and report any information.

ARMINE VARDANYAN