About Yerevan Today

Yerevan Today

Overview

Yerevan Today is an online news website based in Yerevan, Armenia, publishing at yerevantoday.am in Armenian, Russian and English. It covers politics, society and the economy, with news and opinion that are frequently critical of the Armenian government. Alongside its news portal, it operates associated video channels, giving its journalism a presence on the video platforms where much of Armenia's political argument now takes place. Armenian media directories list it plainly among the capital's digital news portals, but Yerevan Today is better known internationally for two episodes in which the Armenian state moved directly against it: a search of its editorial office in September 2018 and an attempted fine over a republished article that its editors denounced as lawless.

Those episodes, reported by Interfax, the Union of Journalists of Armenia and Armenian media-freedom monitors, define the outlet's public record. Yerevan Today presents itself as an opposition-leaning voice in a polarised media market, and the authorities' actions against it became tests of how far the government that came to power in the 2018 Velvet Revolution would go in policing critical media. This profile sets out what can be verified about the outlet, its coverage and those confrontations, without inventing the founding details that public sources do not supply.

Coverage and Editorial Line

Yerevan Today's subject matter is the standard agenda of Armenian political journalism: the government and the National Assembly, party politics, the economy, social questions and Armenia's relations with its neighbours. Its distinguishing feature, noted in the directory descriptions on which this profile draws, is tone: news and opinion critical of the government. In post-2018 Armenia, where much of the established media is owned by or aligned with figures from the former ruling system, critical coverage of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's government is a crowded but fiercely contested space, and Yerevan Today competes in it with a mix of daily news and commentary.

The outlet's trilingual publishing, in Armenian, Russian and English, widens its address beyond the domestic Armenian reader. Russian remains a major language of news consumption in the South Caucasus and among Armenia's partners in the Eurasian Economic Union, while English reaches the diaspora, foreign embassies and international organisations that follow Armenian politics closely. A Yerevan portal maintaining three language editions is signalling that it wants its version of Armenian events to be available to every audience that argues about them.

The September 2018 Office Search

On September 17, 2018, Armenian law-enforcement agencies searched the editorial office of Yerevan Today and the apartment of its editor-in-chief. The searches were part of the investigation into the leaking and publication of a tapped telephone conversation between Artur Vanetsyan, chief of the National Security Service, and the head of the Special Investigation Service, a recording whose release had caused a political sensation in the first months of the Pashinyan government. The Investigative Committee told Interfax that searches were conducted at several addresses in the wiretapping case, in accordance with procedures established by law.

Yerevan Today's own statement, reported by Interfax, gave a sharply different account of why it had been singled out. The authorities' assertion, the outlet said, was that it had published the recording two days earlier than other media. In fact, it said, it published the recording simultaneously with other Armenian outlets, and the apparent time difference was a malfunction of Google's search indexing, a point it said internet experts had already confirmed. Armenian media at the time reported that Yerevan Today was linked to former President Robert Kocharyan, who had been accused of overthrowing the constitutional order in the March 2008 post-election events, a linkage the profile records as contemporary reporting about the outlet's political associations, in a period when Kocharyan's allies and the new government were in open conflict.

Why the Search Mattered

The search of a newsroom is among the most serious steps a state can take against a media outlet, because it exposes sources, unpublished material and internal communications. Coming only months after a revolution fought in the name of democracy and free expression, the Yerevan Today search was watched as an early indicator of the new government's media policy. The taped-conversation affair itself concerned the independence of Armenia's security and investigative chiefs, so the case fused two sensitive questions: whether officials had conspired, and whether journalists could be raided for publishing the evidence.

For Yerevan Today, the episode fixed its identity in the international record. Wire coverage by Interfax carried its name and its rebuttal around the region, and media-freedom reporting preserved the case. Whatever the investigation's outcome for the suspected leakers, the outlet had been publicly identified by the authorities as a target, and publicly defended itself on factual grounds, the search-engine explanation, that other specialists supported. That combination of confrontation and rebuttal is characteristic of Armenian opposition media in the Pashinyan era.

The Attempted Fine and the Republished Article

A second confrontation, described in a statement by Yerevan Today reported by the Union of Journalists of Armenia, concerned an article the site had republished from another Armenian outlet, 7or.am. Three police officers visited the editorial office on a Saturday, October 10, to conduct administrative proceedings and fine the website, saying the republished article was a threat to the security of the state. The officers, according to the outlet's statement, could not say which line or word of the article constituted the threat. As its editors summarised the exchange: it is a threat and that is it, without further explanation.

The legal basis the police produced deepened the dispute. The officers had brought draft amendments to the Code on Administrative Offences that parliament had adopted on October 9 in the first reading only. The editors checked the official legal database, arlis.am, on the spot and found that the law had not come into force: it had been signed by the president only that afternoon and was not yet available in the database. The statement describes officers leaving the room to consult superiors by telephone and returning to insist that, regardless of publication, entry into force or any identified threat, they had orders to impose the fine and to require the article's removal, with a record drawn up either way. Yerevan Today announced that its work had become impossible due to fines. The statement is a striking primary source on the pressures Armenian online media reported during the period of martial-law restrictions that followed the outbreak of the 2020 war, when republication and security claims were heavily policed.

Video and Digital Presence

Like most Armenian political portals, Yerevan Today does not rely on its website alone. It operates associated video channels alongside the yerevantoday.am portal, publishing interviews, commentary and news clips for audiences who consume politics primarily on YouTube and social platforms. Video has become the main arena of Armenian political persuasion, where editors and commentators address viewers directly, and an outlet critical of the government gains reach by speaking in that medium as fluently as in text.

The trilingual website remains the archive of record: the place where statements, such as the detailed account of the attempted fine, are published in full and can be cited by unions, monitors and foreign media. That division of labour, video for reach and text for record, is now standard among Yerevan's serious political outlets, and Yerevan Today's documented history shows both halves at work: broadcasts and clips that build an audience, and written statements that enter the media-freedom literature.

Place in a Polarised Media Market

Armenia's media market after 2018 was described by local and international monitors as deeply polarised. The Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression recorded sharp rises in lawsuits involving journalists, and analysts noted that much of the press remained in the hands of people loyal to the former regime, while other outlets were fiercely loyal to the new authorities, with little in between. Yerevan Today sits visibly in the critical camp. Its clashes with the police and investigators were interpreted by supporters as persecution of opposition media and by officials as law enforcement, and that interpretive split is itself the defining condition of Armenian journalism in this period.

For readers, the practical consequence is that Armenian news must be triangulated. A story on Yerevan Today will be framed critically toward the government; the same events will appear elsewhere framed in the government's favour. Researchers value the outlet precisely because its position is clear and its statements are on the record: it documents, from the opposition side, episodes such as newsroom searches and administrative fines that official sources describe very differently.

What Is Not Publicly Documented

No verified founding date, founder biography, ownership filing or audience statistic for Yerevan Today could be confirmed from the reliable sources consulted for this profile, and none is invented here. Armenian directories record its base in Yerevan, its languages, its subjects and its critical stance; international sources record the 2018 search and the fine dispute. Claims beyond that record, about staff numbers, financing or traffic, circulate in a partisan media environment where such claims are themselves weapons, and a reference profile should not repeat them without evidence.

This restraint also protects the outlet's real significance from exaggeration. Yerevan Today does not need a padded history to matter. A newsroom that was searched in an investigation into the state's own security chiefs, and that published a minute-by-minute account of police attempting to fine it under a law that had not entered into force, has already contributed primary evidence to the history of Armenian media freedom.

Significance

Yerevan Today is significant as a documented case of the friction between Armenia's post-revolution government and critical online media. Its portal and video channels carry the daily argument of the opposition-leaning press in three languages from Yerevan. Its confrontations, the September 2018 searches and the October fine attempt, are preserved by the Union of Journalists of Armenia and international wire reporting as evidence in the continuing debate about whether Armenia's revolution changed the state's behaviour toward journalists, or only changed which journalists the state pursued.

For anyone studying Armenian media, the outlet rewards attention less for its size, which cannot be verified, than for its paper trail. Few small portals leave behind such detailed, contemporaneous accounts of the moment officials walked into their offices. Those accounts, and the official explanations that accompany them, are the raw material from which the history of Armenian press freedom in this period will be written, and Yerevan Today supplied an unusually complete file.