STEPANAKERT – In 2014 a group of journalists from Armenia and the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (Artsakh) set up Artsakhpress to be independent Artsakh’s first news agency. International recognition and a surge of online readers took place in April 2016, during what later became known as Four Day War, when the Azerbaijani Army attacked the Armenian frontline positions in Nagorno Karabakh. Last year, during the 44 days of of war, Artsakhpress staff continued to work despite the seemingly never-ending Azerbaijani-Turkish bombardment of Stepanakert. “When we started, we had about 2,000 unique visitors per day. By the time of the 2020 combats, this number had grown about 10 times,” said David Gabrielyan who works with the English news desk of the agency.
During past years, media agencies of Armenia and the diaspora, from Armenpress in Yerevan to Alik in Tehran and Aztag in Lebanon, regularly quoted Artsakhpress’s news updates from Nagorno Karabakh.
“Russia’s Regnum often refers to our Russian news updates, while the English version was checked in the United States, United Kingdom, and also Turkey and Azerbaijan. About 15 to 18 percent of our readers are from the latter two countries. We have prevented many attempts to hack our site during the last war,” David followed up.
In the fall of 2020 Artsakhpress made sure not only that information continued to go out but also that photos and videos of the Azerbaijani-Turkish bombardments reached international media outlets, politicians and the global community.
The last war, unfortunately, significantly affected the economy of Artsakh. However, its previous financial supporters are unable to continue maintaining Artsakhpress: the great destruction and humanitarian disaster have shifted the focus on the most urgent needs.
The US-based Americans for Artsakh (AfA) organization and Artsakhpress got together in an attempt to make sure that Artsakh’s only news agency continues to pursue its crucial goals. “Our organization is committed to supporting Artsakhpress. We need an objective news service to inform the public,” said board member Jake Bournazian. Donations can be made through AFA’s website at https://americans4artsakh.org/donate/.
