“Not to Fill the Pot but Light the Fire”. 100 Seminars of Internews Armenia

On May 3 Internews was celebrating the World Press Freedom Day. However, there was another pretext for the celebration: the Internews Armenia 100th training course that happened to be the 6-week television journalism seminar by Michael Delahaye.
A number of newspaper, television and radio reporters, representatives of international organizations and professional associations attended the event that took place at the Internews Armenia conference hall.

As Nouneh Sarkissyan, the managing director of Internews Armenia, mentioned at the celebration, the seminars have never had the purpose of providing with “academic education.” However, the training courses that have been taking place since 1995 helped 1125 media professionals to gain television and radio journalism skills and, most importantly, to commit themselves to free and independent way of thinking and readiness to changes.

The celebration was marked “in a television style” – by showing brief video excerpts on the history of the training courses produced by the Internews staff and the seminar participants.

After that, Michael Delahaye, a Thomson Foundation consultant that had conducted 5 seminars in Armenia, addressed the audience by talking about free and diverse media and quoting an English saying that could be applied to television training: “Our job is not to fill the pot but to light the fire.”

Finally, the students of the training course “lit the fire” by showing their films and vox pops on the freedom of the press and access to information.