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Almost half of Georgians think there is no freedom of speech in their country, while journalists say they are under a government-directed financial grip that sees dissident voices get crushed without the need for direct censorship.

These were two of the conclusions that emerged at an EU-organised seminar on media freedom at the end of last week, reports the Georgian Times.

In initial reports on the seminar the Georgian government were happy to highlight headline figures from a Caucasus Research Resource Centre survey which showed that Georgia's media were more trusted than any other in the Caucasus. But the detail is much less happy for Mikheil Saakashvili: a total of 45% of the respondents agreed with the statement that there is no freedom of speech in Georgia, while only 35% said freedom of speech exists.

It seems that boasting you are going better than a country where journalists who ask difficult questions get mudered (Russia), where making an online video of a man in a donkey suit lands  you in prison (Azerbaijan) and where journalists are frequently beaten in the streets of the captal (Armenia) is no boast at all.

And the government of president Mikheil Saakashvili does not need to use direct censorship to control the media in Georgia because it has near total control of the advertising market and uses that to financially target those who might rock the boat.

That, in summary, was the view of Shorena Shaverdashvili, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the magazine Liberali.

“If your content is considered safe, you will get some advertisements,” Shaverdashvili said. But many companies refused to advertise with her magazine, “not because it is unattractive for them by some marketing criteria, but because of the political content. And that is the reason that they tell us, unofficially.

“It is hard to say whether businesses are being pressured directly not to advertise with certain media outlets. But the general atmosphere which surrounds the private sector, that is the businesses, the companies which are advertising, is fear of advertising with certain media outlets.”

On top of that the Georgian media is increasingly owned and managed by people whose political agenda trumps even any business concerns, she said.