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Civil Georgia

Media Abuse in Georgia

Submitted by georgiamedia on Fri, 06/11/2009 - 02:33

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Video of the last moments of Imedi's broadcast as special forces invade the building on 7 November 2007:

More about media ownership in Georgia (from 4 November) here. More about the auction of spectrum here (27 October).

Some examples of propaganda being broadcast in Georgia. In September, October and early November in Georgia - broadcasters have:

Accused the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church of being a dupe of the Kremlin because he disagreed with government policy over the ongoing territorial dispute over South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Story from 7 September here);

Claimed that the outgoing German Foreign Minister was to be rewarded with a job with Russian company Gazprom because the German government refused to blame the Russians for starting the August 2008 conflict: this story resulted in a strongly worded demand for a retraction by the German Foreign Ministry but that appears to have been ignored by the broadcaster concerned (story from 8 October here);

Claimed that one of the members of the Commission established by the EU to examine the August 2008 war was paid a bribe by Gazprom (story from 8 October - a s above - here);

Changed the date of a debate in the European parliament on the Commission’s report to make the story concerned look more helpful to the Georgian government and then broadcast only highly edited extracts of what was said (story from 29 October here);

Misrepresented a year old report on corruption in Georgia to make it look like a new publication and then made false claims about the report's contents (story from 4 November here);

Broadcast faked video to make it appear that Georgian opera singer Paata Burchuladze had sung at military concert in Moscow when, in fact he sang at a charity concert for children the following day (the regime objected to him going to Moscow at all) (story from 1 October here);

Banned adverts from Paata Burchuladze’s charity after he went to Moscow even though only six months previously Georgian television stations had broadcast one of charity’s concerts live (story from 27 October here);

Continued to work with the police to broadcast videos of alleged confessions of obviously distressed suspects in criminal cases in such a way that makes a mockery of the idea of a fair trial but which adds to the idea that the police are being tough on criminal behaviour (story from 4 November here).

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