Category: Imedi

President's office falsify transcript of "state of the nation" speech to slip in tax subsidies for pro-regime television

March 12, 2010 by georgiamedia

Mikheil Saakashvili's office have falsified the Georgian (Kartuli) and English language transcript of his 26 February "state of the nation" speech to parliament to insert new words that point to a massive subsidy to pro-régime broadcasters Imedi and Rustavi 2.

In the real speech (see Maestro's report below for the relevant passage) the president promised a tax amnesty for regional broadcasters in the provinces - "television stations in the provincial regions" - we covered this story at the time, pointing out that the initiative raised some serious questions about the regime's behaviour towards the media:

The use of the phrase "television stations in the provincial regions" is most political of all - because it indicates that the president intends to treat Maestro and Kavkasia, regional TV stations in Tbilisi, differently from all the others.

The president also needs to be asked how many people closely associated with the ruling United National Movement are going to benefit from this tax amnesty? In November Transparency International stated: "according to documents TI Georgia obtained from [the broadcasting regulator]; several ... regional stations are officially owned by people who are closely connected to members of national or regional administrative bodies and high-ranking party officials."

Stopping regional television companies going bust is one thing - allowing them to make a free choice about what they broadcast remains another. Around a year ago several regional TV companies, including Batumi's Channel 25, were relaying Maestro when they weren't broadcasting their own material. Today none of them are. That is no accident and the president has announced nothing that will change it.

And then there is the really big question: just what form the admitted "state aid" received by Rustavi 2 and Imedi takes? When we exposed Grigol Vashadze's confession that the stations were being propped up by the government a panicked regime tried to claim they meant "legal and tax aid" - but there is no separate legal provision for television companies under the tax code and nor is there any clarity as to what sort "legal assistance" TV companies get - especially as Maestro and Kavkasia say they get nothing.
 

Now, it seems, the nature of (at least some of) the "state aid" has become clearer.

Because the president's office has published a falsified transcript of the speech in which the president's words have been altered to say:

"I propose a new initiative by which all Georgian TV channels, whether regional or national, will be granted a tax amnesty so that they are able to develop stronger foundations. The Georgian democratic and political culture will be enhanced by their development."

The point about tax amnesties is that you need one if you have not been paying tax. So it is clear that the Georgian authorities have been letting Rustavi 2 and Imedi get away with paying no tax for years and are now seeking to legitimise the situation. The amnesty is likely to be of little benefit to any station that doesn't take the régime's line, because they will have faced the threat of immediate closure if they failed to pay up on time, down to the last penny.

Taxpayers in Europe and the United States may wish to note that they are people paying for this, through their governments' large subventions to the Georgian authorities. Every penny lost on tax subsidies for pro-government propaganda is a penny that cannot be spent on health, education, or conflict prevention.

Public broadcaster working with smear and propaganda channel: the proof

March 11, 2010 by georgiamedia

Georgia's public broadcaster is working with "Real TV" - a vile and vicious propaganda channel allegedly set up by the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili's former chief spin doctor and dedicated to smearing opposition politicians in the crudest of ways - and we can prove it.

Real TV - allegedly established by Guram Donadze, the former spokesman for Merabishvili who was forced out of office after the Sandro Gigvliani murder case - has broadcast smear after smear against opposition politicians and anybody else who has displeased the regime (one of the more recent victims was Vakhtang Komakhidze, a journalist who has applied for political assylum in Switzerland after what he says was threats against his family).

That Real TV co-operates with Imedi is no surprise - and although Imedi is fully controlled by the regime and funded by "state aid", the government can hide behind the claim that it is a private sector company.

But the public broadcaster has no excuse - co-operating with Real TV puts a government owned and funded institution firmly and undeniably in league with a political smear operation.

Yet here are pictures from last night's meeting with Levan Gachechiladze and Irakli Alasania's Our Georgia Free Democrats:

Both pictures show OGFD's Victor Dolidze being interviewed and they clearly also show that one person, using two hands, is holding the microphones for Imedi (blue), the Public Broadcaster's First Channel (purple) and Real TV (yellow and black).

Want more proof? Look at this slowed down footage of Levan Gachechiladze being interviewed later in Maestro's report. Maestro's microphone (orange with a large მ for მაესტრო) clearly moves independently while at least three of the other four (the orange one is Rustavi 2) once more move as a block.

This is not a trivial matter. The lack of competition between the three national TV stations is already a sign of the dismal quality of Georgian TV journalism - the stations do not chase the news or hope to break stories, merely report the same things to the satisfaction of their propaganda masters. But openly co-operating with a highly partisan and vicious station like Real TV shows a complete lack of ethics by the management of the public broadcaster. They are no longer even pretending to be independent.

Finally - here is the full report.

Is "Time of Truth" the nastiest programme on Georgian TV?

March 8, 2010 by georgiamedia

Imedi's "Time of Truth" has once again lived up to its reputation as one of the most vile programmes on Georgian TV after it was forced to apologise for a slur on the ethnic origin of one of its contestants.

The programme - which is a Georgian version of the American "Moment of Truth" show - involves contestants being hooked up to a polygraph "lie detector" while they are asked highly personal and potentially embarrassing questions.

But in Georgia, unlike the United States, it has been turned into a political weapon in the hands of the authorities.

Most recently controversial campaigner against the Catholicos-Patriarch Tea Tutberidze threatened to sue Imedi after she said her contribution was edited to make it appear that she was withdrawing her accusations against Ilia II.

Before that it was used to blacken the name of Tsotne Gamsakhuirdia on the eve of his trial for attempted murder.

In neither of those cases, hwoever, did the programme's producers apologise.

This time, though, they were deemed to have gone too far when they asked photographer Jiji Rejini "have you ever felt ashamed of your Armenian origin?" reports Media.ge.

The first time Arveladze shut down Imedi

March 4, 2010 by georgiamedia

Giorgi Arveladze gives details of Mikheil Saakashvili's state of emergency in the early hours of 8 November 2007.

Just hours earlier special forces, acting under the orders of Mikheil Saakashvili, had stormed and smashed up the Imedi TV station.

Arveladze is now director-general of Imedi and reports in Tbilisi suggest that the station might be on the verge of a second - likely permanent - closure, as the government runs out of money and political will to keep on subsidising it.

Despite Arveladze's denials the threat of Imedi's closure is real

March 4, 2010 by georgiamedia

Giorgi Arveladze, director-general of the Imedi TV company faces the prospect of being the man who closed the TV station down twice - despite a denial in today's Georgian press.

Arveladze first closed the station down when as Mikheil Saakashvili's economy minister he announced the declaration of a state of emergency on 7 November 2007 - shorly after armed special forces had stormed the station and forced it off air.

Now, along with turmoil at the highest staff level - their head of news resigned yesterday - the station, which is believed never to have made a profit and is all but totally dependent on "state aid" to stay on air, faces closure for economic and political reasons.

The station is believed to be carrying significant amounts of debt on its balance sheet and repayments are causing difficulty, as the only way they can be made is with more money from the state. Georgia's exchequer is already in deep trouble with declining tax revenues at home and a large structural deficit, so additional state cash is difficult to secure.

Politically some in the Saakashvili regime are also believed to think that the station has outlived its usefulness. Although they were desperate to take it from founder Badri Patarkatsishvili in November 2007 and then equally anxious to prevent it from falling back into his family's hands after the billionaire's sudden death in February 2008, the schemes they used then are all unravelling.

At the time New York based businessman Joseph Kay claimed he was the executor of Patarkatsishvili's will. Kay was a distant relative of Patarkatsishvili and also said that the station's founder had charged him with looking after Imedi. Although Kay has lost cases to Patarkatsishvili's family outside Georgia and has now resorted to claiming that Badri's widow murdered her husband, he has won cases in Georgia.

Kay then claimed to have sold 90% of Imedi to local representatives of the Ras Al-Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA) in February 2009. He even introduced someone he called Mark Monem as their representative (watch video to see Rustavi 2 report from the time). These new owners brought in Arevladze to manage the station.

Although the claim that RAKIA were behind the sale was backed up by President Saakashvili's staff, it has since been revealed to be a lie: at least that is what RAKIA's current public position on the issue - that they never bought the station - suggests.

With Kay's claims to legal ownership of Patarkatsishvili's assets under legal seige and the ownership issue causing sever embarrassment to both the friendly government of Ras Al-Khaimah (at the very least RAKIA were guilty of saying nothing while what they knew to be a lie was repeated again and again in the Georgian media) and Mikheil Saakashvili himself, the authorities may decide to cut their losses and just let the station go bankrupt.

After all, Rustavi 2 is as loyal as ever.