More News Pulled Off Air, Georgian “Media Freedom” Rating Falls

News program Mzera on Mze TV channel has suspended its functioning after having been on air since June 1, 2003. Mze TV, owned by the same media holding as Rustavi 2, presented news bulletins on the hour with full-length news programs twice every evening on Mzera.

Mze TV itself has made no announcement on the matter, but its sister station, Rustavi 2, said that “reorganization” was the reason for the suspension. There is speculation that from now on, Mze will be limited to “entertainment” programming.

Georgian Industrial Group (GIG) and GeoMedia Group, a somewhat mysterious company whose ownership is obscure, own Rustavi 2 and Mze, according to documents submitted to the Georgian National Communication Commission.

GIG owns 45% of shares of both stations. Intelligence chief Gela Bezhuashvili’s brother, lawmaker Davit Bezhuashvili, is a founding member of the group.

GeoMedia Group owns the remaining shares of both Rustavi 2 and Mze. The only information available on the company is that it is registered in the Marshall Islands.

The decision on shutting down new broadcasts was unexpected for TV journalists. Rumors are that MP Davit Bezhuashvili, one of the owners of the company did not wish to finance it any longer.

“Perhaps Bezhuashvili wishes for TV Mze to be isolated from politics,” said some journalists of the Mze news service. Some others explained the decision in a different way: they say that the authorities cannot sustain so many TV stations. Other journalists reckon that it will be easier for the authorities to control fewer channels.

Davit Bezhuashvili, an owner of Mze told The Georgian Times that they had to “close unprofitable projects.” He added, “Mze will be a profitable entertainment channel.”

The channel will reshape its airtime format and will either transform into business news channel or entertainment one. Moreover, only those programs that manage to attract sponsors and are cost-effective can stay on air. According to the holding management, only Rustavi 2 will broadcast news programs.

Aleksandre Parulava, director general of Mze TV said that according to the decision by the holding managers, journalists of the TV channel would soon be employed at various TV companies. According to him, Mze will continue functioning and all other programs will remain in their format.

This is the third television news program to go off-air in Georgia in the last month. The news broke on June 22 that Public Broadcaster was shutting down its 7 Days, a replica of Imedi’s Droeba news program. Inga Grigolia’s PrimeTime, the only talk show running on a privately owned channel, is taking time-out until September.

The program 7 Days was produced by independent studio Akhali Droeba and studio Geo TV. Now Geo TV has suspended its contract with Akhali Droeba and GPB.

“Geo TV explained that it had financial problems,” Rusudan Tskhomelidze, a journalist from Akhali Droeba, said. However, she assumes that the studio as well as the format of 7 Days was unacceptable to the authorities.

Studio Akhali Droeba was formed by former journalists of Imedi TV in January 2008. Tskhomelidze and her colleagues worked at Imedi and prepared Giorgi Targamadze’s (MP, leader of oppositional Christian-Democratic movement) program Droeba.

Investigative reports by Droeba have have caused headaches for the government several times. For example, Droeba was the first TV program to report on the high-profile murder case of Sandro Girgvliani (although GT was the first print news source to report on the case).

The future of news programs and talk shows on Imedi TV is also uncertain. On May 5, 2008, Imedi partially restored broadcasting, but only for entertainment programs.

The managers of the channel stated that Imedi would resume news programs in June. Now this has again been officially postponed until September.

PrimeTime, the popular bi-weekly talk show aired by Rustavi 2 and hosted by Inga Grigolia will resume in September. Initially, it was to resume in early July. PrimeTime, produced by TBC TV studio, which has a one-year contract with Rustavi 2 to air the show twice a week, was suspended in early June. Rustavi 2 reported that the talk show’s timeslot conflicted with the European football championship and would resume in late June after the competition was over. The suspension of the talk-show prompted speculation that the program had been cancelled. However, its producer for the talk show Maia Stepnadze assured the program would be back on air in September. She said the decision to postpone until September was made because of the opposition coalition’s suspension of activities for the summer period.

Currently, there are no political talk shows on any national TV stations. The Georgian Public Broadcaster’s bi-weekly program Comment of the Day was also suspended until September on June 17. The station cited summer holidays.

Only one small station, Kavkasia TV, which only covers the capital city, runs a daily talk show, which serves as a platform for the opposition.

From now on, Georgians will only have two options of news programs running on Rustavi 2 and Public Broadcaster.

Koba Liklikadze, journalist of radio Liberty told The Georgian Times that the closing of Mze news service and the temporary suspensions of Inga Grugolia’s talk show PrimeTime and GPB talk show Dghis Komentari until September suspiciously coincided with each another.

As for the closure of Mze’s news program, Koba Liklikadze states that it is impossible to define the behavior of the private owner of the TV Company who has his own business interests, however, “I said earlier and I’ll reiterate again that this TV Company has been in a difficult situation for a long time already. Now they decided to close it.”

According to Liklikadze several months ago, he and some other journalists came together with the initiative to talk about the problems of the media organizations.

“It is difficult for outsiders to talk about internal business of TV Mze; moreover the matter concerns the private TV Company. If Mze journalists do not talk about the problems of the channel, others will not be able to talk about it,” Liklikadze says.

The recent research by Freedom House also concerns problems in Georgian media. Freedom House focuses on several components of democratic development: legislation, media freedom, election process, corruption, court system, local governance, etc.

In order to identify a “freedom” rating, Freedom House uses a 7-point assessment system. In this system, ‘one’ is the highest assessment. In terms of media freedom, Georgia has 4.25 points. In 2007, (using 2006 data) Georgia received 4 points.

The organization talks about the decline of media freedom in Georgia and says that the Georgian Constitution and legislation provide for a free environment for media development. “At the same time, Georgian media demonstrates weak editorial independence and low professional standards. It often demonstrates the political interests of the owners. Despite that, existence of various media owners promotes pluralism of opinions… The temporary closure of Imedi TV and radio put the responsibilities of the government towards media under question. It became clear that it is easy to break media pluralism in Georgia.”

According to the research, the main regression of Georgian media freedom was caused by the state of emergency in November 2007 and Imedi TV’s closure.

– By Nino Japaridze

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