Georgia in pivotal standoff with independent media

A EurasiaNet Photo Story by Marina Rennau: 11/17/03

Photos by John Smock

Georgian independent channel Rustavi-2 filed a suit in district court on November 15, two days after the Central Election Commission reportedly withdrew the channel's accreditation. This channel, the nation's most controversial and popular, has carried images from post-election protests in Tbilisi. Now it is fighting to avoid itself becoming a symbol for protestors.

Georgian officials have grown accustomed to barbs from Rustavi-2. The channel's recent coverage of parliamentary elections and the mass protests that followed may have made these barbs unbearable. While President Eduard Shevardnadze struggled to preserve the official results of widely criticized November 2 parliamentary elections, the channel broadcast speeches by opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili and provided extensive footage of the thousands of protestors in downtown Tbilisi. The news about its de-accreditation came on November 13, after Rustavi-2 aired a message from the student movement Kmara [For background see the EurasiaNet Insight archive]. Later, the commission elaborated a legal basis for its move. Eleven days after the elections, the CEC said, the channel had failed to submit a report on times and rates for pre-election political ads.

A number of civil society activists dispute this claim. "If the report has not been submitted in time, CEC should have reacted during the pre-election campaign and not twelve days after elections," Tinatin Khidasheli of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association said. "Moreover, legally, withdrawal of accreditation is within the competence of a court, and not of the Central Electoral Commission." Independent experts suspect that the withdrawal reflects the CEC's political bias. Members who voted for it represent Shevardnadze's bloc, For a New Georgia, and others in his coalition. The Democratic Revival party, an organ of Ajarian leader Aslan Abashidze, had targeted the station soon after Shevardnadze aligned with him. [For background, see EurasiaNet's ongoing coverage of the elections].

In a joint press conference on November 11, leaders of Revival and two other parties, Labor and the Industrialists, branded the channel as dangerous. They claimed that by broadcasting speeches from Saakashvili and fellow opposition leader Zurab Zhvania, Rustavi-2 had tried to incite the public. As a result, the parties said, they would refuse to give any information to the channel and appealed to everyone in the country to do likewise. "Rustavi-2 will bear main responsibility for possible bloodshed in front of the Parliament," said Tsotne Bakuria, chairman of Revival's Tbilisi organization.

Several officials honored this so-called boycott in ensuing days. "I will talk to you, when you stop spreading lies," said Irina Sarishvili-Chanturia, a spokeswoman of For a New Georgia, to a Rustavi-2 correspondent on November 12. The next night, CEC Chair Nana Devdariani refused to appear on a Rustavi-2 program, claiming scheduling conflicts.

To some experts, these tactics alone violate free-press principles. "By refusing comments to media they dislike, [politicians] deprive media of its right to gather information and to present different views," said Marina Vashakmadze, director of the Caucasus Center for Journalism. "It is clear that pro-governmental forces dislike Rustavi-2, since they offer coverage of events unfavorable to them," said Tengiz Ablotia, Tbilisi correspondent for the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. "But freedom of the press is about having diversity of subjective views."

It is not surprising to these experts that Rustavi-2 became a government target during the post-election crisis. The channel repeatedly broadcast news stories and pre-election polls that gave opposition parties a genuine chance for victory. After the elections, as resentment of the ruling party and Revival grew, Rustavi-2 aired much of the swelling street protest. News editors did not hide their sympathy for those demonstrating in Tbilisi's streets.

State television, meanwhile, tilts as aggressively in favor of the authorities as pro-government forces accuse Rustavi-2 of favoring the opposition. On November 10, both the Ajarian channel, Achara TV and the State First Channel carried live footage of a rally in favor of Shevardnadze and Abashidze that took place in Ajaria's capital, Batumi. Many have called this rally staged, suggesting that its crowds only gathered when Abashidze closed all businesses in the city.

Other channels have been known to lean in the president's favor as well. Shevardnadze may look for a media boost from Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose private Imedi ["Hope"] TV-channel tends toward softer coverage than Rustavi-2. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The majority of print outlets have overtly taken sides in battles between Georgia's political interests, though most newspapers are too small to reach across the country. Only a few draw enough private-sector advertising to maintain editorial independence.

The state-run weekly Literaturuli Sakartvelo, for instance, appealed from its front page to "stop Rustavi-2 from executing terrorist acts against people, the President, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Georgian writers and universities." Letters to the editor in another state-run paper decry Rustavi-2 as an outlet for the opposition.

Eventually, such challenges could effectively silence the operation of Rustavi-2, but for now, the channel continues to broadcast. On November 15, in the late evening, Devdariani said to a Rustavi-2 correspondent that the channel's accreditation had never been cancelled and that the channel continued to have access to commission sessions. "In fact, we have been voting on whether to vote or not on the withdrawal of Rustavi-2 accreditation," she told the Rustavi-2 correspondent. If the Shevardnadze-Abashidze bloc survives the current political crisis, efforts to black out Rustavi-2 may intensify.

Editor's Note: Marina Rennau works with the UK-based Media Diversity Institute in Tbilisi.

John Smock is a freelance photojournalist based in New York.

The EurasiaNet photo coverage of the Georgian parliamentary election is being supported by Foto Care, a New York-based photo supply store that encourages photographers to promote a greater understanding of human conditions in countries around the world.

Posted November 17, 2003 © Eurasianet