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What role can a public broadcaster play in Georgia’s polarised politics?

By:   []

Date: 2021-12

It’s interesting that you say that opposition politicians have the right to appear on the Public Broadcaster, but that they refuse. I looked at the monitoring results of The Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, and the results show that, indeed, most coverage is neutral. But if you look at specific topics, such as the economy and social problems, most of the stories are pro-government. So, thanks to covering news related to the government, you give the Georgian government more space than anyone else.

To be honest, I have stopped discussing this organisation [The Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics]. As much as we discuss this, we do not receive data from them. How do they do their research? I am not going to discuss issues of balance, as long as they do not give us their notes, give us proof of how we are biased. We had similar issues in the past. So we have a monitoring team of our own, and we put the results of it on our webpage especially when it comes to elections. Our monitoring is based on the same kind of criteria as the charter. Our monitors always share with them, we have produced software to monitor our content. And we shared our software to make a comparison between our results and their results, but they refuse to share their findings with us.

You know it’s not just about methodology, it’s about counting the seconds. For instance, 30 seconds to the pro-government speaker and then we have to find 30 seconds for the opposition speaker. And then if someone blames someone for 60 seconds, we need to find someone to disagree with that. That's crazy maths we are dealing with here. In this election we are searching for opposition speakers. In August the ruling party started the campaign, and half of the September opposition was weak and passive. We tried to persuade them that if they have any kind of activity, we will come and cover to strike the balance. And it was very hard work for us.

I understand that it’s getting hard to find the balance. It’s obvious for any external viewer. It’s a global trend, in a way. You say that it’s crazy to calculate how much time each speaker spends on air. I looked at the 2018 presidential elections monitoring report from the same organisation, which says that the host gave airtime to pro-government speakers, like Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, without engaging critically with what he was saying. The host did not pose critical questions to Tea Tsulukiani, Georgia’s then-minister of justice, or asked questions that rather supported the position of the ruling party. So, it is not really about “who gets how many seconds of airtime”, but about how the host behaves and drives the discussion.

What is the problem? We have different programmes. One of our programmes is called ‘Hard Talk’, another is to show the points of view of various politicians. Not just for the representatives of the government, but to give voice to the opposition, too. Even before that we had programmes specifically created to cover elections and we gave speakers the opportunity to answer the same questions. It’s done to focus their attention on their political programme. Also, we have our ‘Hard Talk’ show, including one with the minister of justice. So, making a judgement based on one programme is unfair.

I have mentioned at least three different programmes aired in the same period.

Three programmes with the same aim? Why doesn’t the [2018 election monitoring] report mention that there are three programmes of different kinds?

The charter’s monitoring discusses election-related shows.

I am talking about elections as well. There were specific programmes made during this period of elections, that we focused on presenting their vision.

We are facing the same problem. If you give pro-government speakers the opportunity to express themselves uncritically, people will see that the channel is not neutral.

When I criticise someone, my aim is to find out the people’s views, how they discuss these views, what solutions they have and how they present. This is my point of view and I believe that I am right. When I talk with an opposition representative or government representative, first of all, I want to understand how this person talks about politics, how this person presents issues.When they criticise something, I have to be critical of this, because I want to understand what really goes on with the issue he/she discusses. To give an opportunity to people who watch me to see the basis of their positions or policy. I am not a ‘Hard Talk’ presenter, everyone whom I interview can prove this. If you have seen my interviews with politicians, you will see they have the comfort to talk about anything.
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