Media monitoring report on Programming of the Public Service Broadcasters in Georgia (2014)

The Charter of Journalistic Ethics (the Charter), an independent, non-profit professional journalist association that promotes values of freedom and democracy, monitored various aspects of programming of the public television broadcasters. This monitoring was conducted as a follow-up to previous media monitoring reports on coverage of selected Georgian television channels, most recently prior to the 15 June and 12 July local elections. All analyses were conducted in cooperation with the Slovak media-monitoring organization MEMO 98 and with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The Charter & MEMO 98 have sought to evaluate to what extent public media within daily programming reflected their public service mandate and whether fulfilled respective legal and programming requirements, in particular from the perspective of its funding from tax-payers money.

While all the channels were monitored comprehensively from various aspects, in case of GPB1 the monitoring focused also on channel’s performance in providing diverse and impartial coverage of political subjects and events in its news programmes. The project’s findings have been determined through a well-defined and rigorous methodology and are intended to contribute to the development and cultivation of the Georgian media environment, in particular of its public media component.

From 15 October to 15 December 2014, the Charter conducted monitoring of three public television channels (Georgian Public Broadcaster - GPB1, GPB2, Adjara TV) and of one private television channel (Rustavi 2). While the monitoring of public channels focused on their entire daily programming, in case of private Rustavi 2 only the main evening news programmes were monitored for comparison purposes.

The Charter used methodology that has been developed by MEMO 98 which has carried out similar projects in almost 50 countries over the last 16 years. Given its comprehensive content-oriented approach, it is specially designed to provide in-depth feedback on pluralism and diversity in media reporting, including coverage of chosen subjects/themes. At the same time, for purposes of this monitoring, methodology was adjusted to reflect various aspects of television programming. As such, the outcome of the monitoring is a detailed analysis and evaluation of the current level of programming structure, examined in the necessary context.

 Full report
 Programming structure
 News structure
 Political subjects