GPB Refused Human Rights Organizations Placement of Social Video Clip

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Tskitishvili, Head of the Administration of Tbilisi Human Rights House, is surprised at the letter of GPB Director General Giorgi Baratashvili, which contains refusal to put on the air a social video clip prepared by Tbilisi Human Rights House.

“We’re even more surprised at the fact, that Giorgi Baratashvili had based his refusal on the article of the Law on Broadcasting, which confirms that our video clip is a social advertisement,” Aleko Tskitishvili reported to Media.Ge

According to Article 2 of the Georgian Law on Broadcasting, which General Director of GPB is referring to, social advertisement is explained as “an advertisement with charitable purposes, aimed at the promotion of public benefit, which isn’t considered either as a commercial or pre-election advertisement, and doesn’t contain advertisement of a legal person of private law or governmental agency, as well as of the service realized by them.”

“Due to the fact that the presented video clip doesn’t comply with the aforementioned requirements, we cannot, thus, put it on the air in the capacity of social advertisement,” Giorgi Baratashvili writes to the Human Rights Organization.

With the assistance of Eurasia Partnership Foundation, Tbilisi Human Rights House is realizing the project-“free legal support for socially unsecured population of Georgia”.

The organization asked the Public Broadcaster to air between August 13-23 a video clip prepared within the framework of the “free legal support for socially unsecured population of Georgia” project.

“Our video clip is definitely aimed at assisting public benefit, as we’re helping socially unsecured citizens, which cannot afford legal support from private legal companies. A social advertisement cannot, therefore, be considered as a commercial advertisement, in addition our organization is a non-commercial legal person, and we don’t have commercial purposes,”  stated Aleko Tskitishvili, Coordinator of the given project. He added that the video clip by no means represents a pre-election advertisement, it doesn’t as well contain an advertisement of a legal person of private law or governmental organization, or of the service realized by them. Aleko Tskitishvili stated therewith, that Baratashvili’s refusal completely contradicts the previous fact, when GPB had placed in its programming another video clip of the organization prepared within the given project.