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National Minorities in the Georgian TV Broadcasting

June 15, 2007

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Today, NGO “Youth Alternative” presented the results of the Georgian TV Companies’ monitoring. According to the organization’s representatives, the main goal of the project “Ethnic Minorities in Georgian Information Sources” was the monitoring of the TV programs on ethnic minorities.

Research included 4 leading Georgian television channels – Rustavi 2, Georgian Public Broadcasting (GPB), Mze and Imedi. The research aimed at revealing what place is given to information on ethnic minorities, what time is given to reports on ethnic minorities in news as  well as other types of TV programs, researching trends connected with ethnic minorities, in particular, Azerbaijanis and Armenians living in Georgia in leading televisions.

According to the representatives of “Youth Alternative”, according to one-month monitoring results, issues of Azery and Armenian ethnical minorities are paid very little attention.

It must be mentioned, that the most information concerning with regions compactly populated with Armenians and Azerbaijanis, were about border problems or crime.

As TV Administrations declare, issues on ethnic minorities are non-profitable. And there is no appropriate demand from society.

The most share of coverage of Azery and Armenian ethnical minorities belongs to Imedi and GPB. It must be mentioned, that GPB, unlike Imedi, pays more attention to the political, social and cultural issues of the ethnic minorities.

One of the monitoring criteria was the news’ location, according to 5 categories: Armenia, Azerbaijan, region, Tbilisi and other. The most attention is paid to the cases taking place in Tbilisi. Though, it can be mentioned, that attention to the regions, none of the television, except GPB, has special group of journalists in the region or any special program.

As the representatives of the organization declare, most of TV reportages about minorities are on protest actions, elections, or visits of high ranking officials and etc.

Better to see whole picture, find out the reasons of non-sufficiently coverage of ethnical minority problems, representatives of TV administration and journalists have been interviewed. It must be underlined some problems: Sometimes, representatives of the TV Companies do not think that lack of the coverage of the ethnical minority issues is a bitter problem and the coverage of ethnical issues is non profitable for them.

Nino Tarkhnishvili 

 

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