Who Controls the TV Companies?

Zviad Koridze requests the National Commission of Communications to publish the names of the owners of national TV Companies

Tako Khutsishvili

Personnel changes in the Georgian national TV Companies raised many questions among Georgians.  The appointment of Giorgi Arveladze as the director general of the TV Company “Imedi” was followed the next day by the resignation of Levan Kubaneishvili as director general of the Public Broadcasting [the “PB”]. The personnel changes started on the same day at Rustavi 2: Irma Nadirashvili replaced Nino Shubladze as head of the news room and Nino Shubladze became the deputy director general of the TV Company. Journalist Zviad Koridze spoke about the personnel changes in the national TV Companies in his interview with the www.humanrights.ge

-How do you assess the recent personnel changes in the national TV companies?

-Particularly important and interesting personnel changes for me were in the PB. I do not know why Levan Kubaneishvili resigned and the public has no information about it. Nor has the Board of Trustees at the PB made any comments on the fact. They approved the resignation letter of Kubaneishvili in silence. I think Kubaneishvili is obliged to inform the public about the reasons for his decision. I do not think he resigned because of being busy or being ill. I am going to appeal to the Board of Trustees of the PB and request the recording of the meeting where the resignation of Kubaneishvili was discussed,

-What do you think about the personnel changes at the TV companies “Rustavi 2” and “Imedi”?

-As for the changes at other channels, I do not care about them. It is not important who will occupy different positions at those companies. It is up to executive authority of the channels and I think the replacement of employees is not important. I am more curious about the identity of the owners of those TV Companies. These people rule the channels in fact. In short, the following questions are the principal ones – who are the real owners and who are only formal owners of the TV companies; who is funding those TV companies. Up to now I have often read the comments of those journalists who left the TV Company “Imedi”. Many of them say Imedi was controlled by Gigi Ugulava, the Tbilisi Mayor. I think it does not make any difference who controls the channel –Gigi Ugulava informally or Giorgi Arveladze officially.

This is the Giorgi Arveladze who was the minister of the current government. Furthermore, he was a member of the small group who supported the suspension of the broadcasting of “Imedi” on November 7 2007. During his activities as minister he had his own business, advertising company “Sarke,” which got rich by orders from the government in 2006-2008. Even more, the Ministry of Economic Development ordered different ads from the advertising company when Arveladze was the Minister. It is an ordinary corruption scheme and nothing more. He should be punished for that under the law. But, today he manages to escape liability. He will try to prove his faith to the president once more.

A very important issue is that Josef Key is authorized to run the property of the late Patarkatsishvili. Key sold his share to the Rakiin Group. Representatives of this company have not appeared in the company and have not made any statement about the replacement of the director general yet--this is completely strange to me.

-Don’t you think it is suspicious that the personnel changes in the TV companies coincided with each other? According to the information available the government is getting ready for something?

-What is government preparing for? Did Rustavi 2 do anything different when Shubladze was the head of the news-room and will it work in different way now? Simply, they promoted Shubladze and now she occupies the position of the director-general. I have just been informed that she might be one of the candidates of the director general of the PB. I do not care about these intrigues that accompany similar personnel changes. As a citizen I am curious who the real owners of the TV channels are. It is more important for the society to know who the owners of the TV Company are; what their budgets are… and how they are funded.

One the one hand, there are channels and on the other hand there is the National Commission for Communications which is authorized by law to publish the information about the founders. It is the most important problem. When media representatives appealed to Josef Biden their one request was transparency in this field. The authority should do everything to achieve transparency in TV companies and media.

-Currently, the position of the director general of the Public Broadcasting is vacant; will you participate in the competition?

-I have not decided yet but I am thinking about the issue. I applied for the position one and half year ago. Now I do not hope that the Board of Trustees will be free of political influence and their decision will be impartial. Anyway, I will try once more to speak to the people about how we can save the PB from captivity.

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