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New Report of the Freedom House: Quality of Georgian Press Freedom Deteriorates

May 1, 2008


 The well-respected international organization Freedom House has published a report on press freedoms at the international level. According to this report Georgia’s rate in this rating came went down by three points.

The organization has been publishing yearly reviews relating the world press since 1984. The title of this report this year is “The Freedom of Press in 2007: Year of Global Decline”.

Previous report covering the period of 2006 indicated that Georgia was deemed to be partially independent country in terms of press freedom. Georgia was on 120th place in the rating and its point scale was 57. However, in the report published in 2008 Georgia is still attached to the list of countries that are half independent but the country’s rating point is now 60 and is on the 128th place in the list. Butane, the country that has 60 points and is on the 132nd place, is on the leading place in the list of non-independent countries.


In the regional list of the countries of central and east Europe and post soviet countries, Georgia is on the 18th place after Ukraine (53 points). Georgia is followed by Armenia and Moldova with 66 points both. Azerbaijan is on the 22nd place with 77 points. Russia is on the 24th place with 78 points in the regional rating. Russia as well as Azerbaijan can be counted among the countries considered to be not free regarding freedom of press. Freedom House moved Russia from 164th place to 170th, Azerbaijan from 164th to 168th and Armenia from the 142nd place to 144th. Estonia (16 points), the Check Republic (18 points) and Lithuania (18 points) are on the leading positions in the regional list.

Finland (9 points), Iceland (10 points) and Denmark (10 points) are leading the world rating.
In terms of freedom of press 72 countries are free, 59 are partially free and 64 are not free in the world.

The Freedom of House talks about the reasons why the quality of the freedom of speech deteriorated in Georgia and mentions the November crisis in 2007 when the police used force against demonstrators, dispersed and closed TV-company Imedi. TV-company Caucasus stopped broadcasting because of governmental instruction.

The organization reports that during the terms of emergency when private channels were forbidden to broadcast news programs and the freedom of speech was restricted, the situation in the media as well as other political rights and freedoms deteriorated.

“After suspending the state of emergency, most of the TV channels renewed broadcasting but the broadcasting license of TV-company Imedi was cancelled to December 12, 2007. In this spam of time, its journalists lived under a hostile regime, they were intimidated and assaulted,” is written in the Freedom House report.

“The media environment was much politicized until the end of 2007. The pro-governmental channels Rustavi 2 and Mze were trying to create positive image to the government while the independent channels tended to be more oppositional,” is claimed in the report.

The organization notes that the information as to who are the actual owners of media sources lacks transparency, and that the journalists and reporters themselves often to not know who is the actual owner of the media company they are working. 

As for the non-recognized republics on the territory of Georgia, Freedom House states that Abkhazian and South Ossetian de facto governments continued curbing the freedom of media in 2007. The local and international journalists were often detained and intimidated in these regions. And the local population does not have free access to any kind of information.

Source: Media.ge

 

 

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