Appeal by the Charter and 35 media outlets to government press centers
31.07.2019

Category : Statements;
 Not announcing the topic of briefing causes problems for broadcasting companies, because they have to decide whether to show briefing in live or as a report afterward. This influences planning of newscasts. It is a challenge for Small media companies with a lack of human resources as they can't decide whether to send a journalist for covering the briefing. All in all, journalists who go to briefing are unprepared and cannot ask relevant questions. They just disseminate information automatically.

 In addition, some of the media companies talk about discrimination and claim that for them not only the topic of the briefing is unknown but also the announcement that the briefing is being held.

 We want to remind you that media is not an addition to governmental press agencies and its function does not include giving screen time to briefings. Media has a role to cover public interest stories and ask relevant questions. Therefore, media itself has to decide whether there is public interest about certain topic or not, select coverage format and create questions. All of these does not happen in an existing practice. Therefore, we ask you to review your strategy of communicating with media. Apart from personal communication with editors. before briefings and press conferences, an announcement should be published on web page to get information in a nondiscriminatory manner despite the fact whether their editorial politics are agreeable with governmental structures or not.

 We also ask you to take into account journalists’ interests, give them a opportunity to ask questions and get additional information, to be able to provide the public with interesting, high quality information. 

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The following media companies join Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics in this statement besides member journalists:

  1. TV Pirveli
  2. Rustavi 2
  3. Public Broadcasting Adjara TV and Radio
  4. Kavkasia
  5. Palitra News
  6. Studio Monitor
  7. Radio Hereti
  8. Radio Tbilisi
  9. Radio Fortuna
  10. Radio Palitra
  11. Radio Marneuli
  12. Interpressnews
  13. On.ge
  14. Tabula
  15. Primetime
  16. Informational Center Network
  17. livepress.ge
  18. speqtri.ge
  19. knews.ge
  20. media.ge
  21. sova.news
  22. Qronika+
  23. ipress.ge
  24. Globalpress.ge
  25. FirstNews.ge
  26. newpress.ge
  27. psnews.ge
  28. Media Group Adjara p.s.
  29. Kavkazexpressmediacompany.com
  30. Moambe of Guria
  31. Gurianews
  32. Radio Atinati
  33. newposts.ge
  34. BM.GE
  35. TV 25