Decision N115
January 28, 2017


Head of Council: Giorgi Mgeladze

Members of Council: Jaba Ananidze, Tea Zibzibadze, Tamar Uchidze, Tazo Kupreishvili, Maia Metskhvarishvili.

Applicant: Giorgi Tatishvili

Respondent: Zurab Vardiashvili

Description

Giorgi Tatishvili applied to Georgian Charter of Journalistic ethics. He thought that the article “How does Giorgi Tatishvili Scheme Work” published on Liberali.ge web-page on 27th of October 2016 was violating principles 1, 3, 5, 10 and 11 of the charter. The topic of the article was inquiring about information in public schools, specifically cases when legal entity required certain information from public schools and in case of not getting this information took the case to court.

Applicant and respondent journalist attended the case discussion.

Findings of the Council

According to the first principle of the Charter: “Journalist must respect truth and public’s right to get correct information”.

Based on schools, journalist says in the article that the required information is 15000-20000 papers, but he could not show council any proof that Tatishvili really required this much information and that was the cause of schools not being able to give this information to him. Journalist did not check this information with Giorgi Tatishvili, who he spoke while preparing the article. Applicant said that maximum information required from each school was several hundred pages and not 15-20 thousand. He also said that the information he requires should be electronic according to the law and this is not as hard to provide as is said in the article. Therefore, journalist did not check the important piece of information.

Article also said the following: “After not getting information fully, Giorgi Tatishvili took case to court, and what is important, asked the costs of plaintiff representative to be covered, which is the fee of the lawyer” and “The aim of plaintiff representative is the fee coverage. Generally, it requires 550 GEL. One of the organizations which he is a founder of gets money to protect the second organization. There are thousands of cases like this.”

Journalist said to the council during the discussion that he himself did not read any court case where every representative fee was to be covered by the school. Giorgi Tatishvili said that the pay often was 20, 50 or 100 GEL. 550 GEL was in single case and this was the most expensive one.

It is also important to see the unity of phrases in article like: “How does Giorgi Tatishvili Scheme Work” [the headline], “The goal of these court cases are tens of schools, including regional schools”, “This give any physical and legal entity to manipulate code principles to which in this case the schools became victims of”, “What will the end of “mass attack” on schools be?”, which are strengthened by the interview with the lawyer Inga Arakhamia, who says that requiring information in this way is a “fraud”. Journalist gave impression to the reader that Giorgi Tatishvili’s actions were a fraud based on one open source, lawyer, which the council thought to be a violation of principle one. Of course, there is a doubt that the requisition of information did not have any objective reason and the person requiring it had different aims, but for the purposes of giving information to the reader fully it was better for the journalist to research additional details. This would give the readers chance to understand how important it was to get the information in the first place.

According to the principle 3 “Journalist can spread information based on approved sources. Journalist should not hide important facts, forge documents and information”.

The applicant had the same proof of principle 3 as the principle 1, therefore principle 3 violation was not proved. According to the principle 5 of the charter: “Media is obligated to correct published incorrect information, which may cause confusion in public”.

According to the principle 11 of the Charter: “Journalist has to consider following acts as a severe professional crime: deliberate distortion of facts”.

During the discussion of the case applicant said that he would provide the evidence to council which would prove that he requested the information to be corrected. He would also provide evidence that respondent journalist had interest to not publish the correct material. Council gave applicant time to provide these documents but he did not. Therefore, after the deadline, the violation of principles 5 and 11 were not proven.

According to the principle 10 of the Charter: “Journalist has to respect the privacy of person and not violate it if there is no certain public interest involved”.

Applicant said that by publishing these facts, his privacy was violated, because public got acquainted with the work of organizations in which Giorgi Tatishvili is taking part. Council says that the information about legal entities and their heads/representatives are available publically [napr.gov.ge]. Also they requested public information; therefore this fact cannot violate principle 10.

Resolution

According to the information above:

• Zura Vardiashvili violated Charter principle 1.
• Zura Vardiashvili did not violate Charter principles 3, 5, 10 and 11.