Georgia Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
April 7, 2013
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Europe & Eurasia MSI in 2001.
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Download the Complete Georgia MSI Chapter (PDF): 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001
MSI Georgia - 2013 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.15
A local television station was sold for a price of a compact SUV, a large news network was disposed of for less than two dollars, and still another major public channel imploded as the surprise change in power in Georgia triggered Rube Goldberg machine-style shifts in the news industry.
Two weeks after the October 2012 parliamentary elections, anchors, reporters and weather presenters for PIK T V all stared in silence at the viewers in protest against the impending closure of the station, a Russian-Language channel of the Georgian Public Broadcasting. Despite the silent demarche by its journalists, the signal of the channel, which cost millions of dollars to Georgian taxpayers, eventually went static. Other channels either changed hands or laid-off most of their staff, or both.
The dislodging of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s allies from their governing majority in the parliamentary vote broke the longtime status quo in the media environment, previously dominated by large, pro-president news channels. The election resulted in a sharing of power between Saakashvili’s presidential office and his rivals’ government, which, in turn, led to a more balanced distribution of the media market and cautious hopes for more balanced news.
The highly-contested election campaign unveiled all the issues with Georgian media, such as hyper-partisanship, deficient ethical standards, and uncompetitive business practices. But Georgia offers a regionally-enviable diversity of news sources, reflecting the full gamut of viewpoints. “The information is out there for those who want to get it,” said Nino Jangirashvili, director of TV Kavkasia. However, she added, for getting the full picture, media consumers need to watch several channels, read newspapers, and check what they read online for accuracy.
Television stations continue to function as king-makers and breakers. Many observers believe that television coverage of a prison abuse scandal, essentially Georgia’s Abu Ghraib, sealed the fate of Saakashvili’s party in the election.
The focus group gave Georgia its most optimistic evaluation in years, with the panel placing the country back in the “near sustainable” category, above 2.0 overall, once again. A weak business management sector, while modestly improved from 2012, continues to be a major barrier to overall sustainability. Political competition opened the field for greater pluralism and freedom of expression, but also revealed the difficulties of establishing apolitical media firms and outlets in Georgia.
