Georgian journalists ask PM to revise strategy of communication with media
The journalists, working in Georgia, who are the members of the Charter of Ethics union, call in the Prime Minister of Georgia to revise the strategy of communication with media.
“We, the members of the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, which unites 363 journalists, address you. Both the member and non-member journalists of the organization talk about a very poor practice established by several governmental agencies (especially by the law enforcement agencies), when journalists are invited to the briefing and are not informed about its topic. It is important the editorial offices to be informed about the briefing or new conference topics in order to make decision based on own human and technical resources whether they want to attend and cover them,” the written address reads.
According to the journalists, the invitation without being informed about the topic creates problems to broadcasters, which are not allowed decide to schedule a live broadcast of the briefing or not.
“There are also small media outlets that face challenges related to distribution of their human resources and they find it difficult to decide whether they should send journalists for covering the news or not. Overall, those journalists who are sent to attend the briefings are unprepared and can not provide adequate questions.
In addition, some media outlets speak of discriminatory approach and claim that they remain uninformed not just about the topic, but also about the planned briefing or news conference.
We would like to remind you that the media is not the agency of the press service of any governmental office and its function does not imply to allocate the air time for briefings. Instead, the main role of the media is to cover the news of public interest and ask questions that are interesting to the public. Accordingly, the media itself should decide whether the audience is interested in the topic and to select the format of covering the news content and to prepare for asking questions.
Based on the foregoing, please revise the media communication strategy. Apart of having a private communication with media outlets to publish announcements through your websites in order to provide information to media outlets without any discrimination regardless of whether their editorial policy is acceptable for any state agency or not.
In addition, we urge you to take into account the interests of journalists, to allow them to ask questions and to get additional information in order to be able to provide an interesting information to the public," reads the statement of the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics.
The address is joined by TV “Pirveli”; “Rustavi 2” ; “Adjara TV and Radio of Public Broadcaster” ; “Kavkasia” TV; “InterPressNews; radio “Palitra” ; “PalitraNews” ; Studio Monitor; radio “Hereti” ; radio “Tbilisi” ; radio “Fortuna” ; radio “Marneuli” ; on.ge; “Tabula”; “Prime Time”; Network of Information Centers ; livepress.ge; skeqtri.ge; knews.ge; media.ge; sova.news; “Kronika +; ipress.ge; Globalpress.ge; FirstNews.ge; newpress.ge; Media group “Adjara P.S.; Kavkazexpressmediacompany.com.
