Lack of diversity in TV news programming

The Media Development Fund (MDF) has released the results of a monitoring report conducted last fall, regarding news coverage in the Georgian media. Author of the report Professor Davit Aprasidze from Ilia State University analyzed the content of five major news programs to identify how they covered events between October 1 and 31, 2011.

The media-monitoring project was first carried out in April, with the support of Open Society – Georgia Foundation (OSGF). The project, Media Monitoring – For Professional Media, aims to identify the general themes found in Rustavi 2, Imedi TV, Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB), Kavkasia, and Maestro TV programming.

News programs broadcast by the major three networks – GPB, Rustavi 2 and Imedi TV – were particularly active in covering both nationwide and foreign topics; however, their programming was found to be very similar, more so than the programming found on Kavkasia and Maestro TV. These two stations generally devoted more air time to the activities of opposition parties, as well as the non-governmental sector, while the three major networks gave over more screen time to government news and crime.

The media-monitoring project also revealed that all five networks increased their coverage of the opposition after businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili entered the Georgian political arena in October. Ivanishvili-related issues were covered by all news programs with almost the same frequency.

The goal of Aprasidze's research is not to explain why networks choose to broadcast some stories in favour of others, but to identify the thematic scope of each channel's news coverage. “It’s actually fine if the news services cover a lot of issues, but it also depends on which topic they are covering,” he said, observing that from 50-60 distinct "themes" in October, coverage was generally dominated by stories about presidential appearances and crime.

Professor spoke of the need for deeper analysis of the news content the networks offer their audiences either to confirm or debunk the notion that the Georgian news media is politically biased in favour of the government or whether they have independent editorial policies.