Georgia: Parliamentary Election Media Situation

EurasiaNet examines the media situation on the eve of the 21 May parliamentary election in Georgia. Interestingly, although there are some significant concerns, they appear not to be as serious as was the case in Armenia during last year’s parliamentary and this year’s presidential election. Nevertheless, if Armenia’s political parties and candidates were outraged at the cost of political advertisements during the pre-election campaign period here, they would likely have a heart attack in Georgia.

For example, while private stations charged $300-400 per minute here, the going rates in Georgia hit $3,000 - $32,000. In retrospect, Armenia set a better environment for paid political advertising than its arguably more democratic neighbor. Free campaign slots on Public TV were also available to everyone here while they are limited there. Perhaps the media situation in that respect wasn’t so bad in Armenia after all.

In its April 2008 interim report on Georgia’s election environment, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s observer mission took issue with coverage of the election campaign. Observer mission media analyst Rasto Kuzel said that monitoring of national broadcasters Rustavi-2 and Mze (part of the same company as Rustavi-2) and local broadcasters Adjara and Kavkasia “all show [a] lack of balance.”

The stations provide “overwhelmingly positive and neutral coverage” for the governing United National Movement, while opposition coverage swings more neutral than positive, he continued.

[…]

Meanwhile, Georgian Public Broadcasting, a key target for opposition criticism during the January presidential elections, receives cautious kudos from the OSCE for improving the balance of its campaign coverage.

The station, now headed by a new president and board of trustees, airs election debates twice per week, a political platform presentation show once per week, and offers free airtime for party presentations three times per week. It has also signed a memorandum with political parties to provide “balanced, impartial and objective” coverage of their activities.

[…]

Nonetheless, as with Rustavi-2 and Mze, the OSCE observer mission found that public television “devoted significant and favorable coverage to activities of the authorities, outside the campaign context, thus benefiting candidates with a pro-government orientation.”

[…]

The predominance of United National Movement advertisements sparks much of that frustration. The party dominates paid advertising on television – spots can cost anywhere from $16,000 for 30 seconds (Rustavi-2; evening PrimeTime talk show) to $1,500 per 30 seconds (Mze; evening newscast). The United Opposition Movement and the Christian-Democratic Movement are so far the only opposition parties to have taken out fee-based TV ads.

Free time slots – ranging from 30 seconds per hour on private stations to 60 seconds per hour on Georgian Public Broadcasting – are available for parties that received more than 4 percent of the vote in Georgia’s 2004 parliamentary elections and 3 percent of the vote in its 2006 local elections.