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TV COMPANY “IMEDI” RESUMES ITS BROADCASTING IN GEORGIA
GIORGI TARGAMADZE,
Director of the TV company “IMEDI” political programs, Tbilisi
The television company “IMEDI” is expected to start broadcasting on December 12. This is the final date. We have a lot of technical problems, so, until today, there was no telling when the broadcasting would be resumed.
The November events will make the journalists’ work very difficult. It will be hard for us to interview those government officials who ideologically prepared the terrorist act against the TV company “IMEDI”. A terrorist act that’s what it was. All of those actions were unconstitutional, broke the laws of Georgia and the special decree signed by then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili after November 7.
We were not warned that the company would be smashed up. The military attack began suddenly. The masked and armed to the teeth people beat the journalists. Nobody thought that this kind of events might take place in Georgia. They completely destroyed equipment of the information programs central broadcasting studio. Fortunately, many people came to support us. They were hunted for too. After we had been taken from the company, a group of people came into the room and smashed everything up.
After that, our employees could not get into the office for about a month. During this period some people carried out the equipment and the signal-transmitting system. This system has been withdrawn, and now we have very serious technical problems.
More than 500 employees work for our company. Everybody had a very difficult time. Almost all of them will continue in their present jobs. For this month several television anchorpersons and journalists have resigned. We regret that they left our company. Some our colleagues working for other mass media would like to help us and cooperate with our company. We have no shortage of journalists and in ten past years we have had no shortage of stars.
For all that, the government continues to put serious pressure on the journalists, editors and producers of the company. Officials are using all the ways, for example, blackmailing and intimidating of the people including their relatives and families. They threaten to pay the journalists extremely low salaries. The authorities are brainwashing all our employees including the trainees.
We are going to demand that the Georgian authorities indemnify us for losses. Skilled lawyers, including foreign experts, work for the company. We have already prepared the action to the European Court not only for the technical losses, but also for the moral damage. The damage is moral because the company was not only smashed up, but also robbed. The day our lawyers were about to bring in the action, acting President Nino Burjanadze stated that the television company “IMEDI” could resume broadcasting. We do not hope that the Georgian courts will do anything. So we will take the matter to the European Court.
When I tell the foreign journalists what happens in Georgia, I often utter the word combination “Putinization of the country”. I am sure that the “Putinization of Georgia” started immediately after the “Rose Revolution”. It started with the closing of the independent TV channels by the government officials. “Putinization” in Georgia consists in the fact that there are no independent courts, the entire political system is monopolized, the Parliament’s functions are insignificant and the government seeks to monopolize all the mass media. All Georgians realize that instituting control over the television and radio is the last stage fulfilling this task.
Fortunately, when “IMEDI” starts to broadcast, Georgia will again acquire the reputation of the country that lays claim to being a democratic state. In this sense I am sure that although Saakashvili shows ill will towards his Russian counterpart, he has learnt much from President Vladimir Putin. They are very much alike. If our country follows the antidemocratic policy like Russia does, this will lead to self-isolation of Georgia. But Georgia’s chances to become self-isolated are much worse than those of Russia.
In Georgia “IMEDI” is the only national television channel whose founder everyone knows. It is common knowledge that this is Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili. He founded this channel four years ago. Now he owns the channel. But the management and 100 % of the shares have been passed to the department of the News Corp conglomerate. They have been managing the channel during this year. News Corp representative in South Caucasus Louis Robertson is the head of the company. All of our financial reports are sent to the American partners. Twice a year they come to Georgia with large delegations to approve the budget and the channel’s grid. Robertson lives in Georgia and controls the entire broadcast.
We are not influenced by the authorities. I think that our channel does not pretend to the perfect balance. We understand that given the current situation we cannot be balanced perfectly.
The authorities have been trying to buy our channel for three years. That is really so. The authorities have used various ways to take control of this channel too. At first, they threatened the founders. It was said several times that the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office will consider the issue of Patarkatsishvili’s extradition to Russia. Then the negotiations process switched over to the financial field. Very mach money was offered. This was followed by the proposal to exchange the television for other serious assets in Georgia.
Those efforts failed and “IMEDI” continued to be an independent channel. All the employees will say that Patarkatsishvili does not interfere in the channel’s broadcasting policy. He came once a year when the budget was examined. He did not interfere in our policy and watched over our performance and ratings. Within three or four years our channel has become the television leader in Georgia in terms of advertisement, information and ratings. I believe that the government will seek to make the Americans sell them the shares.
What counts most is that our channel does not depend on the government or other political and business groups. The journalists manage to do what they like.
The material is based on the address of Giorgi TARGAMADZE during the television space bridge Moscow-Tbilisi: ‘The “IMEDI” television channel comes back. What next?’ organized byRussian News and Information Agency RIA Novosti on December 11, 2007.
December 13, 2007
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