Georgian Parliament refuses to renew must-carry and must-offer media principles

The Parliament of Georgia does not intend to extend the period of the mandatory inclusion of news programmes of the Georgian TV Companies to a package, offered to TV viewers by cable TV operators. This was announced by David Bakradze, Speaker of the Parliament. He has noted that the state cannot constantly intervene in private business.

The David Bakradze's statement was made in response to the letter from the working group of ambassadors, who on July 18 held the meeting to discuss amendments to the electoral legislation ofGeorgia. The group of diplomatic officials came to the conclusion that the 2-month introduction of the must-carry (mandatory inclusion of news programmes of the TV Companies in a package of the channels) and must-offer (mandatory offer by the TV Companies of their TV programmes to be included in a package of cable networks) principles is a useful change; however, the ambassadors treated the period of 60 days as insufficient.

"We have a period, when the state finds it possible to intervene for the interests of democracy," David Bakradze stated on the briefing, held on July 19.

Zurab Djaparidze, the journalist of the newspaper "Tabula", believes that a TV Channel owner has the right to build the principles of broadcasting by his own. This is stated in the article "How not to help media", published in the newspaper issue of June 18-24. Zviad Koridze, the journalist, the member of the Charter of Journalistic Ethics, expresses his strict discontent with that approach.

"In accordance with the current legislation, cable service providers have the right to refuse to include any TV Channel in the package of broadcasted TV Channels without explanation. And therefore, it turns out that in the regions, the population does not have the possibility to watch such TV Channels, as the 'Maestro', 'Caucasia', and 'Metskhre Arkhi' ('Channel 9'), since the providers do not want to include them in the offered package," Zviad Koridze told in his interview to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.