Independent media of Southern Caucasus cannot confront Russia, participants of hearing in Tbilisi assert

The informational influence of Russia in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan is strong, while independent mass media are unable to create an alternative platform for covering the events – this is the opinion of the participants of the hearing "Russia's informational influence in Southern Caucasus", held in Tbilisi.

The above conference was held in the building of the Tbilisi State University on February 15 within the programme "Symbolic Caucasian Court of Human Rights and Civil Hearing for Democracy of Caucasian Countries", which is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The organizer of the event was the NGO "Centre for Civil Hearings" (Georgia) at the initiative of Niyazi Mehdi.

The conference was attended by 50 people – representatives of Georgian NGOs, journalists and ordinary citizens of Tbilisi, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

The participants of the conference-hearing have expressed the viewpoint that currently the countries of Southern Caucasus can not resist Russian informational influence, because there is no common platform, on which independent media could rely.

Besides, they noted that independent mass media have no financial capacity to create such alternative platform for covering events and make experts' opinions public.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.