Pursuant to Article 14 of the Law of Georgia on Broadcasting and the Code of Conduct of Broadcasters adopted by the Georgian National Communication Commission (GNCC) in 2009, broadcasters are obliged to establish an efficient complains mechanism for considering customers’ complaints.
If a broadcaster breaches the Code of Conduct, apply to us through filling out a provided questionnaire and the Media Development Foundation, MDF will present your complaint in a broadcaster's self-regulation body.
Media Development Foundation, MDF publishes media monitoring report Social Theme in News Programs. The research was implemented by Ketevan Mskhiladze within the frames of the project Media Monitoring – for Professional Media, supported by the Open Society – Georgia Foundation, OSGF.
The main subject of the research is the coverage of social issues by TV news programs. The prime-time news programs of five TV channels – Public Broadcasting Television, Rustavi 2, Imedi, Maestro and Kavkasia - were observed over the period of October 11, 2011 to November 11, 2011.
Coverage of the social beat by TV channels was mainly selected as a research focus due to the following reason: it’s natural that the existing politicized environment in Georgia influences media. In this marathon the main news programs of TV channels are focused on covering political developments and usually allocate less time and pay little attention to the covarage of other issues of public interest. As a result, TV viewers remain largely uninformed on a whole scale of tremendously important trends and developments. One of such topics of high public interest is a social theme.
Monitoring implemented within the frames of the research was aimed at revealing the following aspects: the total share of reports on social theme within the news programs; whether some social issues are prioritized by news programs of particular TV channels; diversity of the social themes and the type of social issues covered by media; whether the social issues of high public importance are covered; the placement number of social stories within the news program; the TV presentation format of the reported news – substantial TV story or just a short voice-over (short voice-over is limited to a number of video-shots and a couple of attached interviews, while substantial TV story implies the comprehensive, deep coverage of the issue); main differences across the TV channels covering social themes.
Main findings of the research are as follows: Only 2,170 TV stories were aired during the monitoring period by the main news programs on Public Broadcasting Television, Rustavi 2, Imedi, Maestro and Kavkasia. Generally, approximately 21 TV stories are aired by informational program of Public Broadcasting Television; approximately 19 TV stories – news program of Rustavi 2; 14 TV stories – Maestro; 13 TV stories covered by TV Imedi and 11 by Kavkasia. Only 262 out of the 2,170 TV stories covered during the monitoring period reffered to social theme. The total percentage of social stories within all observed news programs was 11%.