Media Development Foundation, MDF within the framework of the Monitoring for Professional Media project supported by the Open Society - Georgia Foundation, continues publication of results of a series of media monitoring.
Within the framework the project expert Davit Aprasidze conducted the monitoring of the main newscasts (Moambe - 20:00, Kronika - 20:00, Dges - 20:30, Kurieri - 21:00 and Akhali Ambebi - 21:00) on five televisions including Rustavi 2, Imedi, Kavkasia, Maestro and the First Channel of the Georgian Public Broadcasting (GPB). April has been singled out as a monitoring period due to the events of political importance or some other kind of extraordinary developments that would ultimately affect the monitoring results.
The monitoring of the newscasts was conducted in terms of thematic diversity. So called percentage of overlapping was assessed too, in particular, how much the topics of the TV companies grouped in three categories coincided with one another.
First group included GPB, Rustavi 2, Imedi, second group - Maestro and Kavkasia and third group - GPB and Kavkasia.
The result of the survey turned out to be rather interesting, e.g.:
•Within the monitoring period Moambe was distinguished with the coverage of multitude of topics within the group as well as in general. On average the main newscast Moambe covered 20 topics per day,14 out of 20 were dedicated to national events;
•The main newscast Kurieri of Rustavi 2 conducted the coverage of 14 topics per day on average, 11 out of them dedicated to national events;
•The newscast Akhali Ambebi of TV Maestro also conducted the coverage of 14 topics on average on a daily basis. 11 topics out of 1dedicated to national events;
•The newscast Kronika of TV Imedi covered 13 topics on average, 10 of them dedicated to national events;
•An average number of topics covered by the Kavkasia TV newscast Dges was 11 per day and 10 out 11 on national events.
According to the study:
The newscasts of three channels such as GPB, Rustavi 2 and Imedi have had more common topics covered than in case of the Kavkasia and GPB grouping or Kavkasia and Maetro TV grouping but an average index of overlapping in case of these three TV channels doesn't exceed 33 percent.
Moreover within the monitoring period the overlapping of topics in the main newscasts in the first and second groups exceeded the half and even topped 60 percent several times. According to the study thematic overlapping prevailed among all of the channels either in case of an important criminal case (The case of Jewish businessmen) or a national development of top significance such as the Georgian-Russian dispute at the Hague Court. The topics on three channels (GPB, Rustavi 2 and Imedi) mostly overlapped in regard to the government policy and criminal, and in case of two channels (Maestro and Kavkasia) in regard to the activities carried out by the opposition and NGO sector.
The methodology of the survey, detailed results and conclusions are attached.
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