On 5th of July, the Parliament of Georgia made amendments to the Civil Code. The new amendments envision the new rule for the registration of religious organizations. Namely, according to the new legislative amendments religious groups, which are recognized as religious organizations in the member states of the Council of Europe or have close historical ties with Georgia, gained the right to be registered as Legal entities of Public Law. The presented draft law and its enactment by the parliament caused various reaction in the public and naturally this topic was covered by Georgian media as well.

The presented research aims to explore whether media acted according to international and local standards while covering the topic. Specifically, the study aims to explore which norms were abused by media during the coverage of the topic about religious minorities.

The observation was conducted during the two weeks after the enactment of the law (5-20 July) and included following media sources: TV Companies – "Public Broadcaster”, "Rustavi 2”, "Caucasia”, "Maestro”; Newspapers – "Rezonansi”, "Alia”, "Asaval-Dasavali”, "Versia”, "Akhali Taoba”, "Kviris Palitra”, "Kviris Qronika”; Radio Channels – "Ucnobi”, "Palitra”; Agencies: "Saqinform”, Magazine- "Liberali”.

As far as the aim of the research is to discover the typology of abuses, it is qualitative and is based on international regulations and on local professional standards: namely, Code of Conduct of Broadcasters, the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics and on the guidelines elaborated by the Institute of Media Diversity (MDI) .