The latest installment in Georgia’s chase for spies on July 7 saw the arrest of four high-profile photographers, including no less than President Mikheil Saakashvili’s personal photographer.
In a nocturnal detention spree, counterintelligence officials detained five photographers on suspicion of sending visual intelligence to an unnamed "foreign country." Detained are: presidential photographer Irakli Gedenidze and his photographer wife Natia Gedenidze; Georgian Foreign Ministry photographer Giorgi Abdaladze; and Zurab Kurtsikidze, a stringer for the European Press Photo Agency.
Also brought in for questioning was Associated Press photo correspondent Shakh Aivazov, but he was later released.
So far, media efforts to extract any piece of information from clammed-up Georgian officials about the reason for the arrests have been in vain. A Ministry of Internal Affairs statement simply has it that the photographers were sending certain things to a certain country's intelligence service, causing certain damage to national interests. Putting all the bits together, it is not difficult to guess that the said country is Russia.
But without any released evidence from police to support their accusations, the photographers' arrest could prove a serious blow to Georgia’s less-than-stellar media freedom record. The police, though, seem to be in no hurry to explain what exactly happened.
On the other hand, if the accusations are proven true, the “Photogate” could prove a big embarrassment for Georgia’s pride-and-joy security and police system.
The Georgian viewers have spoken. They want no more hard news and politics on TV; rather, they want more fun programming, claims the Georgian National Communications Commission, citing an audience survey it sponsored.
The regulator, often criticized for pandering to the executive branch, said on April 5 that it will be issuing broadcast frequencies accordingly. This means that priority will be given to entertainment programming, even though there does not seem to be a deficit of singing, dancing and celebrity chats on Georgian TV screens.
The political opposition was quick to sound the alarm bells. Some fear the Commission now can effectively put the kibosh on political news and government criticism on TV. Opposition Christian Democrats Party parliamentarian Levan Vepkhvadze, a onetime television news producer, fumed that even the pro-government station Rustavi2 may now turn into a music TV channel, with its news anchors acting as VJs.
Representatives of the ruling United National Movement responded that the change will not affect current television stations, but it will influence future applications for broadcast licenses.
In other words, if future broadcast license applicants want to offer political news programming, they may need to come up with an entertaining way of presenting it.
From the television station that brought you the fake Russian invasion of Georgia in 2010 comes a similarly hard-hitting news investigation. This time, it's not about Russian troops in breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Rather, it is the story of a mole and a pile of dog droppings.
Imedi was never really chastened by the international egg-pelting over its make-believe Russia invasion report. It has since moved on to fresher fields. In an apparent attempt to boost ratings, the station's news team now offers viewers a heady brew of sensational reports on murders, male prostitutes, celebrities, and, yes, a supposedly imminent Fukushima-style nuclear disaster in the Caucasus.
In one recent analysis, the station's Special Report news magazine found that Georgians -- especially students -- are ridiculously uneducated.
To prove their point, the channel's gung-ho journalists ambushed a handful of people in downtown Tbilisi with questions about Georgian historical and cultural figures. That was pretty much enough.
But Imedi needed a culprit for why Georgians allegedly know so little about history and math, and so much about trendy fashion designers. And it found one.
It is a popular German children’s book ("The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business" ) about a mole who questions various animals to find out which one defecated on his head.
