Georgia’s disputed parliament has termporary suspended the accreditations of three journalists from the opposition-leaning TV Pirveli, amid reports of similar suspensions affecting reporters from other critical TV stations and online media outlets.
Nodar Meladze, TV Pirveli’s head of news, said on June 29 that the three journalists whose accreditations were suspended are Natalia Kajaia, Maka Chikhladze, and Maka Andronikashvili. They all work on his investigative program “Meladze’s Saturday.”
According to the letters from parliament shared by Meladze, Kajaia’s accreditation was suspended for one year on June 29, Chikhladze’s for six months on June 8, and Andronikashvili’s for one month on June 22. Criticizing the move, Meladze said their accreditations were suspended on “”unjustified grounds.”
In all three cases, the head of parliament’s apparatus cited the provision which states that an accredited journalist is “obligated to stop an interview” if an MP, staff member, or guest refuses to allow the interview to be recorded. Meladze said the letters “do not specify which respondent’s interview triggered application of this blanket norm,” adding, “The completely vague explanations make the intention behind this ban clear to us: their goal is to stop critical questions.”
The suspensions came weeks after the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament tightened its accreditation rules for journalists, allowing the legislature to revoke accreditations before they expire, extend sanctions for repeat violations to up to one year, and penalize both individual journalists and their media outlets. Parliament said the changes were modeled on the rules in the European Parliament, which in May suspended access for Georgia’s pro-government Imedi TV for one year after its journalist approached and filmed an MEP “without prior consent.”
The parliament’s latest decisions drew criticism from the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, a non-state media watchdog, which said the legislature is “gradually becoming one of the most closed institutions in the country, hostile toward those journalists whose critical questions some MPs often lack answers to.” The Charter called on the parliament to stop “persecuting journalists” and allow them to work freely in the legislature.
Other media organizations have also been affected by the stricter accreditation rules. Another opposition-leaning TV Formula’s journalist Nini Balanchivadze said on June 26 that her parliamentary accreditation had been suspended for six months under the same provision.
Earlier, on May 22, the disputed Parliament revoked the accreditations of the online outlets Publika and Studio Monitor, citing the absence of accredited journalists from Parliament for ten consecutive weeks. Studio Monitor said it would challenge the decision in court.
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