The Facebook page of Studio Monitori, a prominent Tbilisi-based investigative journalism outlet, was temporarily disabled on the morning of August 3, before being restored hours later at around 8 pm.
The disruption, which temporarily removed the page from Meta, followed what the outlet and its journalists described as a “cyberattack,” amid a series of similar attempts in recent months to take down Monitori’s investigative reports and its social media pages and channels, including on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
“An organized series of cyberattacks against Monitori has been underway for about a month,” Monitori journalist Mari Dudunia told online media outlet Publika on August 3. She said journalists had repeatedly received so-called phishing emails and that the outlet’s investigations and social media channels had been subjected to what appeared to be coordinated reporting campaigns aimed at having them suspended.
The Facebook page was disabled about a week after a similar case, in which Monitori’s YouTube channel that hosts years of its investigative work was temporarily removed from the platform. Dudunia said the YouTube incident followed reports submitted by “inauthentic accounts” run by so-called trolls. She added that the channel was later restored after Monitori complained to YouTube and the platform reviewed the case, finding no copyright violation.
Dudunia suggested that the reports against Monitori’s pages appeared to come from government-affiliated pages and accounts. Monitori has carried out a series of investigations into the wealth and activities of Georgian Dream figures and their affiliates, drawing continued criticism from government officials, while some of its findings were later supported by subsequent investigations.
Georgian Dream MP Nino Tsilosani appeared to welcome the temporary suspension on August 3. In a Facebook post sharing a card from pro-government broadcaster Imedi TV reporting that Monitori’s Facebook page had been “deleted,” she accused the outlet of spreading “lies and manipulations” over the years.
The latest suspension came just before Monitori was due to publish a follow-up video investigation into scam call centres. Ultimately published on August 4, the investigation builds on an international investigation published a year ago, in which Monitori was one of the participating media organizations that exposed how European and Canadian citizens were defrauded by scammers in Tbilisi-based call centres.
The latest investigation suggests that, although authorities froze the scammers’ property following the journalistic investigation, they have continued operating from another office in Tbilisi.
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