The big problem with news coverage about Georgia is not only bias. It is that a small cluster of foreign-funded NGO media platforms have come to dominate the English-language reporting of the country while presenting themselves as neutral journalism.
International media benefit from this. They get English-fluent intermediaries ready with quotes, angles and ready-made narratives. The NGO platforms benefit too, because this gives them influence far beyond their real standing inside Georgian society.
How did we end up where we are? After the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia’s state institutions were heavily shaped by foreign-backed reform projects. The judiciary, the executive and the legislature were all targets of training, advice and donor attention. The Georgian press also was drawn into this.
It was an odd fit. The country already had a lively post-Soviet press: unruly, confrontational, often poor. But was alive and did its job, reporting events honestly to its readers. Television was also alive before the reforms. In fact, it was Rustavi 2 that helped bring about the change in 2003.
Georgia did not lack a media tradition before the money and advisors began inundating Tbilisi’s media landscape. But suddenly, a cluster of foreign-funded NGO media platforms began claiming the mantle of democratic journalism.
What, exactly, have they added? A free press is supposed to widen debate. It should publish arguments, assumptions and interpretations from different sides, especially in a polarized country. That is not how Tbilisi’s NGO media sphere works.
Look at the opinion pages of outlets such as JAMnews and Civil.ge. The range is narrow. All their opinion pieces express one general world view: Georgian Dream is the problem. Russia is the villain. The EU and NATO sit on the side of virtue. The recurring dispute is about tactics, speed and messaging inside one general worldview. JAMnews recently ran Georgia-related opinion pieces on the grants law, Georgian foreign policy, the Aliyev–Ivanishvili meeting and Hungary’s election, all from the same general political angle. Civil.ge’s recent op-eds follow the same pattern: criticism of Georgian Dream, criticism of its foreign policy, criticism of its education policy, and platform space for opposition-aligned voices.
It is OK to pump out these pieces, of course. The problem is that when all the opinions carried reflect the same general world view – one that is at odds with the major part of the local population – people have to wonder whether it’s news or advocacy.
Georgian Dream has now held power for nearly 14 years. It has also won repeated electoral support. We may dislike that fact. We may think those voters are mistaken. But a media sphere that claims democratic legitimacy cannot simply go on failing to represent, in any serious way, the worldview that has carried the ruling party to victory time and again.
This matters especially now, when the government’s legal moves against foreign-funded NGOs, including the foreign agents law and the grants law, are defended by Georgian Dream as a way to curb outside influence and let a more homegrown civic sphere develop. Those arguments should be examined, challenged, tested, dissected. But they should also be presented fairly. Too often, NGO media platforms skip that step. They do not engage the logic of the other side. They filter it out.
The failure of some NGO platforms to perform a bona fide role as democratic institutions and reflect all sides of every debate makes it all the harder to justify why we should care when they are targets of legal moves to limit their reach.
