Children's Rights and Georgian Media

Civic Development Institute, in partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) organized seventh meeting in Poti within the Supporting Ethical and Professional Reporting on Children's Issues in Georgian Media project.

A two-hour discussion which was held with the participation of local journalists, representatives of NGOs working in the field of children's rights and pedagogues had a rather stirring start.

The goal of the project, said Ia Antadze, chairperson of the board of the Civic Development Institute is to support the reporting on children's issues in ethical and highly professional manner.

"We believe children is one of the most complex issues to Georgian media due to two main reasons. Firstly, journalist and editors are not precisely aware of the framework for reporting on children's issues which is based on international best practice on the one hand, and on the other hand it is scattered in the Georgian legislation and codes of ethics. Secondly the society is not involved in the dialogue with media over the issue and does not possess a tool to control the protection of children's rights by media," said Ia Antadze. In the course of the meeting she discussed the Journalism Charter of Ethics and the Broadcasters Code of Conduct thoroughly stipulating the standards for reporting on children's issues.

Maya Kurtsikidze, Communications Officer, UNICEF Georgia says the Georgian media reporting on children's rights is being conducted through the violation of elementary principles.

"Children's identification and making scandalous reports out of their stories is the violation mostly commonly observable in the Georgian media," said Maya Kurtsikidze.

The project experts Ninia Kakabadze and Gogi Gvakharia discussed specific cases that come about in the Georgian TV space. Mostly, they said, children's rights are being violated by national broadcasters. In the course of the meeting the Imedi TV special report on the mother having murdered her child was singled out. Experts and some of the participants of the meeting think the rights of the child as well as the mother were violated since the journalists showed concern in the sensational case instead of the reasons having provoked it. Moreover the TV coverage was provided in a theatricalized way.

The meeting participants were curios to know about the reasons of a recent increase in the frequency of TV reporting on violence against children and how much the audience is concerned into the issue. Gogi Gvakharia, having compared the aforementioned TV stories with an action movie said a greater part of the society is interested in watching them.

The meeting participants agreed there is a need for raising media workers' professional level to secure the coverage of children's issues in adherence to standards. The society should get exigent in regard to media content and object violation of children's rights.

At the second stage of the project, Ia Antadze said, all of the cases of the violation of children's rights in 80 media outlets will be described and publicized. The project will be jointly implemented by UNICEF and Civic Development Institute.

The discussion of the kind is scheduled to be held in three more regions.