Journalists and producers are face an ongoing dilemma that on the one hand, they have to respect privacy but on the other, they need to offer materials of high interest.
To explore this perpetual dilemma, a two-day workshop in late May was held for producers, media managers and journalists, in which the follow topics were debated: Where is the borderline between the freedom of expression, journalistic ethics and the respect of privacy? How is the journalist supposed to protect the presumption of innocence when reporting? What is the local and international court practice regarding suits filed against the media? The course was run by Lasha Kalandadze and Ketevan Meskhishvili, judges of the Appeals Court.
More than 15 media representatives attended the training course.
Participants’ thoughts about training:
Sopho Zurabiani, Maestro TV news producer about the training course:
‘I would like to say that this workshop really met my expectation; as a rule I have an expectation that the workshop organized by you is always interesting, but in this case it was particularly interesting, because the media along with the right to freedom of speech and expression has responsibility and there is somewhere a borderline between this freedom and law, and we have been introduced to very good international examples about this borderline at the workshop, which is essential and rather useful in practical activities either. The freedom of speech and expression is one of the key human rights but when the law is broken the freedom of speech is also restricted. These are very rare cases, and the experience of international court has showed that the European Court of Human Rights is always on the side of the media. Although the examples we had heard about were rather interesting and useful for practical activities, thank you!’
Keti Gigashvili, a journalist of Monitor, a studio of investigative journalism, talks about the training course
Journalists everyday have to deal with the topics like human rights, legislation, decisions, therefore conversation with judges and discussion with them based on concrete cases as to where is the borderline between the responsibility and duties was rather interesting. Because there are frequent cases that when you work on health care issues, child issues, legislation, and on a case, where a suspect has not been yet found guilty, there is often a big risk that you will make a mistake, not on purpose, but because you do not know, you just are not aware that by doing this specific thing you make a mistake. Therefore such meetings are rather interesting and productive, I think. I found particularly interesting specific information provided about redacted information. In the investigative journalism, first names and family names are often redacted in the information you get while working on a topic. I have found that you may identify…
Lasha Kalandadze, a trainer, evaluating the training course:
The training course was maximally focused on both delivering theoretical information and developing practical skills. As part of the training course, we basically considered not only Georgian law, but international legislation in the field, as well as the Georgian court practice, including the Strasbourg Court practice. Generally, they were given an opportunity to get more information about the freedom of opinion and expression. By the way it was rather interesting to consider freedom of opinion and expression in terms of health care and both Georgia and the Strasbourg Court have this kind of practice. And I think that they should be satisfied because it is very good when you know more or less what the court thought about some cases, both in Georgia and Strasbourg. Therefore they will maximally try to take this into account to some extent in their professional activities.
