Civil Georgia, Georgia
Aug 20 2005

New Chief of Public TV Speaks of Priorities

Kintsurashvili vows to secure independent
editorial policy of the Public TV.

Tamar Kintsurashvili was elected for a six-year term by the Board
as the Director-General of the Public Broadcasting on August 19.
Appointment of the General Director is a crucial step in establishing
first-ever politically independent, publicly funded broadcaster.

Tamar Kintsurashvili of non-governmental human rights advocacy
organization Liberty Institute was herself member of the Board, but
withdrew membership on August 13 and joined those 23 candidates who
were competing to chair the Public Broadcasting.

Kintsurashvili’s decision was regarded as controversial and most
of the participants of the competition criticized her move as
“unethical.” Opponents claimed that the competition turned into
“formality” immediately after Tamar Kintsurashvili applied to run for
the position. But the new Director-General of the Public Broadcasting
downplays criticism and says that the law did not prohibit her to
participate in the competition.

This was the second competition, as in July the nine-member Board of
the Public Broadcasting declined all the sixteen candidates, citing
contenders’ lack of experience in media management.

Kintsurashvili, 35, worked for the newspaper Droni in 1993-2000 and
served as deputy editor-in-chief. She was a PR manager at the beer
producing company Castel-Georgia in 2001. Since 2001 Kintsurashvili
has led media programs at the Liberty Institute, where as she said,
gained a huge experience in working over the media legislation. Law
on Public Broadcasting was developed by the Liberty Institute.

In an interview with Civil Georgia on August 20, Kintsurashvili
outlined her policy priorities which she plans to carry. She said
that creation of the Public Broadcasting, which will be “a bearer of
the democratic and civil society values” and provider of genuinely
unbiased news and information will be her top priority.

“Strengthening of the news service is of crucial importance. Public
television should at first gain public confidence and it will happen
only after providing unbiased, balanced and genuinely objective
information and news to the society. So at the first stage I plan
to make a major focus on the news service. Only on the next stages
it will be possible to think about other services and programs,”
Kintsurashvili said.

She said that securing independent editorial policy will be crucial
in this regard. “I think that lack of independent editorial policy
is a major problem of the Georgian median organization. Although
legislation is perfect in this respect, but unfortunately this is
not realized in the practice,” Kintsurashvili said.

She thinks that distribution of duties and responsibilities to a
lower managerial level will foster independence of the editorial
policy. “We should delegate certain level of decision-making to
the lower level managers. But it will require highly professional
managers and producers, that is why we should re-train existing staff
in accordance to the international standards,” Kintsurashvili said.

The new Director-General believes that the Public Television has an
advantage and unlike the private television stations, which currently
dominate the Georgian media market (Rustavi 2, Imedi TV, Mze TV)
Public Broadcasting will have more opportunity to establish editorial
independence, as “it is not owned by a tycoon.”

“While private televisions are financed chiefly by tycoons who have
personal interests, the Public TV has a guaranteed financing, currently
up to 17 million Lari [USD 9,4 million]. This is an advantage which
should be utilized,” Kintsurashvili said.

She said that there is “absolute mess” in the issues related with
the television’s finances and property.

“We should immediately carry out inventory of property. It is
impossible now to find out what kind of property the television owns.
According to the documentations quite a large amount of money has
been spent in recent years for upgrading the television’s equipment.
But the reality is that the TV still urgently needs technical upgrade
and no one knows where the money has went,” Kintsurashvili said.

In her brief concept over development of the Public Broadcasting
submitted to the Board for consideration, there is a separate
chapter regarding the role of the public television in the process
of integration of ethnic and religious minorities.

“It is a long-term plan, but I think of creation of local regional
public broadcastings in those regions, which are predominately
populated by ethnic minorities, for example Public Broadcasting in
Samtskhe-Javakheti [Armenian-populated region], Public Broadcasting in
Shida Kartli [Azerbaijani-populated region] and of course these local
regional televisions will operate under the aegis of the Georgian
Public Broadcasting,” Kintsurashvili said.

She says that the covering of upcoming MP by-elections in Georgia’s
five single-mandate constituencies “will be kind of first test” for
her and the Public Broadcasting. “But less than two months remain
before these elections – it is a short period of time = so I can not
guarantee that we will pass this test perfectly,” she added.

Kintsurashvili will take over the office on August 22. She says that
“the public television should become a flagship in the Georgian media
space,” adding that she will immediately quit if fails to implement
her plans.