On July 1, the Charter of Journalistic Ethics and Memo 98, an international nongovernmental organization (Slovakia), will launch media monitoring during the pre-election campaign. The support for the project will be provided by the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF).
For the period of four months the Charter of Journalistic Ethics and Memo 98 will observer the adherence to the principles of journalism ethics and those professional standards that all journalists are expected to meet during the coverage of respective developments. Six media monitors selected through competition will observe 11 TV companies, including four regional TV companies, during the prime time (from 19:00 to 24:00). They will focus on applying the principles set by the Code of Professional Conduct.
‘This project is not the only one that calls for media monitoring in the pre-election period, but it focuses on content analysis rather than quantitative indicators. As part of the project evening programs of 11 Georgian channels will be observed to make content analysis and check its compliance with journalism ethics, in particular, the Code of Conduct for Broadcasters’, says Khatia Jinjikhadze, the OSGF Media Program Manager.
Memo 98 is a Slovak-based media watch-dog NGO with 13 years’ experience of working in the sphere. It has conducted media monitoring in 35 countries of the world, including Georgia. The aim of Memo 98 is to observe the coverage of developments by the media in the pre-election period and the adherence to the principles of delivering information to voters.
Ivan Godansky, a Memo 98 representative and Media Monitoring Project expert: “As a rule, we always observe the adherence to three key principles: the impartiality of information delivered to the voter, the freedom of an election subject when providing information to the mass media and the independence of media outlets. We also find important whether all media outlets have equal access to the information provided by election subjects, whether any party shows a bias in favour of any media outlet etc.”