Five mistakes of Georgia reporting

This post was inspired by Five Worst Clichés of Russia Reporting.

For past couple of years Georgia is in western media almost every week, if not many times a week. Most of the coverage is about Georgia’s reforms, its food & wines, Georgia as a tourism destination, 2008 Georgia-Russia War, etc. and etc. Those articles later appear in local media: “Another article on Georgian reforms in NYTimes” or “Financial Times about Georgia’s economic growth.” And of course all of this coverage makes Georgians happy just like any other mention on web, for example this:

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Tbilisi Hangout 011

In the eleventh edition of Tbilisi Hangout Mirian Jugheli, Nick Clayton and Mathias Huter of Transparency International Georgia talk about Georgian media, net freedom, “cohabitation”, ownership transparency, February 8 National Library Incident, etc.

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Google Voice lists Abkhazia as Russia

Whenever you’re abroad for a long time you look for different ways to contact your family every once in a while (Skype, landline, etc.). A Georgian friend of mine who lives in Bulgaria wanted to call home and he decided to use Google Voice (A telecommunication service from Google). But before doing so he checked call rates. By doing this he suddenly discovered that Google Voice lists Abkhazia as one of the rates for calling Russia.

In addition to this strange fact it turns out that the fee for Abkhazia is the highest in the list. I decided to write Google Voice and ask them why do they list Abkhazia as an option for Russia. I am waiting for their answer and as soon as they reply I’ll post it here.

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Death Rate in Georgian Prisons [INFOGRAPHIC]

JumpStart Georgia, an NGO which applies open-source technologies to open up public data has launched a new project called Feradi.info.

Feradi.info is a collection of news and data that is brought to you visually; The website calls all interested individuals to share their own visuals or ideas. So far JumpStart has posted two infographics about the death rate in Georgian penitentiary system. Information is based on an annual report presented by the Public Defender’s office of Georgia. According to the data 653 inmates died in the period 2006-2011, 1/3 of them because of tuberculosis.

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Tbilisi Hangout: Live talk on all things related to Georgia

Starting from November 28, Every Wednesday at 20:00 (Tbilisi time) me and Nicholas Clayton will talk about current affairs of Georgia on Google Hangout. The live webcast is called Tbilisi Hangout and it is about politics, society, sports and whatever nonsense we find interesting. We are trying to make it as interactive as possible, hence you can ask questions or leave comments, decide what you would like to hear next week and also join us with your web camera. Occasionally we will be coming live from various locations like bars, offices, streets, etc. You can subscribe to this YouTube channel in order to be updated about upcoming hangouts.

Here’s the first Tbilisi Hangout. In this episode we talk about anti-Ivansivhili articles in western media, global amnesty, mandatory ID cards, Georgia rugby, etc. let us know what you think.

 

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Georgia: Netizens react to the Saakashvili-Ivanishvili Meeting

The President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and the leader of Georgian Dream coalition Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is set to become the Prime Minister of the country, met on October 9 at the presidential palace. The meeting, that was also attended by representatives of the current government and Georgian Dream coalition, lasted for about 35 minutes after which both Saakashvili and Ivanishvili gave commentaries to public. After the first images were out, Georgians on Facebook began to react. Some of them claimed that Ivanishvili looked mad, some wrote that Saakashvili looked sad, others said that the meeting looked like El Clasico (A football match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona), etc.

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A few words about the post election period in Georgia

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