The Mtavari Channel case and the unprecedented fine - GDI appeals to the Court as a Friend of the Court
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"The Georgian Democratic Initiative (GDI) is appealing to the Tbilisi City Court as a friend of the court in the Mtavari Channel case.
The case involves the unprecedented sanction the National Communications Commission imposed on independent and critical media outlets for three commercials:
GDI believes that the Georgia National Communications Commission qualified the videos presented as "political advertising," ignoring the basic elements of that concept and based on an arbitrary interpretation of international practice.
Also, the disputed clips do not contain elements of the concept of "political advertising" due to their content, and in fact it would be more reasonable to "qualify them as 'social advertising,'" GDI said in a statement.
As a reminder, a fine of GEL 111,903.43 was imposed on the Mtavari Channel by the Commission on November 25, 2021. The regulator decided that the videos were political advertisements and that their broadcasting between elections was illegal.
We are talking about three videos - two of them are related to the imprisoned Mikheil Saakashvili, which show statements/pictures of various state officials, and at the end the word "kills" is heard and calls: "Let Mikheil Saakashvili go", "Say no to murderers", "#Freedom".
The third is a video produced by Shame, in which Russian President Putin's face is superimposed with photos of members of the Georgian Dream party and "Shame" is written.
