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Owner Hands Over Maestro TV Supervision to Journalists

Mamuka Glonti, the founder and owner of a small Tbilisi-based television station, Maestro, said on October 23 he was handing over supervision of the station to a group of journalists to secure its independent editorial policy.

Maestro TV, which goes out on cable, plans to resume political programming by the end of November, as soon as a formal deal on the matter is reached with the communication regulatory commission (GNCC) in the Court of Appeals this week. The television station has been in a dispute with GNCC over a political programming license for over six months. The dispute has been resolved as a result of a deal negotiated with the mediation of the Anti-Crisis Council.

“A seven-member board of journalists will now be in charge of the television station and I will only be an executor of the decisions of the board,” Glonti said on a Tbilisi-based Kavkasia TV daily talk-show late Thursday evening, October 23.

The board will include Ia Antadze; Zviad Koridze; Tamar Chikovani; Aleko Elisashvili; Nino Zhizhilashvili; Lasha Tugushi – all journalists and Natia Imnadze, who works for the Georgian Public Defender’s Office.

“As an additional guarantee of independence, we will have a legally binding contract barring the founder from any type of interference in the television station’s editorial policy; it will be purely up to the board,” Glonti said.

Ia Antadze, a respected commentator and journalist, said on the same program on Kavkasia TV that she had experiance of working with Glonti (she was one of the hosts of a talk-show on Maestro TV, before the station had to suspend political programming in April) and “I am sure that he will stand by his commitment and will not interfere.”

Lasha Tugushi, the editor-in-chief of the daily Rezonansi said on the show that the board members would work on a voluntary basis.

Tamar Chikovani, who formerly worked for the RFE/RL Georgian service, will be chairperson of the board. She said that board membership would rotate and other journalists would replace existing members after an unspecified period of time.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)

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