Panel Discussion concludes Media Law Project

Details
Published: January 31, 2020
Moderator Prof. Sergi Jorbenadze (on the left) with judges Prof. Maia Kopaleishvili, Ketevan Meskhishvili, Nino Bakakuri, and Tamar Oniani during the panel discussion
Moderator Prof. Sergi Jorbenadze (on the left) with judges Prof. Maia Kopaleishvili, Ketevan Meskhishvili, Nino Bakakuri, and Tamar Oniani during the panel discussion

On 18 December 2019, a panel discussion was held to sum up the results of the wide-ranging media law project (see below) in Georgia. The project was financed by the German Federal Foreign Office to support the “Expanding Cooperation with Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia”.

The event began with a presentation of the main themes of the project to the audience of experts for discussion. Participating in the event were:

  • judges
  • legal experts
  • journalists and
  • representatives of non-governmental organisations.

The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Sergi Jorbenadze and the panel was made up of four Georgian judges: Prof. Maia Kopaleishvili, a former judge at the Constitutional Court of Georgia, Ketevan Meskhishvili, a judge at the Court of Appeal, Nino Bakakuri, a judge at the Supreme Court, and Tamar Oniani, a judge at the Court of Appeal. They gave some impressive short lectures to share their knowledge and experience with the audience.

They covered the influence of disinformation and the difficulties in many cases to differentiate between disinformation and the right to freedom of speech. The conflict between freedom of expression and the protection of personal rights was also discussed. All the participants expressed the opinion that both issues required further, more in-depth discourse and discussion at national and international level. They explicitly expressed their support for a continuation of measures and exchange of experiences with German colleagues on subjects relating to media law.

Background of the project

Since the highly successful opening conference for the project, which was held on 2 November 2019 in Tbilisi, media representatives have taken part in four workshops on media law. These workshops were organised for media representatives by IRZ in cooperation with the Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani University. The media experts and media representatives addressed the following topics during the workshops:

  • social media
  • data protection
  • media and ethics
  • media and politics

Students following courses in law and journalism also took advantage of a four-day autumn academy on media law, during which German and Georgian experts presented an introduction to European and international media law. The following topics were discussed:

  • primary legislation relevant to the media
  • freedom of the media in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
  • EU secondary legislation in the media sector
  • European Convention on Human Rights
  • competition and antitrust laws
  • copyright law
  • media criminal law
The speakers took the current case law of the European Court of Justice and of the European Court of Human Rights into account in their explanations.