On October 4, 2025, the day of the local self-government elections (which were boycotted by a large part of the pro-Western opposition and the public), the Chairman of the Georgian Dream Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, called some of the information disseminated by TV Pirveli from the polling stations “funny and curious” and referred to the TV company as “Khazaradze’s TV.”

“Today, all day long, Khazaradze’s TV, TV Pirveli, has been trying to stir up scandals, although I think they are making a mockery of themselves,” Shalva Papuashvili said at a special briefing. He then listed several TV Pirveli stories from the polling stations, which, in his opinion, were just funny. Among these materials were a table at a polling station and the alleged case of bribery. “I don’t know if Khazaradze is feeding his journalists now,” Papuashvili added, noting that there is nothing strange about someone taking care of feeding the election administration. After discussing the alleged bribery case, he said again: “Here, Khazaradze has sunk to such a level that not only did he violate journalistic ethics for all members of his television, but there are now funny curiosities in general” (timecode 5:52–8:16).

As a reminder, on October 4, a number of independent media outlets became targets of Shalva Papuashvili’s attacks for spreading information related to election violations. Among them were TOK2regions and Publika. More broadly, recently, Shalva Papuashvili’s attacks on the media and efforts to discredit them have become a worrying trend.