The Center for Media, Information and Social Research (CMIS) monitors violations of media freedom in Georgia. This report covers the full calendar year of 2024 and the first half of 2025, through the end of June. During this period, CMIS documented 222 media freedom violation alerts, encompassing 459 individual cases; several media representatives and outlets were impacted more than once. The report provides an overview of the state of media freedom in Georgia, highlights key issues and emerging trends, and offers analysis of the types of media freedom violations recorded, and their perpetrators.
According to CMIS’s documented data, mostly independent media professionals were subjected to a wide range of violations, including an increasing number of physical violence, verbal attacks, such as threats, discreditation and intimidation attempts, and the use of legal and bureaucratic mechanisms to target their activities. The legal actions included fining journalists, detentions, arrests, and imprisonment – Mzia Amaglobeli, founder and director of the online publications Batumelebi and Netgazeti, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. Additionally, journalists frequently faced interference with their work in the form of being denied entry into public spaces or events, or being forcibly removed from such venues.
CMIS also observed incidents involving damage to journalists’ equipment and violations of employment rights, among others. CMIS’ monitoring results demonstrate that public protests in 2024 and 2025, and the 2024 parliamentary elections were characterized by the highest concentration and variety of incident types.
Among the identified perpetrators, law-enforcement officers emerged as the primary actors, responsible for the majority of documented violations, followed by administrative bodies and the courts. The document includes a chapter presenting general statistics. The subsequent chapter is dedicated to themes of particular importance during the monitoring period when the incidents occurred.
These include developments surrounding mass public protests; the adoption of repressive legislation by the Georgian Dream-led Parliament; violations observed on the 2024 parliamentary election day; violations of journalists’ right to information during court hearings; harassment and intimidation of media workers; and any other contexts in which physical assault, injury, interference or other incidents limited media workers capacity to perform their duties.
This report has been prepared by the Center for Media, Information and Social Research (CMIS), as part of its project dedicated to monitoring and documenting violations of media freedom in Georgia. The alerts forming the basis of this report can be accessed through the alerts webpage – https://cmis.ge/en/incident/.
