Kintsurashvili for The Geopost: Law on foreign agents and Russian propaganda are hindering the media in Georgia

The biggest problem facing Georgia today is propaganda, estimates the executive director of “Media Development Foundation Ge”, Tamar Kintsurashvili, adding that the same is in line with Russian propaganda.

In an interview with The Geopost, Kintsurashvili talks about the difficulties of fighting propaganda in Georgia, after the current government introduced the law on foreign agents.

She points out that the independent media face speculation from the Georgian government which tries to portray them as “enemies of the country”, which she says is in line with Russian propaganda which claims that “Moscow is a third Rome and tries to protect them from the perverse west and strange values.”

Full interview:

The Geopost: Tamar, thank you very much for this interview for The Geopost. Can you tell us a little bit about the situation in Georgia? What’s going on, what’s the Russian influence there?

Kintsurashvili: Right now, the greatest challenge for Georgia is domestic homegrown propaganda, which is in line with Russian disinformation. Recently, our government introduced a new law, foreign agent law, which makes our work more complicated. We are monitoring the discourse in Georgian language, Russian language, and we can see many similarities, especially after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. There is a change in terms of threat perception from the point of view of our government. We had the security threat document clearly highlighting that Russia’s invasion in Georgia is a main security challenge for the country. Unfortunately, government classified this open document, but in public discourse they are accusing U.S., EU, Ukraine, and other Western partners in dragging Georgia into the war and they’re weaponizing fear of war in order to consolidate public support and deliver their propaganda message saying that we are only government who ensures peace in this country, and when you listen on a daily basis the news about fear of war, you are scared and its natural fears.

So, another topic is related to work of non-government organizations and independent media. Government tries to present us as enemies of the country who are destroying traditional values and identity. This is also in line with Russian propaganda which speculates that Moscow is a third Rome and who tries to protect us from pervert West and strange values. An Orthodox Church plays a crucial role and weaponization of religion is another issue how Kremlin tries to achieve their goal to manipulate with human feelings and identity and of course fear of losing identity is a natural fear like in case of weaponization of the peer support. But actually it’s not about the protection of identity because we remember from Soviet time how Soviet Union and Russia was fighting against religion, changing the ownership of churches and saying that God is enemy of the people and replacing religion with communist ideology. It’s not about protection of identity, rather than about geopolitical aim of the Russia not to have a country near its border which is a part of European, Euro-Atlantic family.

The Geopost: And what is your strategy for journalists and NGOs and civil society for fighting this propaganda and disinformation and to tell the Western democracy what’s really going on?

Kintsurashvili: First of all, we run fact-checking platform which operates on daily basis. We have partnership with Meta, we label false content on Meta’s platform which reduces distribution of lies. We run media literacy programs, because it’s impossible to address every lie spread by different actors. It’s better to inform public and equip them with tools how to differentiate false content from trustful news and how to filter this harmful information in their minds. So, we work with youth, we work with teachers, and another way is mapping hostile actors because when we talk about disinformation, we have biased media outlets, of course, we know who stands behind them and it’s part of plurality, but we need to know more about the hostile actors who act in a hidden way and that’s why we are analyzing this course and who are spreading this propaganda messages because it’s not always factual, sometimes the narratives are framed in the way that they are harmful for society and we inform public about the messages, about intention, about political agenda of internal and external hostile actors and about connections between them.

The Geopost: A lot of influence in media and spreading disinformation in Balkans is coming from Russia, what is your message for us in the Balkans?

Kintsurashvili: Trustful information is essential for democratic societies and protection of the information space from external actors because what Russia tries to achieve using this emotional topic that of course is related to our identity. Their goal is to achieve political influence and to have sphere of influence, not to the prosperity of the people, not human rights protection and only space where we can feel ourselves independent is Western civilization. So that’s why in order to survive in this hostile environment, we should protect our values and defend democracy.

/The Geopost