Imedi Facebook Page Advertising Kakhi Kaladze’s Election Promises
On August 16, 2017, the news webpage of TV Imedi – imedinews.ge published an article, titled “Kakhi Kaladze proposed an initiative to reconstruct the Tbilisi Dendrological Park”. The same article has been published on Imedi Facebook page as a sponsored post. Materials prepared about other political subjects, concerning the election initiatives of the candidates, were not sponsored by the given media outlet in August.
Which criteria does the editorial board choose sponsored materials and why the other political subjects were not present in the advertising category? – we addressed TV Imedi with this question. They refused to give a video commentary. However, the Head of Imedi’s Social Media Office, Giorgi Koroglishvili provided the following written response to the question:
Giorgi Koroglishvili, the Head of Social Media Office at Imedi: “We have verified it and the given material definitely has not been sponsored by us. While advertising materials, we try to offer issues from various categories to the readers and none of the particular directions is not emphasized.”
After this response, we verified the given material once again on Imedi Facebook page and the material about Kakhi Kaladze could not be found anymore. However, the photo attached to the article as a screenshot, proves that the article has been sponsored indeed.
The sponsored article came with a video message of the candidate for mayor from the Georgian Dream, Kakhi Kaladze, who shared it on his Facebook page on August 16. The video concerned the initiative of the election candidate of the Georgian Dream and the reconstruction of Tbilisi Dendrological Park.
ISFED has also spoken up on the issue of advertising political subjects on Facebook. According to Nino Rizhamadze, regulation of social media is a pre-election challenge. As she explained, the fact of Imedi sponsoring the candidate for mayor of the Georgian Dream, Kakhi Kaladze, is an advertisement of an electoral subject and, according to the Law on Elections, Imedi should have sponsored materials prepared on other subjects as well.
Prepared by Nika Gurini
Myth Detector Lab
