GEORGIAN MEDIA: COVERING CONFLICT IN ABKHAZIA

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union was accompanied by numerous violent conflicts in some of its former territories, which was simultaneously transformed into armed clashes. Georgia had to face two extremely violent conflicts – in Abkhazia and Ossetia, and our population has still to live with the pain of losses and a great amount of unsolved and, as it seems, unsolvable, problems up today. Newly emerged Georgian media had to cover the hostility within and between ethnic communities, which was further degenerated into war in Abkhazia. The main problem that journalists and their audience faced in that period was that nobody knew, how the issues of this type must be covered: during the Soviet regime, the Communist Party once declared that all the nations in that huge imperia were “brothers†and were equal, nobody dared to point out that thing didn’t go in an ideal way, so there was no culture or experience of reporting on ethnic problems. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of problems emerged in the political and social life of the former Soviet republics; Georgia was among them. Conflicts among “brothers†started and Abkhazia and Ossetia appeared to be the so called “hot pointsâ€.