Need for a unity became urgent in April 2025, after the law on approval of foreign grants
Originally published on Global Voices
Photo by Slava Taukachou on Unsplash
This article by Elli Kostika is an edited version of a longer piece, first published on June 11, 2026, by the non-profit journalism organization Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD). This excerpt is published on Global Voices, with permission under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Any use of images or charts by third parties requires permission.
As Georgia has dropped to 135th place in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, iMEdD spoke with representatives of four independent media outlets about the challenges facing journalism in the country: imprisonments, attacks, “foreign agent” laws, and the struggle for survival.
Tamar Rukhadze, Deputy Director of Georgian outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, describing the state of Georgia’s press, said:
Ι cannot remember any other period in Georgia’s recent history, since I’ve started as a journalist in 1997, with such a harsh and hostile environment towards journalists, media workers and civil society.
Georgia’s government, led by the Georgian Dream party, has intensified its crackdown on media by adopting a series of restrictive laws aimed at suppressing the country’s independent media. Meanwhile, Georgian journalists have been facing constant threats, from legal challenges to physical attacks.
Georgia’s deteriorating press freedom is part of a broader process of democratic backsliding, with the right to peaceful protest severely restricted, opposition politicians jailed, a decline in judicial independence, and a disputed election in October 2024.
Although Georgia has been an EU candidate country since 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream Party, founded by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, has pivoted the country’s foreign policy towards Russia. However, large segments of Georgia’s population remain pro-EU, and citizens have been protesting for over 500 consecutive days since November 2024, following the contested October 2024 elections and the government’s decision to suspend efforts to advance Georgia’s EU accession process until 2028.
As the struggles of Georgia’s independent journalists have intensified in this increasingly repressive environment, so too has their determination to survive.
A CEO behind bars, yet her colleagues press on
Batumelebi and Netgazeti have paid a heavy price for their independence. The outlets’ co-founder and CEO, Mzia Amaglobeli, was arrested on January 12, 2025, after an altercation with a police chief in Batumi, Georgia’s second-largest city. Following a trial which press freedom groups denounced as politically motivated, Amaglobeli has been sentenced to two years in prison.
In December 2025, the European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She remains detained under deplorable conditions. Her eyesight — already poor before her imprisonment — is now almost completely lost, Rukhadze tells us, while her lawyers spent six months securing permission for her to visit a clinic, as medical facilities within the penitentiary system lack proper equipment.
In an interview with iMEdD, Rukhadze stresses the deep psychological effects Amaglobeli’s sentence has had on the newsrooms. “We aren’t the same as we were earlier before this imprisonment,” adding, “It’s a nightmare for every single journalist to become news.”
Rather than resorting to self-censorship, Batumelebi’s and Netgazeti’s journalists have persisted in their reporting. She highlights:
The first thing Mzia did after her arrest was to send a message from prison, asking her team to continue their work as before — to do what they had always done and what they are known for: professional, ethical watchdog journalism that gives a voice to those who need it most.
Weaponizing the law
Arrests and detainments are only one of the ways the Georgian government uses legislation against the country’s independent media. Nino Bakradze, co-founder and editor-in-chief of iFact, tells iMEdD they have lost 90 percent of their income since May 2025 owing to a series of laws that have restricted the outlet’s access to foreign funding.
Georgian media, civil society organizations, and individuals receiving financial support from abroad are obligated to register as foreign agents under the 2025 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and face criminal liability for noncompliance. When such provisions are combined with the 2025 amendments to the law on grants, which require foreign donors to obtain governmental approval before offering grants to Georgian recipients, the causes for iFact’s financial troubles become clear.
Because foreign grants had been a major source of funding for Georgia’s online media for years, as Rukhadze explains, iFact’s financial situation is far from unique. Batumelebi and Netgazeti are also struggling financially: “It’s not about a bright future or expansion or professional growth or anything. It’s about just survival,” Rukhadze stresses.
In March 2026, access to foreign funding was further restricted when the Georgian parliament adopted new amendments to the law on grants, expanding the definition of a “grant.” In 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream government tried to adopt legislation requiring media and civil society organizations that receive over 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.”
Although mass protests prevented its immediate adoption, the “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence,” commonly known as the “Russian law” due to its perceived similarity to Russia’s “foreign agent” law, was passed in May 2024. Batumelebi and Netgazeti have refused to register as foreign agents, Rukhadze tells us, as have most Georgian independent media.
Amid such restricted legal and political circumstances, the trust between sources and journalists has been disrupted. Georgians are now often reluctant to talk to iFact’s journalists and request to speak under anonymity in fear of consequences, explains Bakradze. There have been cases of people who have lost their jobs or access to social aid after openly criticizing the government, she adds.
Attacks, smear campaigns, and surveillance
Since 2023, watchdogs have recorded 65 cases of physical assault and 83 verbal attacks against Georgian reporters.
Sulkhan Meskhidze, who started working as a journalist in 2010, is no stranger to physical and verbal harassment. Such incidents have intensified in the last five years, he tells iMEdD, highlighting that in nearly half of his in-the-field reporting trips, he becomes the target of attacks.
The most serious attack Meskhidze faced came in February 2025, while he was reporting on the deaths of two kids at a public construction site in an area of Batumi called “Dream City.” A group of people began throwing stones at him and demanding that he leave. According to Meskhidze, the aggressors were local residents and government supporters.
The police were present, Meskhidze says, but did nothing to protect him. Even when he managed to record and publish evidence of such attacks, authorities still remained indifferent.
iFact has recently experienced a different type of attack, in the form of smear campaigns. After the outlet published an investigation regarding how Russian oil continues to move through Georgian ports despite international sanctions, the European Commission decided to put Georgia’s Kulevi port on a potential sanctions list. Following that, in March 2026, pro-government media “labeled us as spies of the British intelligence service,” Bakradze explains.
Physical and digital surveillance presents another challenge for iFact. “A lot of the time we see the state security people around us,” Bakradze says. Their phones are also being surveilled and cyberattacks are common.
Survival tactics: From wine tasting to yoga
Bakradze, who co-founded iFact in 2016, tells iMEdD she would not have decided to establish an outlet today.
When you start the week on Monday, you never know if you’ll last until Friday or not.
Since losing their foreign grant revenue, iFact is now relying entirely on local Georgian-derived income, selling a monthly newsletter on sanctions evasion, while also offering a paid membership, the first outlet in Georgia to do so, she says. Events are another revenue source, with iFact organizing a wine tasting event in May 2026.
What has helped iFact’s reporters cope with stress is making themselves busy and seeing the results of their investigations, Bakradze says, adding that “we do yoga as a team.” Sulkhan Meskhidze worries mostly about the stress his family is facing, who live in constant fear for his wellbeing.
“The lights must stay on”
Georgia’s independent media have forged a collective response in the form of Sinatle Media, a solidarity and sustainability network of 22 online media. As Sinatle’s Chair of the Board and journalist at the investigative outlet Studio Monitor, Teo Kavtaradze tells iMEdD, the need for a united front became increasingly urgent in April 2025, after the law requiring government approval to obtain foreign grants was adopted. Following a lengthy bureaucratic process, Sinatle Media was born in July 2025. The Georgian journalists who spoke to iMEdD all work for media outlets that belong to the network.
In Georgian, Sinatle means “light.” Both the name and the network’s slogan, “The lights must stay on,” were chosen to underscore a shared conviction: “If the lights go out, the truth disappears with them,” Kavtaradze highlights.
One of Sinatle Media’s main functions involves collecting funds that are allocated to its 22 members. Through a series of events, including book fairs, flea markets, and artwork auctions, Sinatle has managed to raise GEL 260,000 (approximately EUR 84,000).
The network also provides cost-sharing services, which proved particularly valuable in December 2025 during a smear campaign against the network. Sinatle Media helped its members secure legal support to counter these allegations.
One of Sinatle’s main achievements, according to Kavtaradze, is that this is “the first case when we [Georgian media] are actually helping each other […] and we are building this solidarity together.”