21 March is Georgian Journalism Day, which was jointly established by the Independent Association of Georgian Journalists and Tbilisi State University in 1993. The Georgian Journalism Day was established on March 21, 1819, due to the fact that the first Georgian newspaper - known as "Georgia's Newspaper" and then "Georgian Newspaper", published its first newspaper.
Organization "Young Barristers" is proactively cooperating with the Georgian Media-publications and with the Georgian Journalistic Corps, since 2012. The organization congratulates that day to all journalists who carry out their professional duties in good faith and with high responsibility.
The role of the media is essentially important for the democratic processes, for having the transparency of the Government activities and, therefore, for making the right decisions for the society. For sure, there can be a variety of demonstrations of protecting the journalistic standards, but the professional activities shouldn't flow against the principles of ethical journalism. In the process of ensuring the journalistic ethics in our country, the work of the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics should be positively evaluated, as well as, the principles set out for the ethical journalism and the reactions on them.
Today, the freedom of speech is protected. Georgia has achieved the media-pluralism in the recent years. Based on the Human Freedom Index 2019 Georgia holds 41st out of 162 countries in the world. In the statistics, Georgia has the best ranking results in the Caucasus and the region of central Asia. Georgia's average point on the scale of 0-10 is 7.74. Compared to previous research, Georgia's ranking towards 2017 has slighty improved. in 2016, Georgia was ranked 46th with points of 7.65.
According to "Young Barristers", the Georgian Journalism today has the major challenge in the process of permitting and using the so called "Fake News". The Georgian Judiciary System reviews numerous disputes concerning the compensation of defamatory damages and demanding the rejection of information that humiliates honor, dignity and business reputation. Therefore, in this regard, in is important for them to apply self-regulatory mechanisms and to extend the area of legal responsibilities to all cases.
"Young Barristers" is the only organization, which at the end of each year, specially honors the work of the Journalistic Corps. The organization has established the tradition since 2014, when the honorable role of the professional community and the institutions, which co-operated with the organization in a good faith, is celebrated during the main event of the year. The organization has founded the listed nominations regarding performing professional duties with a high standard: "Protector of the free speech", which is granted to the representatives of TV companies and Media, as well. Moreover, the nominations: "For the balanced and trustworthy information", "Voice of the public" and "Public Society Supporter", is constantly granted to various TV companies, broadcast and publication authors. In the period of 2014-2019, the organization granted "Protector of the free speech" awards to a total of 53 journalists.
