A Tbilisi court has ordered the Georgian television channel Formula to pay a prominent film director 10,000 lari (£2,900; $3,810) after upholding a defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster.
The lawsuit, filed by filmmaker Goga Khaindrava, concerned an investigative report aired in January 2024 on the channel’s Saturday Formula programme.
The broadcast alleged that Khaindrava had run a corruption scheme, helping foreign nationals enter Georgia illegally in exchange for payment.
The Tbilisi City Court ruled entirely in Khaindrava’s favour, ordering Formula to retract the claims and pay compensation for moral damages.
The broadcaster’s lawyer, Eto Katamadze, called the ruling unfounded and said the channel would appeal.
“We believe that free and responsible journalism should not be punished in this country,” Katamadze said, adding that Formula would exhaust all domestic legal routes before potentially taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The disputed report is also the subject of a separate criminal investigation into an alleged false accusation, launched by Georgia’s Prosecutor’s Office on 16 June 2026.
Several of the programme’s staff, including presenter Davit Kashiashvili, reporter Natuka Lomadze, and cameraman Misho Markashvili, have already been questioned.
Katamadze argued that the court had issued its ruling before state investigators had finished verifying whether the report’s claims were true.
“It is for the competent investigative authorities to determine that, and journalists should not be held liable for carrying out their primary duty — reporting information,” she said.
The ruling comes amid growing international concern over media freedom in the South Caucasus nation.
According to the 2026 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Georgia fell to 135th place out of 180 countries, down from 114th in the previous ranking.