Georgia’s Media Muckrakers

Op-Ed

Euphemistically speaking, muck-raking is investigative journalism, something which has become very trendy in Georgia of late. We haven’t invented anything new in journalism, especially in television journalism, in the last 30 years: our TV startups of the bygone 80s and 90s just made carbon copies of Western electronic media, be it talk show, sitcom, soap opera, reality, action, hard talk, or the style and content of news presentation, except sports, of course – this genre is still lingering in soviet era dullness and ennui, with glum-faced, languid and morose anchors appearing on screen several times a day.

The modus operandi of muck-rakers (let’s conventionally call them the reform-minded braves of mass media) contains attacks on recognized institutions and well-known personalities. Although they have wide audiences of watchers or listeners, their work still leaves a certain amount of doubt and suspicion to digest post factum. The prerequisite for the inception and further burgeoning of muck-raking, an attribute of the post-soviet era, included accelerated public activism and an inevitable social, political, economic and environmental reform severely, but not very methodically, executed across the entire territory of the former USSR, including Georgia, with the intention of making drastic alterations to soviet political culture and social life.

The most scrumptious quarry for a muck-raker happens to be a governmental officeholder caught in some crooked move, constituting political corruption of a considerable caliber and tightly intertwined with the alleged crook’s official obligations. But a talented and experienced muck-raker has the professional skill to make something out of nothing, thus blowing the subject of investigation out of proportion, especially if the job is done by an investigative journalist in favor of a certain political party.

Democracy, whether direct or representative, is a real haven for muck-rakers because they feel free to pounce on any potential victim with ease and a clear conscience, using verbal manipulation and making conclusions effortlessly. But muck-rakers try not to lie too flagrantly; they have their own ways of obfuscating the reality so cunningly and dexterously that a regular naïve watcher or listener has no way to discern the difference between the stretch and the genuine fact.

Muck-raking is an organic part of the political machine. Actually, without a political machine running at full capacity, a muck-raker becomes ineffective as a journalist because the muck-raking ideas and attitudes are generated in the process of fulltime operation of said political machine. For the sake of saving his or her thick skin, a muck-raker, especially in an evolving political culture like ours, needs some upper-hand patronage to prop up the talent financially, give the necessary encouragement and to support ideologically.

On the other hand, rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's, I am ready to admit that there are investigative journalists out there who are utterly independent, doing their job very honestly and serving the purpose to the best advantage of the nation, but nobody on earth has counted the number of good guys and bad guys in the muck-raking echelons of ladies and gentlemen of the press.

One of the reasons for the proliferation of muck-raking might very well be the deplorable practice of giving privilege to the unwelcome ‘spoils system’ in politics, providing jobs to buffs, friends and relatives over the laudable ‘merit system’ which guarantees employment based on the ability to deliver a quality job rather than using political connections. What does muck-raking have to do with this? The involvement is direct: honest professionals are less prone to go corrupt compared to the cadres who have sneaked into their cushy jobs with the help of powerful big bugs protecting their protégés’ vulnerable souls and bodies. Muck-rakers know for months and even years in advance what animals their potential prey might be, and they work on their sneaky projects with diligence and deliberation. They sure do, because they are regular humans who want to be fed and clad as anybody else in our sinful world.

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze

Image source: thinglink.com