“We truly believe that public service media is part of the solution for the public. We have to make ourselves stronger, to increase the confidence between us and the public,” said Eric Scherer, Chair of the EBU News Committee.

According to Eric Scherer, free, independent and verified information is the key to handling streams of disinformation and war propaganda during a crisis.

“Today the public, agencies, and citizens are overwhelmed by disinformation and propaganda that some social networks produce. It is a complex world. We truly believe that public service media is part of the solution for the public and it is not by chance that, in the European Union, the public service media news are the ones most trusted by the public.

So, this is a very important conference. We have to make ourselves stronger, to increase the confidence between us and the public and we have new challenges. There is for instance Chat GPT, how to adapt to it, how to benefit from it, and be very cautious also, how to cover climate change, wars in Ukraine, in the Middle East or elsewhere. This is our main task,” he said.

According to Eric Scherer, the GPB does “a great job” in ensuring free and independent media for the public and democracy.

“Georgian public Broadcaster is an important member of the European Broadcasting Union. It is doing a great job of being independent, keeping independence from the political sphere. You have an important role to play for the public and democracy,” he said.

The Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) hosts the 18th News Assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on November 22-23.