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In Georgia, since a new party took power in 2024, founded by a billionaire oligarch with links to Russia, journalists are facing unprecedented attacks. All sorts of repression have become more common: physical assaults, arrests, arbitrary fines, suspensions of accreditation, and more. But perhaps the most devastating blow was less direct. After the government clamped down on all foreign funding and grants to Georgian organizations, citing them as examples of malign foreign interference, many independent media outlets lost as much as 90 percent of their budgets.
Now journalists in Georgia are fighting back. In August of 2025, more than twenty online media outlets launched The Lights Must Stay On, a campaign to raise awareness of their collective struggle against authoritarianism. The effort gave rise to a new network, Sinatle Media, with a simple objective: to keep independent media in Georgia alive. It is based on the recognition that this can only happen when journalists work together.
In this episode of Journalism 2050, recorded live at Zeg, a storytelling festival in Tbilisi, cohosts Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin speak with two members of Sinatle Media: Lika Antadze, an executive director of Chai Khana, which gives a voice to underrepresented groups in the region; and Nino Bakradze, the editor and cofounder of iFact, an investigative media collective. What have they learned from their shared fight against a despotic regime? How do the precarious economics of journalism today make it more vulnerable to political attacks? And why did a flea market, of all things, fill them with hope?
Credits:
Producer: Sarah Myles
Research: Samuel Earle
Production Assistant: Hana Joy
Art: Katie Kosma
Music: Henry Crooks
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