The Report of “Reporters Without Borders” on the state of the media environment in Bulgaria, presented last week, reflects stability. Pessimistic – we have not climbed a single point higher than last year’s ranking, which anchored us at 111-th place (out of 180 possible) after Ethiopia.
Optimistic – we have not fallen lower than Mali, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Gabon, how the trend of the last few rankings had shown.
The third point of view is that of the realist
Twelve years after Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union the state of media and the journalism in our contry is realy sad. But the position between Ethiopia and Mali is a metaphor rather than a realistic position. It is an expression of our criminal self-esteem because of the failure we experienced. The methodology used by “Reporters Without Borders” takes into account, through surveys, the opinion of civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, active and former journalists about the place they think the media in Bulgaria deserve and the one with which they have to reconcile with. This brings noise in the picture, but even without it the picture does not turn pinker.
The ascertainment of “Reporters Without Borders” that „the government continues to distribute EU funds to the media in complete non-transparency“ is an indisputable fact. Also, in this way media are „bribed not to criticize the authorities, or to completely refrain from covering certain problematic topics.“
However, what “Reporters Without Borders” assess is just
the tip of the iceberg
There are 265 municipalities in Bulgaria. For years, without suffering any sanctions, they finance the activities of private print, electronic and online media through their budgets with public funds. In most cases, the amount of payments received fully covers the media alimony.
The lack of any regulation puts this type of relationship out of control. Turns them into something like state-tolerated smuggling with influence and dependencies, in
accounted media corruption,
in providing corridors for their uncriticality.
Thus for example, at the beginning of this (election) year, Varna provided BGN 200,000 for a similar type of partnership with eight media, including two of the most powerful newspaper groups in the country. This amount does not include payments under advertising contracts of municipal companies or items for publicity on European projects. With them, the money allocated from the budget of the third largest city in the country will certainly be several times more than last year.
The only effort beneficiaries had to make was to send letters to the local administration with estimated proposal for a „media partnership“. But also to assume, albeit in different versions, the commitment formulated in one of the letters as follows:
„to create and affirm a positive attitude
in the citizens of Varna to the work of the municipal council and the municipal administration“. Again due to the lack of regulation and control, the municipal administrations show in full their ingenuity in imposing total control over the media.
Thus for example, only a few days ago, a jury composed only of officials in the mayor’s administration selected the director of the municipal television in Shumen. However, this TV is registered in the electronic media council with the status of a public media.
Recently, the local administration in Blagoevgrad founded a trade company, which, among other things, is charged with media, advertising and PR partnerships. Thus, payments for the purchase of media influence and comfort were disguised as a commercial activity in order to make it difficult to follow them under the current legislation on access to public information.
The municipal administration in Stara Zagora has never denied paying for media services, but for four years in a row has refused to provide financial information about these relations, although it is obliged to do so.
In complete contrast to this gray secrecy, three full-time employees of the Gabrovo municipality turned out to be journalists in a private radio station. There, they host a show paid for with public funds.
All this has a clear financial expression.
According to data of 2016 , 10 randomly selected municipalities in the country had spent about
BGN 2.5 mln for purchasing of media influence
This makes about BGN 250,000 per year for a local administration, regardless of whether it is Burgas, Shumen or Montana.
Let’s multiply this cost by 265, i.e. the number of municipalities in Bulgaria. Whatever the stipulations, clarifications and doubts to which the result is subject, its value is significant enough not to allow it to be ignored. And the current data from Varna show that for the last four years the amounts have swelled significantly. But another analysis is more important – about
how relentless media corruption ruthlessly ruins
It first destroys communication between citizens and those to whom they have delegated the right to govern on their behalf. And while in large cities, albeit sporadically, critical journalism finds a loophole through which to shout, in the completely compromised media environment of smaller cities, the resistance is an excessively high-risk cause.
The corrupting of media and journalists decomposes the DNA of political pluralism and degenerates it into its complete opposite. This is also the reason why the results of local elections in the country periodically raise the growth of political humunculus in local municipal councils. In their secret conspiracies, competition of ideas has been replaced by cartel agreements for the implementation of public procurement, which no one ever investigates.
Media corruption inflicts
heavy blows to business and private initiative
The public resource lent for the production of controlled editorial content is most often returned to the creditor through the favoring of an „inner circle“ of companies and the unscrupulous compromising of their competitors.
Go to anyone of the thousands of sites targeted to a limited local audience in the country and look for information about its publisher. You will not find such information, because almost without exception these are people involved directly or undercover in local government. Through their sites, they clear their accounts or their path. In the meantime, they actively participate in the allocation of each budget for publicity on projects with European funding of local administrations.
To make the absurd complete,
it is this part of the online media in the country that provides a route for the most ridiculous and low-profile anti-European, anti-Atlantic and xenophobic propaganda.
All this remains outside the reports of “Reporters Without Borders”. But the important thing is that every year they bring us back to the topic of the state of the media environment in Bulgaria. They are becoming something of a monitoring and control mechanism, the termination of which cannot be negotiated politically. That is why the only option for solving the problems – legislation that once and for all will stop the uncontrolled flow of public resources to private media, cannot be postponed indefinitely.
But smugglers are not lawmakers. Thus, salvation is again in the hands of the surviving segment of the Bulgarian media, which continue to work according to the rules of honest and responsible journalism. It remains for them to do the impossible – like Baron Munchausen to pull themselves by their own hair.
