The head of the KAS Media Program South East Europe, Christian Spahr, explains the possible causes for this crisis of confidence in Bulgarian media in an interview for the German radio show "Medienmagazin" of the public broadcaster Radio Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) on 8th February 2015.

One possible reason for the scepticism is the lack of dialogue between the different media stakeholders, according to Spahr. "Politicians, media owners and journalists talk about each other rather than with each other, and besides that, do not dare to demand anything that the other side could possibly comment negatively," says the head of the Media Program South East Europe. "Together with other NGOs, we would like to re-launch this dialogue." Furthermore, Spahr uttered the hope that the new Bulgarian government would create a better legal framework for the media.

Dr. Orlin Spassov, head of the Foundation Media Democracy (FMD) and a cooperation partner of KAS, also commented on the media situation: "The media suffer from a strong dependency of politics, economy and state administration. A lot of NGOs mention this kind of criticism. We do not just present our subjective evaluation of the media situation." Moreover, Spassov explained why especially the print media perform poor in the current study: "The print media has a bad reputation in Bulgaria. They allied too much with the politics." Also for this reason, the Bulgarian citizens trust the television more than the print media outlets. According to Spassov, the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) is relatively independent, indeed critical and a role model for other electronic media.

Questioned how KAS is improving the situation of the media in the region, Spahr explained that the Media Program South East Europe is offering training courses for journalists and other media representatives, especially concentrating on the topics of investigative journalism and European integration. "Furthermore, the KAS Media Program organises conferences where media experts have the opportunity to discuss openly and intensively solutions for improvements of the media situation," he adds.

Spahr continues: "Moreover, we would like to extend our activities in the area of political communication. We deeply believe that not only good journalists are needed to make politics more transparent, but also professional communicators in the politics." Politicians and their staff need to improve their communication of political events. The region still suffers from a backlog of a professional understanding of political communication. Values as transparency and citizen-inspired thinking should be lived more effectively. To strengthen these values and to improve the exchange within the sector, the KAS Media Program co-founded SEECOM, a professional association for government spokespersons. "We would like to support the understanding of modern political communication in South East Europe," says Spahr.

The complete interview is available here. Another version was broadcasted on Deutschlandfunk on 14th February 2015.

More information about the studies are available here and here.