KAS MP SOE

Many newspapers show leading politicians around prime minister Borisov in very positiv light, single other publications on the other side, in quite a negative one. There are only few differentiated positions in the middle, showed a long-term-study of important print media. Political parties on the whole enjoy less popularity than their high level staff. „Especially in an year of elections public relations and communication are very important for each political party, in order to explain its goals and agenda to the people “, said the head of the KAS Media Program South East Europe, Christian Spahr.

Politicians tend to be much more often covered as personalities. In the same time important political content seems to be pushed in the background. It looks as if there is almost no space for politics in tabloid press, which enjoys big popularity. Traditional newspapers have restricted possibilities to invest in complex journalistic content, due to the widespread economical difficulties they have been experiencing lately. Investigative journalism is rare. „There is a trend in standardization of media coverage“, said Orlin Spasov, head of the researcher team.

The difficult conditions for quality journalism go together with a trend of ownership concentration. Media experts and foreign ambassadors expressed their concerns about this. According to assessments of observers an approximate monopol in the print media market is possible. „There are too many media outlets for this quite limited market, which favours a further consolidation“, explained Christian Spahr. „But in order to assert themselves against the internet, the only thing that could help print media in the long term is pluralism and quality.“ Blogs and social media already managed to influence important political decisions in 2012.

Bulgaria does not yet have a print media law, which could define journalist’s labour rights and and economical transparency for the media business in detail. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung is in a dialogue about this topic with journalists, media organisations and politicians. In 2012 there was a debate illustrated by the press law of the German province Brandenburg. „The goal is to reach long term guarantees for a free and pluralistic media landscape“, said the head of the Media program, Christian Spahr. Parallel to its range of further education activities for journalists of the region, KAS is going to continue its efforts to support this discussion about a framework for quality journalism.