Every second journalist bewails pressure from politics and economy - Media Programme Southeast Europe
Event Reports
52 percent of Bulgarian journalists think that the people in power influence their media. Political pressure has increased, suggests a new study of the "Reporter" foundation and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), which was presented on 5 November in the context of a press conference in Sofia. While journalists most often suffer from political pressure, media owners mostly find themselves under pressure from advertising clients, so the media experts and authors of the analysis Krum Blagov and Dr. Orlin Spassov. Besides them, Dr. Marco Arndt, head of the KAS country office Bulgaria and Christian Spahr, head of the KAS Media Program South East Europe spoke at the press conference.
The topic is volatile, the interest in it accordingly high: around eighty journalists and other Sofian citizens showed up on 5 November at the presentation of the new study of the Bulgarian media experts Krum Blagov and Dr. Orlin Spassov, who examined the influences of media owners, politicians and advertising clients on Bulgarian media. The press conference also experienced great attention, because there has been no systematic research on independence of Bulgarian media until now. "We are closing this gap with the study of Krum Blagov and Dr. Orlin Spassov", said Christian Spahr, head of the Media Program South East Europe of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, at the press conference last Wednesday in Sofia. Experts are already criticizing the shortfall of independence of Bulgarian media for a long time; now there also exists a systematic survey on this topic. Hundred journalists and fifteen media owners and media managers were interviewed by Krum Blagov from "Reporter" foundation and Dr. Orlin Spassov from Sofia University – forty media with national and regional distribution, from newspapers to electronic media, were analysed. The study confirms what many people already assumed: politicians and advertisement clients as well as media owners interfere into the work of Bulgarian journalists on a regular basis. "Many Bulgarian journalists do not consider their work independent," the authors outlined at the presentation of the study, which was now published as a book in Bulgarian, German and English language. "The reporting is not enough protected from external influences."
Every third journalists feels an increasing pressure from politics, only every sixth an improvement over the last years. While journalists lament influence of politicians more strongly, media owners feel under pressure especially by advertising clients. Every fourth reporter or editor states that some of his texts have been prevented from publishing. All in all, around 30 percent of editors and reporters state, that in their media it is only possible to report with a certain tendency about specific topics, persons or companies. This more or less matches the view of the owners. "Media strongly get themselves into an unofficial censorship," said Christian Spahr. "Reasons are the difficult economic situation in the sector, but also a missing consensus on the tasks of media in a democracy."
In their scientific research, Blagov and Spassov classify different kinds of media owners, detect corruption practices and outline big changes on the Bulgarian media market over the past years. The authors found that the overwhelming majority of media makes financial losses. That's why the question arises who is compensating those losses and if independent reporting and financial dependence are possible at all. In this context, Spahr commented on best-practice examples of independent financial models in the neighboring countries – Serbia and Romania.
Finally, the authors of the study make nine recommendations for better framework conditions in the media sector. Among others, the equal access of all media to information and sales should be regulated in a better way. The state as an advertising client should be more transparent as well as the economical situation of media, especially print media. There should be a requirement to label advertising articles in print media. Moreover, the experts ask for a political debate about the restriction of ownership concentration in individual media sectors. Following the presentation of the study, Doz. Dr. Georgi Lozanov, chairman of the council for electronic media (SEM), and Ognian Zlatev, representative of the EU-commission in Bulgaria, discussed with the journalists. The experts agreed, that an urgent call for action is needed – also according to the worldwide index of press freedom, in which Bulgaria occupies the 100th place.
Editorial contribution: Franziska Türk
