Media Crisis as a Challenge for Democracy - Media Programme Southeast Europe
Event Reports
The "Club of Venice" is a forum of senior communication experts of EU institutions and member state governments. They came together to discuss both political communication and media freedom.
Christian Spahr took part in a panel discussion at the first day of the conference. He explained tendencies in the media landscapes in South East Europe, mentioning issues such as the difficult financial situation of many media outlets and the lack of media freedom. Besides that, he presented results of a KAS survey on trust in the media in Bulgaria and Romania. "Only every sixth Bulgarian and every fourth Romanian believes in the independence of media," Spahr stated.
Further on, he emphasised that Bulgarian journalists often had to deal with pressure of politicians, owners of media outlets and advertisers. Spahr added that internal censorship restrained news coverage of certain people, companies or themes. "Other reasons for the media crisis in Bulgaria are the inadequate framework conditions, amongst others, gaps in the media legislation, a weak self-regulation and a missing solidarity among the journalists," Spahr said. According to him, a vivid debate among media stakeholders concerning common standards, journalistic education in the field of media ethics as well as a professional political communication could improve the political discourse.
