AEJ-Bulgaria Worked on Three Main Projects During 2013

AEJ, Bulgaria

Report 2013

AEJ-Bulgaria worked on three main projects during 2013:

1. Survey on media freedom, implemented with the support of the American embassy in Bulgaria;
2. Balkan journalists' meeting, with the support of the Council of Europe;
3. AEJ-Bulgaria participated also in a project leaded by the FYROM OSF concerning the connection between the young people and the media.

During this year AEJ-Bulgaria continued to monitor and react to the media problems in Bulgaria issuing regulary positions when the journalistic ethic and the law were broken by press articles, radio and TV programme.

AEJ-Bulgaria participated with expertise concerning the media during election period in a common proposal prepared by several Bulgarian NGO. The proposal was sent to the Bulgarian parliament in the prospective of preliminary elections.

In October, AEJ-Bulgaria organised journalsits' seminar about how to cover the refugees' crises, trying to react to the hate speach in some media in Bulgaria concerning the refugees coming from Syria.

Bellow you could find the main results of the first two projects of AEJ-Bulgaria (media freedom survey and Balkan journalistic meeting):

I. The results of the latest AEJ Bulgaria survey of the freedom of speech

The journalists in Bulgaria are regular victims or witnesses of pressure in the media they work for. The applied pressure comes both from the inside, practiced by editors and owners, and from the outside, through the direct influence of advertisers and political and economic players. This has led to the creation of a well- developed “culture of pressure” in the Bulgarian media landscape, including well integrated and institutionalized channels which transmit the external influence directly into the newsrooms.

These are the main conclusions of a survey on the state of media freedom in Bulgaria, conducted by the Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria (AEJ) among 169 journalists in the period 10th May to 10th June 2013. The results expose the indisputable deformations of the democratic state, which only sheds further light on the public motives that led to the ongoing anti-government and anti-oligarch protests.

The study which primary goals were to identify the problems of the media sector, will serve as a solid basis for a more extensive and representative survey in 2014. Although the questionnaire provided an option for anonymity, it is remarkable that 144 out of 169 respondents chose to reveal the names to the research team. Still, AEJ guarantees the anonymity of all the participants.

The term “unregulated pressure”, used in the survey, was defined in the questionnaires as a threat to the physical, financial and moral integrity of the respondent. Based on this concept, a shocking 86.98% of the participants agree that influencing the content of the journalistic materials is a practice in Bulgaria’s media sector. No one of the respondents has defined the pressure on the media and the journalists as “non-existing phenomenon”.

The opinions, concerning the pressure in the media where the journalists currently work for, disclose different trends. A little less than a half of the respondents admit they have been a subject of pressure because of their journalistic work (46,15%) while 53,85% claim they have never had such experience. It is worth mentioning that journalists, who have started a new job in the past 2 years, seem to be under pressure significantly more often in comparison to their colleagues who have longer experience in a particular media outlet. However, a stunning 2/3 of the respondents have witnessed cases of their colleagues being subjected to pressure.

Very alarming is the clear statistical relation between the pressure and the dynamics of the personal income of the journalists for the last 5 years. Journalists who have been subject to pressure prevail in the group where the incomes have declined, while their colleagues, who claim they have never suffered from pressure, fall in the group with clear pay rise.

The most common kind of pressure, according to 70% of the journalists is the one coming from the outside, but exercised by employers and owners who defend the interests of close political or economic allies. The internal pressure in newsrooms is a common practice for the editors-in-chief, according to over 60% of the respondents. Another 30% confess that they do not need to be reminded what is “right” to do in their work, as they practice self-censorship quite regularly.

Netizens survey

In parallel with the survey for practicing journalists, AEJ-Bulgaria approached also netizens – citizens who actively produce media content through blogs and other internet tools – to ask for their opinion on the media sector in Bulgaria. A total of 50 netizens were invited to take part in the survey and 26 of them responded. 96.2% of respondents have blogs, while the platforms “Twitter” и “Fаcebook” are being used by76.9%. The majority of the netizens have produced content for traditional media – 83.3%. A total of 73% are not paid and a huge group of 69.2% declare that getting a paycheck is not their goal, even though 3.8% would still would like to profit from their work.

A total of 80.8% of the netizens say that they are motivated to produce media content because this allows them to focus on topics of their personal interest. Over 82.6%of the respondents believe that the role of citizen journalism is to compensate the defects of the traditional media. About a half – 52% of the respondents believe the freedom of expression in Bulgaria is poor, while 40% say it is “satisfactory”. 46.15% of them claim they have been a subject to pressure, while the other 53.85% deny any violations of their freedom.

The results of the survey were presented at an open debate with the participation of Boris Gurov, sociologist, Nelly Ognynova, media law expert, Spas Spasov corespondent for Dnevnik and Capital in Varna, Konstantin Pavlov-Komitata, blogger. Moderator of the debate, which took place at The Center for culture and debate Red House on 25th of June, was the journalist from the Bulgarian National Radio Irina Nedeva.

„I would like to focus on the fusion of money – media – power and the deformations it has caused to the media market in Bulgaria. There is no doubt that the number one problem is the concentration of media and the lack of transparency in the media ownership”, said Nelly Ognyanova.

„There is a radical difference in the quality of the journalists’ work in the national media and the conditions for their regional representatives”, said Spas Spasov.

According to Konstantin Pavlov-Komitata “ the survey gives a picture of Bulgaria the way it existed several weeks ago ( before the mass protests began) and it helps us to observe the media landscape in a prerevolutionary situation”

Maria Cheresheva, Vice-President of AEJ-Bulgaria, called up on the all participants in the debate that it will be good if “we all stand for initiatives based on the problems, identified by the survey”, adding that –“AEJ-Bulgaria would be happy to work with people and organizations that share the same ideas”.

The survey was made possible by the financial support of the Embassy of the United States of America in Sofia and the media partnership of the Bulgarian national radio (BNR),Dnevnik.bg, Offnews.bg, Profit.bg.

II. Conclusions of the journalists’ meeting organized by AEJ-Bulgaria with the support of the Council of Europe, dedicated to the problems of hate speech and self-regulation in Bosnia and Herzogovina, Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Due to the continuously shrinking private advertising market, the state governments in Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzogovina and the Republic of Macedonia have turned into the most influential advertiser in the media. Not surprisingly, this trend has highly destructive influence on the freedom of speech in the three Balkan countries, as the public money are mostly spent for securing media comfort for the ones in power. To various extents in the respective countries, this comfort is being achieved through different channels for applying pressure on the journalists – political, public, economic, legal.

This is one of the main conclusions of a journalists’ meeting organized by AEJ-Bulgaria with the support of the Council of Europe, dedicated to the problems of hate speech and self-regulation in Bosnia and Herzogovina, Bulgaria and Macedonia. The conference took place on June 29th in Sofia, Bulgaria with the aim of identifying the most significant problems of the media and journalism in the three countries and establishing a basis for further common actions on regional level.

Hate speech

According to the journalists, bloggers, legal and media experts who participated in the conference, the use of hate speech is а common practice in the discussed Balkan countries. Unfortunately, the demonstrations of hate speech, which are declared a crime both by the internal and international laws, are rarely or never sanctioned in Bulgaria and Macedonia, even though many law suits have been started in both countries.

In order to fight with the problems of racism, xenophobia and other forms of open hatred in the media landscape, the independent Press Council in Bosnia has created a well-functioning self-regulatory system based on the direct involvement of the citizens. If citizens notice a case of hate speech in the media, they send a complaint to the Press Council which has the authority to evaluate it. Although the decisions of the self-regulatory body cannot take any form of legal or financial sanctions (but they can serve as a basis for court actions), they have a significant influence on the editorial policies, as they are an expression of the people’s will, according to Liljana Zurovac, Executive Director of the Bosnian Press Council.

“It is our mission is to educate the owners, journalists, editors and the citizens to fight for their rights”, she says. The head of the Press Council is determined that the campaigns to raise awareness among the citizens have indisputable effect,as more and more people recognize hate speech and take actions against it – in 2012 the Council has received 52 signals for hate speech (out of 200 in total).

Death of journalism?

“The role of journalists is under threat – from commercial, political, economic and legal forces. Of course in that regard, we are far from unique…. Government commercials are used to buy the media editorial policy, there is unclear media ownership, biased reporting by the controlled media, poor social and working conditions for journalists, censorship and auto-censorship.But, journalists in Macedonia are facing these challenges in a form that is so intense, so severe, that we can only say that we are facing the death of journalism or to be precise the death of the journalist’s role to speak and act on behalf of the public: In holding the powerful to account. In asking the questions that people want answered, in investigating the truth. Journalism as a public good is completely vanishing in Macedonia and we are expected not to even talk about it.”, Tamara Causidis, President of the the Independent Trade Union of Journalists and Media workers commented.

Ms Causidis’s observations on the Macedonian media environments are similar to the conclusions of AEJ-Bulgaria’s latest freedom of speech survey, according to which a widespread culture of pressure and self-censorship is dictating the Bulgarian media landscape. According to the survey, the applied pressure comes both from the inside, practiced by editors and owners, and from the outside, through the direct influence of advertisers and political and economic players. This has led to the creation of a well- developed “culture of pressure” , including well integrated and institutionalized channels which transmit the external influence directly into the newsrooms.

The instruments of intimidating the critical journalism in the two neighbouring countries also share common features, although in Macedonia cases of direct public pressure on journalists and their families, lay-offs and blacklisting seem to be more severe.

“Simply, critical journalism is labeled as non-patriotic. Critical media and journalists are branded as mercenaries of suspicious funds and political parties, or as criminals.”, Tamara Causidis explains.

“If there are any critical journalists, they are being named and shamed”, Saska Cvetkovska, journalist in the Nova-Web News Portal in Macedonia, adds. This is a job of the pro-government mainstream media, which openly frames them as pro-western traitors, ”sorosoids” (a term, successfully adopted in Bulgaria, too), spies, and gay…”It all started in 2008, and now almost all the media is supporting the government of PM Nikola Gruevski. 95% of the media is spreading hate speech. We infected the society with hate”, the journalist comments. Cvetkovska has been a victim of social and legal pressure herself.

According to Aleksandar Trifunovic, Manager of the Bosnian independent web media portal Buka, in Bosnia and Herzegovina the case is not of such severe pressure on the media, but there is widespread social apathy. A proof of that are also the international freedom of the rankings – in Reporters without Borders 2013 ranking Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks 68th, Bulgaria – 87th and the Republic of Macedonia – 116th. In Freedom of the Press 2013 Survey, all three countries fall in the category of “Partially Free”.

Still, due to the fact that the government is the biggest sponsor of the media (even through direct donations), politics can very powerfully influence media content and this is happening quite openly. “In Bosnia and Hezegovina, the most important is to reduce the influence of politics on media and media content. It is important to work on making the audience recognize what is relevant information and what is not. It is absurd that our society is economically falling apart, unemployment is the highest since the war and the information about the causes for such situation is rarely published.”, Trifunovic adds.

Towards more regulation

In both Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Macedonia, the conservative governments of Bevanda and Gruevski are trying to pass new media regulations which will consolidate the influence of the ruling parties. In the Bosnian case, if it gets passed, the new Law on access to information will protect the politicians from giving away certain information in public – a possible consequence about which the OSCE office for media has already warned.

In Macedonia, the project for the new Law on Media and Audiovisual is an attempt for establishing a common legal framework for all mass media providing information to the public, irrespective of the technical means used in this process. However, it has been widely criticized by all the relevant organisations and institutions and now undergoes significant changes.

The main problem of the proposed regulation, according to Filip Medarski, lawyer and press freedom activist, is the new Agency for Media and Audiovisual Media Services (also responsible for the press) , which will be given extended powers and will be widely politically influenced, as it will be appointed and held directly accountable by the National Assembly. The draft law contains many other controversial provisions – on the illegal media concentration the licences for TV and radio broadcasting, the allocation of state funds to the national broadcaster, etc.

“When we bare in mind the current bad situation with the freedom of expresion in our country, we come to conclusion that this attempt (for adopting a new media law) carries very high risks with it.”, Medarski concludes.

The idea of strenghthening the media regulations is still in a very preliminary phase in Bulgaria. Actually, such discussions have been going on for years and the ex-prime minister Boiko Borissov even initiated expert consultations for drafting a new law on the press, but there is a lack of public consensus on the prospect of adopting more strict regulations in the field. At the same time, self-regulation has limited effects, as just a small number of the media which have signed the Media Ethics Code actually stick to its principles.

Therefore, a solution may be provided by finding more effective self-regulation alternatives or by the adoption of new EU regulations which allow for more competencies of the EU institutions for taking actions in cases of violations of freedom of speech in the Member States. Currently, a EU-wide discussion on a future Directive on Media Pluralism is being initiated by the EU-Commission and a high-level expert group headed by the former President of Latvia, Professor Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.

Internet – the oasis of free opinion

As a result of the existence of brutal state influence on the traditional media, the internet takes the role of a true alternative for practicing critical journalism and raising the citizens’ voices in all three Balkan countries.

“The new way of consuming media content is mainly the reason why there are hundreds of internet portals in BiH. This is good. The problem is that the internet media market has not been regulated. This means you can publish whatever you want in the comments under the texts, you can insult, spread hatred without being sanctioned by the system, which is not the case with radio and television content. However, even though they are not regulated by law, I believe that internet media in BiH are the oasis of alternative and free opinion and all positive things that happened recently have in some way or the other involved new media. These are young journalists, without any burdens from the past, and they are our best chance for creating new media content in the country.”, Alekandar Trifonovic comments about Bosnia.