Bulgaria – EU’s Media Black Sheep Georgi Staykov Newspapers on f re. Photograph by Georgi Staykov. ack in 2006, Bulgaria and France had something important in common. Both countries were ranked 35 in the annual Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom index in a list of 169 evaluated states. Over the course of the next 14 years, Bulgaria’s free speech and free media indexes plummeted. Since 2018 Bulgaria has been in 111 place. How did the numbers change over the years? The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) ranks the degree of freedom that journalists, news organizations, and Internet users have. It does not deal with the quality of journalism, nor does it look at human rights violations. The ranking is based on pluralism, legislative framework, media independence, environment and self-censorship, transparency, and infrastructure. It took a little over a decade for Bulgaria’s media freedom to deteriorate drastically. How did the deterioration begin? In a report from 2018, the Union of Publishers in Bulgaria points out that Delyan Peevski’s New Bulgarian Media Group (NBMG) controls around 80 percent of the distribution market for printed media, and their respective online editions. These 2 Fall 2020 | AUBG Daily numbers also include more than 1,000 kiosks in about 130 Bulgarian cities. Peevski is an important political figure in Bulgaria and also owns numerous online media outlets, including the TV channels TV7 and Kanal 3. His public appearances are rare, and he hasn’t been seen in the media since his last appearance on April 19, 2017. Peevski began building his media empire in 2007. He acquired the daily Monitor, the tabloid Telegraph, and the weekly Politika. The media outlets were facing financial predicaments and were purchased by NBMG, owned by Peevski’s mother, Irena Krasteva. According to the Union of Publishers in Bulgaria, the money came from loans from the Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB). The Union also states that initially Peevski did not act like the owner of the media outlets. It was not until 2014, when he addressed the newspapers as his own and his mother gave him 50 percent of the ownership. Over the next couple of years, Peevski continued buying out media outlets, including the National Distribution Agency. In 2009, Peevski became a member of parliament as part of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms’ (MRF) list. Four years later, in 2013, the National Assembly elected him for the head of the State Agency for National Security (SANS). This appointment led to protests across the country that lasted more than 400 days. How does the media business model work in Bulgaria? Irina Nedeva, president of the Bulgarian branch of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), said that the reason behind the plummeting of the country in various international press freedom indexes was that 15 years ago Bulgaria was trying to meet certain democratic criteria that the EU had set. Back then Bulgaria was still trying to join the EU. During the negotiations, the measures the country took to improve the state of the media gave good results. However, after Bulgaria officially joined the union in 2007, the enthusiasm for free media started fading away. “The situation with the media gradually started deteriorating because by old customs and inertia from previous time periods, Bulgarian media outlets were being used as a tool in political disputes. The political disputes turned into economic battles. All this culminated in what we today, unfortunately, define as numerous successful attempts to control a huge chunk of the media in Bulgaria. Many private media outlets are owned by conglomerates consisting of people holding state positions and people owning private businesses. The media’s role is no longer what it is supposed to be. Those people use the media outlets as
3 Publizr Home