site.btaReport Shows Further Slump in Confidence in Bulgarian News Media

Report Shows Further Slump in Confidence in Bulgarian News Media

Sofia, February 11 (BTA) - The confidence in the Bulgarian news media continues to slump, according to a report based on a study by Foundation Media Democracy (FMD) and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS). "Only every eighth Bulgarian believes in true freedom of media," said Christian Spahr, Head of KAS' Media Program South East Europe.

According to the opinion poll, 65 percent of the citizens disagree that media are free. Only 12 percent explicitly believe in free media reporting.

The report says that there is no systematic repression of critical journalists in Bulgaria. "However, media freedom is restricted by scattered pressure from political actors, media owners and advertising customers, as well as by unstable employment conditions and self-censorship," Spahr added.

Reasons for the lack of independence are furthermore the trend towards monopolization in the newspaper sector, inefficient legal regulation and weak self-regulation.

Two in three Bulgarians evaluate the public relations of politicians as poor or very poor.

An annual media monitoring of KAS and FMD showed that Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is still the most frequently mentioned personality in the political news, followed by President Rossen Plevneliev. Ranks three to five are occupied by: Radan Kanev (Reformist Bloc), Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova, and former Minister of Justice Hristo Ivanov.

Borissov and Plevneliev enjoyed the most positive media coverage in 2015.

In 2014 the media image of Borissov and Plevneliev was rather critical.

In 2015, the media reported negatively Ataka leader Volen Siderov, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria leader Radan Kanev, ousted Movement for Rights and Freedoms leader Lyutvi Mestan and Socialist leader Mihail Mikov.
 
The study found that the news media are focusing on persons and not on parties and that individual politicians are often perceived more positively than their party.

Currently the media response is especially negative for the Bulgarian Socialists. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms is perceived critically, with the exception of "Telegraf" daily. The Reformist Bloc is criticised by several media outlets and described neutrally by others. GERB is equally supported and criticized by mainstream media.

 The Europe-wide migrant crisis gets mainly neutral media coverage, according to the analysis of the Foundation Media Democracy. President Plevneliev is portrayed with an especially positive position towards protection-seekers while a very critical stance towards refugees is associated in the media with the Bulgarian-orthodox church, representatives of the police and the Ministry of Interior. Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova herself was mainly quoted with neutral or positive contributions.

Criticism against the news media is gradually turning into a background noise which has no power to provoke action by the competent institutions or disturb the usual operation of the media outlets, commented FMD Executive Director Orlin Spassov. He said that another bad trend in 2015 was the surge of hate speech in the news media.

The media monitoring was based on more than 40,000 news items of three daily newspapers ("Trud", "Telegraf", "24 hours"), three television channels (Bulgarian National Television, bTV, Nova TV) and three online media (Blitz, Dnevnik, Offnews), analyzed by research institute Market Links. The opinion poll used in the report was taken among 1,000 respondents last December.