site.btaParliament Rejects One of Two Electronic Media Council Reports

Parliament Rejects One of Two Electronic Media Council Reports

Sofia, October 29 (BTA) - The National Assembly on Thursday approved a report on the performance of the Council on Electronic Media (CEM) in the first half of 2014 but rejected a similar report for the second half of 2014. Members of the parliamentary groups of the Patriotic Front and BSP-Left Bulgaria said that CEM should be disbanded.

Georgi Bozhinov (BSP-Left Bulgaria) said CEM has become useless over the years. "With or without CEM, the state of Bulgarian media, as it is today, would remain unchanged. CEM spends public money in an absolutely wasteful and parasitic way," Bozhinov argued. Yanaki Stoilov (a fellow member of the group) said censorship is reemerging in Bulgaria and many media organizations are being used for mass manipulation.

Slavi Binev (Patriotic Front) called for CEM's disbandment and said its Chairman Georgi Lozanov should be investigated for protecting certain media cartels.

Lyutvi Mestan (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) said the debate on the CEM reports must be devoid of election campaign emotions.

CEM Chairman Lozanov told journalists that the rejection of the report for the second half of 2014 can have no legal consequences. "The attacks on the regulator are an encroachment on the freedom of speech," he said. He noted that the parliamentary debate on the report was general talk with no substance to it.

According to Lozanov, the electronic media regulator has come under attack from nationalists. He believes the attack was triggered by a debate on new National Radio programming for the southern region of Kurdjali, which has a large Turkish population. "On several occasions I explained that those Turkish-language broadcasts have been there for 20 years already. What is new now is that we are starting 15 hours of programming in Bulgarian. But this is being grossly misrepresented for the purposes of partisan propaganda," he said.

* * *

The National Assembly approved the annual report of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) for 2014 by a vote of 101 in favour and one abstention. The Culture and Media Committee said in a summary that BTA did not report any drastic changes in its operation and described the past year as successful. The news agency provided information about its place on the media market, its role as a principal source of news about the world in Bulgaria, its agreements with international partners, news reporting services, financial position and international contacts, and the operation of its National Press Club and a whole network of regional press clubs.

Like many international news agencies, the most serious problems identified by BTA are the unlawful use of its news by others and the quoting of its items by official partners without proper reference to the source.