site.btaBulgaria Down 1 at 112th in Reporters Without Borders 2021 World Press Freedom Index

Sofia, April 20 (BTA) - Bulgaria has fallen one place to 112th
in the Reporters Without Borders' 130-country annual World Press
 Freedom Index for 2021, from 11th in 2020.

This country's worst ranking was 113th in 2016, and its best was
 34th in 2002. It now ranks last among the EU Member States. The
 second worst performing country in the EU is Hungary which, at
92nd, is 10 places ahead of Bulgaria. In the Balkans, only
Turkey (153rd) is ranked below Bulgaria, while Serbia (93rd),
North Macedonia (90th), Greece (70th) and Romania (48th) are
positioned better in the regional ranking.

The deterioration in Bulgaria's score is attributed, among other
 things, to increased attacks against journalists and arbitrary
arrests.

In its country analysis of Bulgaria, the organization writes:
"The few outspoken journalists are constantly subjected not only
 to smear campaigns and harassment by the state, but also to
intimidation and violence. The situation of the media is very
worrying because no one is interested in investigating or
condemning violence against journalists. The police beat
freelancer Dimiter Kenarov when arresting him in September 2020.
 Masked men beat investigative reporter Slavi Angelov outside
his home in March 2020. Another investigative reporter, Nikolay
Staykov, received death threats in June 2020 after releasing a
documentary about high-level judicial corruption. Journalists
are often summoned and questioned by police about their work,
while politicians and oligarchs maintain relations marked by
corruption and conflicts of interest in the pro-government
media. Delyan Peevski, the oligarch who was the most notorious
embodiment of this aberrant state of affairs, has sold his media
 outlets but his influence over the media continues to be
problematic. The government allocates EU and public funding to
media outlets with a complete lack of transparency, with the
effect of encouraging recipients to go easy on the government in
 their reporting. At the same time, judicial harassment of
independent media, such as Bivol and the Economedia group,
constantly poses a threat to press freedom. One of Economedia's
owners, Ivo Prokopiev, was finally acquitted in June 2020 on
charges that seem to have been politically motivated." NV/LG