site.btaAssociation of European Journalists Urges Parliament to Look into Possible Government Censorship in News Media

The Association of European Journalists - Bulgaria (AEJ) calls on Parliament to set up a committee of inquiry into possible government censorship in the electronic media.  

The call is prompted by a Nova TV interview with MP Ivaylo Mirchev (Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria) last Friday where he pointed out that none of the national TVs picked up the so called Barcelonagate scandal over the possible role of GERB leader and then Prime Minister Boyko Borissov in a money laundering case. The response of the anchor, Viktor Nikolaev, to that was, "Are you aware of the kind of pressure that is put on national televisions through the regulators?"

Because of that, AEJ asks Parliament to look into the possibility that the government may be using regulators to force media outlets to avoid certain issues of public interest when they have the potential of harming power-holders' interests. "There have long been alerts but until recently saying that aloud was a taboo for many journalists with access to the national audience," the organization says.  

It mentions three such cases, including the now widely discussed Barcelonagate. Information about it surfaced in 2016-2018 but remained outside the scope of interests of the large media organizations and the prosecution service showed little interest in the suspicions about large-scale money laundering exposed by the investigative journalism organizations BIRD and BIVOL. The situation changed only recently following a fall-out between Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev and Boyko Borissov.

The other two cases mentioned by AEJ are the Eight Dwarfs case exposing an operation for company theft and capture of the judicial system (exposed by the Anti-Corruption Fund in 2020); and the syphoning of medical insurance funding by Sofia's Lozenets hospital (exposed by journalists Mirolyuba Benatova and Genka Shikerova). 

As a minimum, a parliamentary committee of inquiry must hear the members of the competent regulators of the past five years, as well as the management of the three national televisions (Bulgarian National Television, bTV and Nova TV) and the Bulgarian National Radio, and any journalists willing to speak about their own experience with political censorship, says AEJ.