At its sitting on Thursday, the National Assembly rejected, 15-128 with 56 abstentions, the annual report on the activity of the Council of Electronic Media (CEM) in 2022. The debate on the report began on Wednesday and continued throughout Thursday morning.
The votes against the report came from GERB-UDF (51), the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (25), Vazrazhdane (34), BSP for Bulgaria (12), Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (5), and one independent MP. The report was backed by the MPs of There Is Such a People (TISP), two members of GERB-UDF, and one member of Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB). Forty-eight MPs of CC-DB and eight of GERB-UDF abstained.
The report focuses on CEM's monitoring of: the war in Ukraine; children and media content, including incidents; vaccines and green certificates; accessibility of audio-visual content for people with impaired hearing; reality and entertainment shows; ads; media services with changes in content; specialized observation of the 2023 parliamentary elections. According to the data provided in the report, in 2022 CEM's Monitoring and Analyses Department carried out 17,436 hours of monitoring of 41 TV programmes, 607 hours of websites, and 7,132 hours of 22 radio programmes.
During Thursday's debate on the report, CEM Chairperson Sonya Momchilova said that many roundtables and discussions were held in 2022, and at one of them Italian experts offered to provide free of charge know-how on fighting gambling advertising. "I talked with many of you, but no one showed interest," Momchilova told the MPs. In her words, it is very important to put an end to gambling ads, which are like a pandemic, but Parliament is deaf and blind to the problem.
Momchilova called complete disinformation what grant-funded media are claiming: that the President's quota on CEM is the reason for the lack of change in the Bulgarian National Television's leadership. No one can take decisions single-handedly at CEM, she recalled. She said that calls for her resignation are heard very often but she has only several months of her term in office left, and the President does not have the habit to extend the stay of representatives of his quota beyond the term for which they have been elected.
Radomir Cholakov MP of GERB-UDF said that in its history, CEM has several fundamental interpretation decisions, one of which allowed gambling advertising. "That is a CEM decision taken by a previous leadership, and now you are offended by its consequences," Cholakov told Momchilova. CEM can review those decisions with its current members," he added.
Miroslava Petrova MP of CC-DB said that the CEM Chairperson has caused significant and reasonable aggravation of public opinion. She referred to Momchilova's statement of June 2023 in which she described the atrocities in Bucha as propaganda. "We are obliged to symbolically vote against this report precisely due to the compromised tone at the top of this institution," Petrova added. Another MP of CC-DB, Yavor Bozhankov, said that not once has CEM played its role of a state regulator to counter Russian propaganda in the country.
Angel Georgiev of Vazrazhdane said that CEM is not a political body to take a side against Russia in the report. It is not right for a pillar such as CEM to give assessments and instructions, he added. CEM's report contains Euro-Atlantic propaganda. In his words, there is nothing in the document related to the media time dedicated to the euro's introduction in Bulgaria, and Bulgarian media cover only one point of view on the matter. The report also does not say anything about Sofia Pride. CEM has no control over propaganda and destructive influences in society, Georgiev argued.
Ivan Chenchev MP of BSP for Bulgaria said that CEM is the regulator with the smallest number of employees. "I am among the people who voted against this report. There were questions to the CEM members, there were questions regarding vaccines and the information about them on CEM's part, there were questions also regarding Petar Volgin of Bulgarian National Radio," he said.
TISP floor leader Toshko Yordanov said that his group backed the report because the decent people on CEM - Sonya Momchilova and Gabriela Naplatanova - should be encouraged. "This CEM has a chairperson who keeps it in a normal framework," he added.
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