15 Sep 16 | Bulgaria, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
Between 2013 and 2015, 10 Bulgarian municipalities spent a total of 2.7 million Bulgarian lev ($1.54 million) – mainly to media companies and PR agencies – in return for positive coverage of their activities, an investigative series by news site Dnevnik.bg found.
According to the articles, the local governments of the five largest, excluding the capital Sofia, and five of the poorest cities in the country were found to be engaging in “corrupt practices” and displayed a disregard for “journalistic ethics and loyalty to the audience”.
Under the guise of using contracts to create advertisements, “job posting messages and other texts” – not only in publications but also for radio and television broadcasts – all 10 municipalities were found to be buying influence in media outlets and attempting to eliminate criticism, Spas Spasov, the author of the series, told Index on Censorship. The cities reviewed were Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Ruse, Pleven, Stara Zagora, Shumen, Kazanlak, Blagoevgrad, Vratsa and Montana.
The data, which was obtained through freedom of information requests, does not claim to be exhaustive but provides an indication of administrative control over news in the cities covered by the investigative reports. “The idea behind the project was to reveal the deep crisis in which freedom of the press finds itself in Bulgaria,” Spasov said.
One visible trend in the series is that media content is sold at a discount to local governments who buy “wholesale”.
“The results of my investigation show that virtually all the media in the analysed municipalities are dependent on the public funding they get,” Spasov told Index. The lack of an advertising market outside the capital only strengthens this dependence on handouts from local government, he added.
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This article is a case study drawn from the issues documented by Mapping Media Freedom, Index on Censorship’s project that monitors threats to press freedom in 42 European and neighbouring countries.
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He found that in many cases the money private media outlets receive from municipal administrations often covers the entirety – or at least a significant portion – of their budgets. In one case a source told Spasov that the entire salary of a journalist was covered by Vratsa municipal funding.
In the city of Varna some advertising contracts were signed by municipal companies that are monopolies that were not in need of advertising. Spasov said that this is a way to buy political and institutional influence in a media outlet.
Many municipalities were found to be contracting “advertising” and “promotional activities” through private media despite the fact that almost every municipality has its own municipal media, through which they already publish official announcements.
“Of course, there is nothing vicious in the practice of municipal administrations buying advertising in private media,” Spasov said. He does, however, stress that in order to avoid buying media influence, local administrations and government institutions should publish their advertisements only in media outlets that comply with the Ethical Code of the Bulgarian Media.
“This code clearly stipulates that all text covered by the contracts will be marked as sponsored content but this is not the current practice,” he said, adding that vague wording–phrases such as “other texts”–helps to disguise sponsored articles published as editorial content.
This is possible because Bulgaria has no law requiring print and online media outlets to label sponsored content they are publishing. Existing regulation only addresses television advertisements.
“Transparency of sponsored content is crucial for a functioning free press. It is vital that existing legislation on advertisers be reformed swiftly to include all media outlets in order to protect the public,” Hannah Machlin, project officer for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom, said.
The investigation went on to find that many media outlets from smaller municipalities were created by political entities with the purpose of bullying their opponents in local government.
Spasov told Index that if the remainder of the country’s 256 municipalities were also to be investigated, “there should be no doubt” that the findings would be similar to the 10 which were analysed in his investigation.
11 Jan 16 | Bulgaria, Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features
Journalists of the Bulgarian investigative news website Bivol.bg are facing an orchestrated smear campaign that’s unusual even for Bulgaria, the worst-ranking EU member in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
The attacks can be linked to mainstream media outlets controlled by the Bulgarian media mogul and lawmaker Delyan Peevski, and seem to be a response to a number of investigations published recently by Bivol.bg, all involving Peevski in one way or another.
“Even if it is not like in the beginning, the smear campaign did not end,” Bivol’s editor-in-chief, Atanas Chobanov, told Index on Censorship in December 2015.
During the autumn, articles denigrating Chobanov and Assen Yordanov — Bivol’s founder, co-owner and director — began appearing in media outlets such as the Bulgarian weekly Politika, the Telegraph, Monitor and Trud dailies, as well as the news website Blitz, which are controlled either directly or through proxies by Delyan Peevski, an MP from the parliamentary group of the Turkish minority party, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).
According to a summary published by OCCRP, the articles allege that Yordanov uses Bivol.bg to publish fake stories to blackmail politicians and business people. The attack pieces allege that Bivol.bg publishes stories about environmental issues to serving the interests of fake eco-activists who pose as people concerned about the environment to extract cash from firms that want to build in the Bulgarian mountains and on the Black Sea coast.
There are allegations saying that Atanas Chobanov is a former Komsomol activist (the youth division of the Bulgarian Communist Party), aspired to a political career, and has links to a businessman whose media strongly oppose Peevski. Some articles insinuate that Chobanov works for foreign intelligence services; and that he lives a luxurious life in Paris where he milks the social welfare system. (The latter allegation is interesting because in 2013, it was Chobanov who uncovered that former planning and investment minister Ivan Danov was collecting €1,800 per month in unemployment benefits in France while working two jobs in Bulgaria.)
The pieces give a thoroughly negative depiction of Chobanov, saying that he is greedy, aggressive, mentally unstable, narcissistic, disliked and unwanted.
The campaign culminated on 10 October, when a crew of the Bulgarian TV Channel 3, a television where Peevski is a co-owner, showed up at the rented apartment in Paris where Chobanov and his family lives.
“I was at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Lillehammer, Norway,” Chobanov said, adding that the crew did not try to contact him by phone, e-mail or by any other means in advance. The journalist believes they must have known that he was away because he made a public announcement about his upcoming trip and he was tweeting from Lillehammer.
Although Bivol.bg was the target of similar articles in the past, the ongoing campaign started when the investigative news site published proof that Peevski is a shareholder at the Bulgarian cigarette maker Bulgartabac, a former state-owned company that underwent a controversial privatization process in 2011.
Then the journalists started publishing a story about the disappearance of €26 million ($28.3 million) from an EU food aid program for the poor, where the majority shareholders of Bulgaria’s First Investment Bank (FIB) were implicated. “After the Bulgarian bank crash, Peevski moved his assets, his credits and deposits to this bank, so this investigation also hurts Peevski’s interests,” Chobanov said.
Next, Bivol.bg broke “Yaneva Gate”, a series of stories based on leaked phone conversations between former Sofia City Court president Vladimira Yaneva and fellow judge Roumyana Chenalova over unlawful surveillance warrants that Yaneva had signed.
In those conversations, the judges mentioned Peevski by his first name, Delyan. “The Prosecutor General, one of the men of Peevski, is also involved,” Chobanov pointed out, adding that the story provoked an earthquake in Bulgarian politics, causing justice minister Hristo Ivanov to resign.
“It is a judicial battle now. We are turning to courts to stop the smear campaign, and we are also defending ourselves from legal complaints filed for the investigations we did in the past,” Chobanov said.
Reporters Without Borders expressed support and sympathy for Chobanov, condemning the smear campaign directed against him. “We can only condemn what are clearly attempts to intimidate Bivol’s journalists,” said Alexandra Geneste, the head of the Reporters Without Borders EU/Balkans desk. “Their investigative work is perfectly legitimate and we express our most sincere support and sympathy for them.”
The smear campaign orchestrated by the media outlets controlled by Peevski took an unexpected turn when they accused Xavier Lapeyre de Cabanes, the French Ambassador to Bulgaria with unacceptable meddling in Bulgaria’s affairs after he shared on Twitter a link to the press release by Reporters Without Borders with the comment: “Press freedom has no borders.”
The Bulgarian Association Network for Free Speech also issued a position saying that “the integrity of Bivol’s investigations and publications has not been and is not challenged in any way, despite repeated attempts to pressure our colleagues. (…) We have no reason to doubt the good faith of our colleagues, the journalist from Bivol (…).”
22 Dec 14 | Bulgaria, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society
Murky ownership, a whole array of censorship practices as well as corruption are plaguing Bulgarian media, according to a survey from the Bulgarian Reporter Foundation.
The report, Influence on the Media: Owners, Politicians and Advertisers, is based on surveys with 40 media outlets carried out between January and September 2014. One hundred journalists and 20 media owners were questioned about their perception of censorship in the Bulgarian media.
The report found that journalists, senior editorial staff and owners are offered bribes by politicians and corporations. While these allegations are very difficult to prove, there is a widespread assumption among people working in the media that reporters in certain sectors receive regular payments from large companies to present them in favorable light.
“It is very hard to prove the (existence of) bribes”, said Dr. Orlin Spassov, one of the authors of the report, who is an associate professor in media and communication studies at Sofia University and executive director of Media Democracy Foundation.
There are no court cases related to the bribes, Spassov told Index. “We collect the information using anonymous interviews. In other circumstances, journalists would hardly share such statements. Even under conditions of anonymity guaranteed, some of them were afraid to speak.”
Bribes can come in many different forms, the report found. From low-interest rates offered by certain banks to luxury trips, expensive presents or even as little as the payment of a phone bill.
Corruption among editors-in-chief is also considered a widespread phenomenon. The report mentions an editor-in-chief who received a record-high amount of 5 million Leva (EUR 2,5 million GBP 2 million) for changing the orientation of a media outlet to support a political party.
Media owners are also seen as corrupt. A leaked document, which was posted online, showed that a football club transferred five-digit amounts to a sports daily for its “favorable attitude”. According to journalists, media outlets sometimes blackmail companies or local authorities by threatening negative coverage unless the target buys advertising in the publication.
According to the report, the lack of media ownership transparency is one of the biggest problems. There are a number of media outlets owned by off-shore companies, anonymous joint stock companies or bogus owners. Even if the owners are known, it is sometimes difficult to see their interests and their finances. Public registers show that in Bulgaria the majority of media outlets are making losses. The fact that a number of prestigious foreign media companies have withdrawn from the Bulgarian market in recent years made things even fuzzier.
Documents that emerged after the Corporate Commercial Bank crisis showed that politics, mass media and finances are entangled in an unhealthy knot. This marks the relationship between journalists and media owners, the report points out.
There is no clear border between the owners and the senior editors. Thirty-five per cent of the surveyed senior editors say that the owner interferes with their work. Moreover, 20 per cent stated that they are sanctioned if they refuse to follow the owner’s instructions. Thirty-six per cent of the journalists consider that there are things they cannot tell the public through their media and 16 per cent confess that they are not convinced on everything their publication publishes.
A number of media owners see their media outlets as a tool for helping or protecting their other business interests. In May 2014, an internal document was published containing instructions given by one of the owners of an influential media group to the journalists of his papers and website on how to cover an issue about the withdrawal of licenses of electricity distribution companies.
The broader the audience a media outlet has, the stronger the pressure it faces from politicians. In Bulgaria, it is a common practice that MPs or members of the government call or send SMS messages to owners, senior editors or even journalists if they are not happy with their coverage.
If a media outlet does not comply with their demands, politicians often deprive “unfriendly” media of information. Their reporters would not be invited to certain events or do not receive information which their competitors are given access to. If politicians are reluctant about a certain topic, they would refuse to participate in the talk programs. Because journalists are obliged to present all points of view, they need to drop the topic from the agenda.
Sometimes authorities also misuse the Access to Public Information Act to obstruct the access to certain media outlets. When journalists request information from ministries and other departments, they are asked to file a freedom of information request that are replied only after 14 days, the period mandated by law.
The main leverage of central and local authorities over the media is the publication of paid announcements. This is an important source of revenue for Bulgarian media, especially because advertising has strongly declined due to the economic crisis. The report cites an editor-in-chief saying that the biggest advertiser is the state. Openly there are no conditions posed to obtain advertisements, but there is an assumption that critical media outlets will not receive contracts.
Commercial advertisers also have a strong influence on the editorial output of Bulgarian media. Companies routinely ask for materials that present them in a positive light as a condition of buying advertising. Sometimes they ask outlets to play down or ignore customer complaints or run critical coverage of their competitors. Many times there is no clear differentiation between the sponsored and editorial content, the report found.
Intra-editorial censorship is also widepsread in the Bulgarian media. Easily controllable, loyal journalists are promoted into responsible positions. They make sure political positions and orders are given a professional justification, this way reporters do not feel the political pressure from their peers. Sometimes negative comments are erased from the internet.
Personal blogs are seen as a way to circumvent editorial influence, with more or less result. In one case a journalist had to close his blog after he came under pressure from the senior editorial staff. In some media outlets, journalists are forbidden to have personal blogs, other owners allow them only by written authorization.
The survey and report were completed with the support of the Sofia office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and its Media Program South East Europe.
For more on media violations in Bulgaria, visit mediafreedom.ushahidi.com
This article was posted on 22 Dec 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
13 Aug 14 | Bulgaria, Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society
Index on Censorship and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso are joining forces to map the state of media freedom in Europe. With your participation, we are mapping the violations, threats and limitations that European media professionals, bloggers and citizen journalists face everyday. We are also collecting feedback on what would support journalists in such situations. Help protect media freedom and democracy by contributing to this crowd-sourcing effort.
Bulgarian journalists covering the financial beat can breathe freely as the most controversial parts of the so-called “bank censorship” amendment to the criminal code have been removed by the legal committee of the national assembly.
In July, parliament adopted the amendment on first reading. The text of the draft outlined sentences of two to five years in prison for circulating “false or misleading information” about banks that could “cause panic”.
The amendment was suggested indirectly by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) after a series of bank runs involving Bulgaria’s fourth largest credit institution, the Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) and later an unrelated run involving financial institution the First Investment Bank (FIB).
It is still unclear who was behind these incidents. The run against CCB was likely caused by disagreements between media tycoon Delyan Peevski, one of the CCB’s large depositors and his old friend, Tsvetan Vasilev, the owner of CCB. Peevski started to remove funds, sparking a bank run which undermined the bank’s liquidity.
In the FIB case, three people have been arrested. They are suspected of spreading rumours about the imminent bankruptcy of FIB via emails and short text messages to the bank’s clients. This stirred mass panic, as people rushed to withdraw their money from the bank: in a few hours, BGN 800 million (£327 million) were withdrawn.
“Society is very sensitive especially to issues that affect the financial and banking stability as the memory of the banking crisis in 1996-1997 is still fresh,” said Petya Stoyanova, a financial and banking journalist from Bulgaria. During that crisis, 14 Bulgarian banks collapsed.
The memory of the mid-1990s financial crisis is the main reason behind the low public confidence in the Bulgarian banking system, which can easily be moved to panic. As a response, BNB proposed an amendment to the criminal code on 1 July stating that those who “disseminate misleading or untrue information on a bank or a financial institution that could create panic among the population, be punished with five to 10 years of imprisonment”.
BNB also proposed a fine ranging between BGN 5,000 and BGN 10,000 (£4,061) to be imposed in such cases. People causing significant damage or those having received significant illegal revenues through the aforementioned activities would be punished the same way.
According to Stoyanova, the proposals have been criticised by politicians and lawyers because of its vague language which, in a broad interpretation, could lead to a conviction for dissemination of any information related to the banking sector, even if it is not false or misleading.
After the first reading of the amendment in parliament, members of the legal committee applied a number of corrections. The revised amendment removes the danger of censorship by tightening up the language, which now refers to disseminating “false” banking information. While the potential fines for those spreading such information were increased, the possibility of prison has been eliminated.
The banking scandals hinted at the dimensions of backstage political machinations in Bulgaria. Stoyanova believes responsibility for malicious behaviour should have a place in future changes to the criminal code. Future lawmakers, she said, should not be allowed to quickly alter laws in violation of rules and best legislative practices, without public discussion.
The second reading of the amendment will be left to the next national assembly, as parliamentary elections will be held on 5 October.
More reports from Bulgaria via mediafreedom.ushahidi.com
Election law amendment could limit press freedom
Attacker sprays substance in Bulgarian sports journalist’s face
Bulgarian journalist beaten by football fans
Newspaper reporters attacked, threatened in Bulgaria’s city of Plovdiv
Arson Attack Against Bulgarian Journalist Genka Shikerova
This article was posted on 13 August 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
