The campaign for the local elections on October 25 is now half over. The messages of the parties through these 4 weeks are important, but so is their media coverage. The latter lives according to its own laws, as the campaign month is like harvest time for peasants. Parties’ headquarters are now willing to give money, tempting different media representatives with offers on the publishing of information on their campaigns – the proposals are often tough to be rejected due to the poor financial state of those.

Unpleasant stories happen in the process, often failing to comply with the image of a democratic EU member-state. The Center for the Study of Democracy has reached that conclusion with the cooperation of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Media Program. “The absence of normally functioning media across the regions is a process of crisis of devastating consequences,” the report reads, as published on the eve of the local elections. The polled journalists from 179 regional media from all district centers, with the exception of Sofia, confirm the trend for economic and political pressure put on their work. According to the report the lack of independent media is a serious problem, affecting the regional public and economic life. A large number of local media do not reveal their ownership, the report further reads. Mr. Christian Spahr, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s media program talks about another problem:

“Our analysis reveals the constant violation of the principle for clear differentiation between advertorial and an election story,” Mr. Spahr says. “The lack of media ownership transparency has been a serious issue in Bulgaria for a long time. Will and joint work are needed, in order for this weakness to be overcome, both by politicians and media, as the issue is a milestone in the solving of this problem.”

The constant lack of financial resources forces media to bend over, publishing paid party messages, masked as editorial texts. However, the public notices that. Different sociological surveys show that each 6^th Bulgarian thinks that media representatives depend on political or economic individuals, as printed media is considered to be the most affected. People act by simply refusing to buy the newspapers and the sales of the latter collapse. A series of printed editions have been losing money for a long time, but are still released, in contradiction with any economic logics. Regional media determine their economic state as too heavy. The Center’s report points out that some of them save themselves through side activities, but this has its inevitable negative effect on the product’s quality. Some of the employees say they also act as PRs, they organize events or even develop some commercial activities. Thus the local authorities have guaranteed media comfort and the proper tone for their pre-election campaigns. The law provides for the marking of such stories with the respective sign, but this is simply not complied with, as no one would read such a story. Nearly 1/3 of the media coverage within any campaign is actually paid, i.e. we are talking on advertorials. Thus the border between a journalistic story and party propaganda gets very vague and the most alarming trend is that the public has no expectations for any improvement anymore. The sale of media space during a campaign might really save media budgets, but in the long terms the most important thing is lost – the public’s trust.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev