Whether there should be a media law and how the media should apply the principle of self-regulation in Bulgaria were part of the questions discussed by the participants in the third “Dialogue with the citizens” under the aegis of President Rosen Plevneliev, which is devoted to the topic “What is the future for the Bulgarian media?”
According to associate professor Orlin Spasov, executive director of the “Media Democracy” foundation, we need an urgent restart not only of regulation, but also of self-regulation. In his opinion, there is a lack not only of political and institutional will, but also of a will of the media themselves to work for making amendments in the media legislation.
The participants in the discussion called on the media to reach a consensus on implementing the Ethics Code of the Bulgarian media and voiced their stance for ensuring transparency of the ownership and financing of the media and of the practical implementation of the legislation to this effect.
Professor Nelly Ognyanova, expert on media law, highlighted the necessity to establish general and similar rules for access of the media to the public funds and to the funding provided by the European funds. According to her, new rules for analyzing the level of media pluralism and for protecting the journalists’ labor should also be formulated.
According to associate professor Georgi Lozanov, chief of the Council for Electronic Media, the model of concentration of the media in Bulgaria is inappropriate. In his words, hardly can we speak of media monopolies in Bulgaria unless clear thresholds of concentration are planned, unless a register of public funding is established and a lot more steps are made. “There is a tangible necessity to remove the journalists’ dependence on the owners and this can happen only if a powerful journalists’ union is established in Bulgaria,” the chief of CEM said. A further reason for Bulgaria’s slipping to lower positions in the international media rankings is that the media have lost their reflex to the power holders.
The media should not bear the responsibility for the politicians or for para-political figures who produce hostile speech, they should be sanctioned under the penal code, associate professor Lozanov commented in relation to the increased usage of hostile language in the Bulgarian media in the past weeks. The issue was raised by a big part of the participants in the discussion.