The journalists in Bulgaria are regular victims or witnesses of pressure in the media they work for. The applied pressure comes both from the inside, practiced by editors and owners, \u00a0and from the outside, through the direct influence of advertisers and political and economic players. This has led to the creation of a well- developed \u201cculture of pressure\u201d in the Bulgarian media landscape, including well integrated and institutionalized\u00a0channels which transmit the external influence directly\u00a0into the\u00a0newsrooms. In parallel with the survey for practicing journalists, AEJ-Bulgaria approached also netizens \u2013 citizens who actively produce media content through blogs and other internet tools \u2013 to ask for their opinion on the media sector in Bulgaria. A total of 50 netizens were invited to take part in the survey and 26 of them responded.\u00a096.2%\u00a0of repondets \u00a0have blogs, while the platforms\u00a0\u201cTwitter\u201d \u0438 \u201cF\u0430cebook\u201d\u00a0are being used by76.9%.\u00a0The majority of the netizens have produced content for traditional media \u2013 83.3%. A total of 73% are not paid and a huge group of\u00a069.2%\u00a0declare that getting a paycheck is not their goal, even though 3.8% would \u00a0still would like to profit from their work. The s<\/i>urvey was made possible by the financial support of the Embassy of the United States of America in Sofia and the media partnership of the Bulgarian national radio (BNR),Dnevnik.bg, Offnews.bg, Profit.bg.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The results of the latest AEJ Bulgaria survey of the freedom of speech provide further justification on the motives for the ongoing anti-oligarch protests in Sofia. The journalists in Bulgaria are regular victims or witnesses of pressure in the media they work for. The applied pressure comes both from the inside, practiced by editors and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,962,965,963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-aej-survey","category-from-aej-bulgaria","category-media-freedom","category-initiatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThese are the main conclusions of a survey on the state of media freedom in Bulgaria, conducted by the\u00a0Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria (AEJ) among 169 journalists\u00a0in\u00a0the period 10th<\/sup>\u00a0May to 10th<\/sup>\u00a0June 2013. The results expose the indisputable deformations of the democratic state, which only sheds further light on the public motives that led to the ongoing anti-government and anti-oligarch protests.
\nThe study which primary goals were to identify the problems of the media sector, will serve as a solid \u00a0basis for a more extensive and representative survey in 2014. Although the questionnaire provided an option for anonymity, it is remarkable that 144 out of 169 respondents chose to reveal the names to the research team. Still, AEJ guarantees the anonymity of all the participants.
\nThe term \u201cunregulated pressure\u201d, used in the survey, was defined in the questionnaires as a threat to the physical, financial and moral integrity of the respondent. Based on this concept, a shocking 86.98%\u00a0of the participants agree that influencing the content of the journalistic materials is a practice in Bulgaria\u2019s media sector. No one of the respondents has defined the pressure on the media and the journalists as \u201cnon-existing phenomenon\u201d.
\nThe opinions, concerning the pressure in the media where the journalists currently work for, disclose different trends. A little less than a half of the respondents admit they have been a subject of pressure because of their journalistic work\u00a0(46,15%) while 53,85%\u00a0claim they have never had such experience. It is worth mentioning that journalists, who have started a new job in the past 2 years, seem to be under pressure significantly more often in comparison to their colleagues who have longer experience in a particular media outlet. However, a stunning 2\/3 of the respondents have witnessed cases of their colleagues being subjected to pressure.
\nVery alarming is the clear statistical relation between the pressure and the dynamics of the personal income of the journalists for the last 5 years.\u00a0Journalists who have been subject to pressure prevail\u00a0in the group where the incomes have declined, while their colleagues, who claim they have never suffered from pressure, fall in the group with clear pay rise.
\nThe most common kind of pressure, according to 70% of the journalists is the one coming from the outside, but exercised by employers and owners who defend the interests of close political or economic allies. The internal pressure in newsrooms is a common practice for the editors-in-chief, according to over 60% of the respondents. Another 30% confess that they do not need to be reminded what is \u201cright\u201d to do in their work, as they practice self-censorship quite regularly.<\/p>\nNetizens survey<\/h3>\n
\nA total of\u00a080.8% of the netizens say that they are motivated to produce media content because this allows them to focus on topics of their personal interest. Over\u00a082.6%of the respondents believe that the role of citizen \u00a0journalism is to compensate the defects of the traditional media. About a half – 52% of the respondents believe the freedom of expression in Bulgaria is poor, while 40% say it is \u201csatisfactory\u201d.\u00a046.15%\u00a0of them claim they have been a subject to pressure, while\u00a0the other 53.85%\u00a0deny any violations of their freedom.
\nThe results of the survey were presented at an open debate with the participation of Boris Gurov, sociologist, Nelly Ognynova, media law expert, Spas Spasov corespondent for Dnevnik and Capital in Varna, Konstantin Pavlov-Komitata, blogger. Moderator of the debate, which took place at The Center for culture and debate Red House on 25th<\/sup>\u00a0of June, \u00a0was the journalist from the Bulgarian National Radio Irina Nedeva.
\n\u201eI would like to focus on the fusion of money \u2013 media \u2013 power and the deformations it has caused to the media market in Bulgaria. There is no doubt that the number one problem is the concentration of media and the lack of transparency in the media ownership\u201d, said Nelly Ognyanova.
\n\u201eThere is a radical difference in the quality of the journalists’\u00a0work in\u00a0 the national media and the conditions for their regional representatives\u201d, said Spas Spasov.
\nAccording to Konstantin Pavlov-Komitata \u201c the survey gives a picture of Bulgaria the way it existed several weeks ago ( before the mass protests began) and it helps us to observe the media landscape in a prerevolutionary situation\u201d<\/p>\nMaria Cheresheva, Vice-President of AEJ-Bulgaria, called up on the all participants in the debate \u00a0that it will be good if \u201cwe all stand for initiatives based on the problems, identified by the survey\u201d, adding that \u2013\u201cAEJ-Bulgaria would be happy to work with people and organizations that share the same ideas\u201d.<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n
\u201cThis survey is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Department of State. The contents are the responsibility of Association of European Journalists-Bulgaria and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of State or the United States Government.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n