{"id":2331,"date":"2015-08-21T13:08:18","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T10:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/?p=2331"},"modified":"2015-08-21T13:08:18","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T10:08:18","slug":"the-closure-of-presa-and-tema-another-alarming-signal-about-the-state-of-the-bulgarian-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/the-closure-of-presa-and-tema-another-alarming-signal-about-the-state-of-the-bulgarian-media\/","title":{"rendered":"The closure of \u201cPresa\u201d and \u201cTema\u201d- another alarming signal about the state of the Bulgarian media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Association of European Journalists-Bulgaria (AEJ – Bulgaria) wishes to express its solidarity with the journalists of\u201cPresa\u201d and \u201cTema\u201d. The two media were closed on August 1, 2015.
\nThe news about the closure of the two media causes a strong concern about the status of journalism in the country. Journalists from both media were informed that they will be losing their jobs witha two day notice, which is in sharp contrast with the principles of transparency and good governance in business. \u201cPresa\u201d and \u201cTema\u201d closed operation just two weeks after another controversial event – their transfer from the previous owner \u201cUnited Free Media\u201d AD (UFM)to the \u201cIntegrated Road Systems\u201d JSC, which, as the UFM, owes substantial sums to the bankrupt Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB).
\nWhat is even more disturbing is that a vast part of Bulgarian media operate in a financially unsustainable manner and, as \u201cPresa\u201d and \u201cTema\u201d, are among the major debtors of CCB, as revealed after an investigation <\/a>carried out by \u201cBulgarian Protest Network\u201d. Besides UFM, who have a non-performing loan granted by a related to the CCB company amounting to 2.5 million lv., other beneficiaries of such schemes are GM Press (publisher of\u201cStandard\u201d, \u201cMaritza\u201d, \u201cStruma\u201d,\u201cHaskovo Maritza\u201d andBlitz.bg) with a credit of 6.4 million euros and Pro News Bulgaria (owner of the newspapers\u201cTrud\u201d, \u201c24 Hours\u201d and \u201c168 Hours\u201d), who received a loan of 6.5 million euros.
\nThe current practice media to be used for political aims while at the same timethey receive funding through a bank that was drainedbut where the government pumped huge money in,is against the society best interests. The recent victims are journalists who lost their jobs when the scheme fell apart. In this regard we express our outrage at the fact that the Bulgarian judicial system has not yet sought the responsibility for what happened to the CCB – abank that was also corrupting the entire media environment with the active involvement of politicians, who at the moment are still factors and apply new tools for influence.
\nWe appeal to reades to \u00a0be critical to the media they choose to inform themselves from, and thus not to contribute to the promotion of unethical practices and journalism that serves political interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news about the closure of the two media causes a strong concern about the status of journalism in the country. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,972,965,967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-from-aej-bulgaria","category-latest-news","category-media-freedom","category-positions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","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=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/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=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}