Reporters face obstacle run in corruption-hit Bulgaria

Cartoonist Hristo Komarnitski and his colleagues had no illusions: launching a satirical journal was always going to be tricky in Bulgaria, new holder of the EU presidency but also ranked as the bloc’s worst press freedom violator.

But they didn’t expect that almost none of the 10,000 copies of the first issue of their “Prass-Press” humoristic journal would reach the newspaper stands when it launched in March.

The cartoonists accuse MP and businessman Delyan Peevski of exercising control over newspaper distribution. Peevski, 37, is the registered owner of five Bulgarian newspapers and his supposed buisness and political influence makes him one of the favourite targets of their drawings.

Press freedom in Bulgaria under attack ahead of EU Presidency

Bulgarian opposition parties exposed on Tuesday (12 December) what they see as an attempt to silence and close down media considered unfriendly to the government of Boyko Borissov. Bulgaria will take over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU from 1 January.

However in a letter to AFP, Peevksi states: “I do not own, either directly or indirectly, any press distribution companies”. His name does not appear on any of the company records of press distributors in Bulgaria.

Prass-Press continues to appear on the internet and is distributed by hand by volunteers in the provinces.

“We had no idea about all the problems that were about to hit us,” Komarnitski told AFP. “But we don’t go as far as our fellow cartoonists in Britain or France, who are much more brutal”.

“There is no alternative for us, no choice… The (media) situation is going from bad to worse,” he added.

As Bulgaria took the rotating EU helm on January 1, its press industry is mired in “corruption and collusion between media, politicians, and oligarchs,” according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The pressure group says M. Peevski “controls nearly 80% of print media distribution.”

Since joining the bloc a decade ago, Bulgaria has tumbled down in the annual RSF press freedom ranking from sharing the 35th place with France in 2006 to 109th out of 180 countries in 2017 — by far the worst placed EU member state.

‘Chronic’ self-censorship

Some observers say there is, paradoxically, a correlation between this deterioration and Bulgaria’s desire to improve its image as the bloc’s poorest and most corrupt country.

Authorities want “Brussels (to) believe that there is progress” in their anti-graft fight and therefore try to muffle investigative journalism, according to opposition newspaper columnist Svetoslav Terziev, who also teaches journalism at Sofia University.

In 2014 oligarch Tzvetan Vassilev wrote to Commission President José Manuel Barroso and other Commissioners, seeking assistance to silence Terziev, accused of “malicious falsehood” in interpreting the Commission’s report on Bulgaria. The journalist added among the names of the people referred to in the report those of Delyan Peevski, a controversial businessman, his mother Irena Krasteva, owner of the New Bulgarian Media Group Holding and banker Tzvetan Vassilev, whom he calls their “creditor”.

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Vassilev’s bank CCB went bankrupt the same year. Billions were lost. Vassilev sought protection in Serbia, who so far resists the Bulgarian requests to extradite him.

Like in other ex-communist countries, Bulgaria has a large number of media outlets, but ownership tends to be opaque and concentrated in the hands of a few.

“It is like Russian dolls – when you open one, there is another one inside. There is an official owner of the media outlet but everybody knows that it is not the actual owner, there is someone else behind,” said Christian Spahr, head of the regional media programme of the German Konrad Adenauer foundation.

Bulgaria’s opaque entanglements between political and economic interests have indeed transformed journalism into an obstacle course for reporters.

More than 90% of the Bulgarian journalists polled recently by the Association of European Journalists declared that interference with their work was frequent.

“Self-censorship has become a chronic illness,” the study summed up.

‘Sicily-style’ threats

In 2016, “Prass-Press” cartoonist Chavdar Nikolov saw all his comic strips deleted from the websites of the media group that he worked with, after he depicted Prime Minister Boyko Borisov as chief of a civil militia hunting migrants.

Also last year, television journalists found themselves threatened with sacking by a lawmaker during a live broadcast.

Physical aggression is also common, according to reporters.

Atanas Chobanov from the investigative website Bivol.bg said he and his colleagues were regularly subjected to intimidation “with Sicily-style messages”.

The US International Research and Exchanges board (IREX), a non-profit group campaigning for independent press rights, has denounced the “visible political pressure” on leading Bulgarian national media.

It also highlighted the growing impact of so-called truncheons — “tabloid newspapers, online news sites, and television channels used by local oligarchs to exert influence, ruin the reputations of political and business opponents, and manipulate public opinion.”

The government uses EU funds earmarked for the press sector as leverage “to make the media benevolent” towards those in power, Chobanov added.

The result: only 10% of the Bulgarians polled in a recent study said they believed in the independence of their media.

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