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Why Public Service Broadcasting
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Note:I think it is interesting to reproduce here an article published in 1994 and signed by Mr. Elieser Alfandari, a prestigious Bulgarian researcher of mass-media, editor in the daily "Demokracia". Even though there are two and a half years since Mr. Alfandari wrote the article this is more actual than ever. The title of this article is "Bulgarian Media Today - The Censor and His Mentor", and it constitutes also a competent point of view on the history of the last 7 years of Bulgarian radio and television broadcasting.Here is the article: "In Bulgaria there are no media laws. The law of the press had functioned till 1946 and after it was repealed the role of regulating mechanism, as well as of censorship, was played by the decisions and the congress documents of the former communist party and by the acts of the government stemming from them. In the end of 1989 the first attempts were made at creating a press law - and in 1991 a law on radio and television. The efforts in this direction have continued but the main obstacle is the strong political polarisation of Bulgarian society. Until very recently Gudyou and Penyou, two characters of Assen Sirakov's Saturday radio broadcast "12 Plus Slap" which is a humorous version of the news broadcast "12 Plus 3", have entertained the audience with humour concerning the politicians. But after the broadcast on 23rd October, 1993, when they dared ironical remarks for President Zhelyu Zhelev, the two characters were forced to limit themselves on slapping their women instead of "slapping" the politicians. The present variety of information and opinions, compared to the monotony of the communistic stagnation in journalism, is only a misleading illusion of free journalism and free public access to it. In actual fact the opportunity to speak and write has been emancipated in Bulgaria in a way as to provoke parody and revulsion. First, this has been done without any kind of legal norms and without any moral whatsoever. The syndrome of the savage who easily turns freedom into anarchy has been used successfully for the flourish of the communistic pornopress which was one of the earliest stages in the laundering of red money. Second, the opportunity of expression does not mean necessarily informational pluralism which is the only true criterion for democracy in journalism and society. There is nothing which even slightly resembles pluralism because the different social subjects do not have equal freedom of access to the media and the other means of public information. And what shall we say then about the so-called ratings and sociological inquiries? The parody of freedom of expression and of free journalism is the result of the fact that the present censor does not act openly but hides behind different covers. The first of them is represented by the so-called private press. To a great extent it is this press to which we owe the introduction of verbal and imaginative non-discipline, defamation, blackmail, fabrications, gossip and anonymous calumniation. The source, however, of the present state censorship is the Parliamentary environment. But is it normal for Parliament to function as a censor since this is by virtue an executive function typical only for some of the sectors of the executive power, whereas Parliament is only a legislative organ? The fact that the plenary hall dismisses and appoints the directors of radio and television could not be so dangerous if after the first staff changes since 10th November 1989 a new media law came into force. The draft law on radio and television, however, is still on the stage of discussions in the Parliamentary commissions and has remained on since the beginning of 1992. In the meantime the dismissals of directors have become recurrent event, all of them done with the too evident desire of the Bulgarian Socialist party to politicise the media in its own favour, which in the long run has been completed. The staff dictatorship of the Parliament has led to another paradox: law-makers feel themselves very comfortable as regards with journalism in a lawless situation. And still another fact has become obvious: the highest institution of the state can be violated by the former communists in order to censor in their own favour the contents of information. The Parliamentary Commission for Radio and Television, in spite of some single voices, is only a continuation of the dictatorship-censorship function of the Parliament in regards to the media and in such a way it willingly, or unwillingly, plays the role of executive power. In this respect it is unique among all other commissions of the Parliament. As early as 16th November 1992 on a special briefing the Commission stated that it would introduce in the plenary hall not only the draft law on radio and television but also a law of the National Library so that to become of the rate of the Congress Library in the United States...If we leave aside the sad irony and a certain feeling of megalomania, what remains is the crying need of the journalists to have a law in the frame of which they will feel comfortable and to know exactly what is the essence and encompass of their rights. It is evident, however, that among the politicians in the Parliament and the forces which support them there is no will and wish to deprive themselves of the power over radio and television, let alone to make these institutions based on firm social and legal ground, as is foreseen in one of the variants of the draft laws. The supported by the Parliament informational lawlessness and its censorship behaviour concerning the media initiates lawlessness and anarchy in the other power structures and particularly in the executive. All the more that the high administration is intervening unceremoniously in the choice of staff and content of the electronic media. What else but repression and actual censorship are the series of blows dealt by Mr. Berov's government against different sectors of the information sphere: the dismissal of the director of television and the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA); increase in the taxes collected from the news agents; the proposition to introduce surtax on the press, including taxation of the incomes from advertisement. If this rough approach has as alleged justification the failure of the budget, in no other terms but party-political can be defined the intervention of senior officials in the content of information and in such a ruthless way that not only the structure but the very typology of newspapers and broadcasts is changed. This is what happened with the above mentioned radio broadcast "12 Plus slap". It is obvious that at the veiled suggestions from the Presidency it is being from strict-political to humorous-domestic broadcast. We should also mention the downright threats articulated even by some of the parliamentarians of the opposition anti-communist union (UDF) toward some of the few dignified and objective, as far as this is possible, editors like for example "Otechestven Vestnik Newspaper". The press-centre of the President has taken the role of outspoken and most severe censor. It is socially dangerous when politicians take up the role of disinformators. Then the press and the media environment become polluted with information from anonymous sources which either turn out to be false or get "lost" somewhere in the social memory, to be retrieved whenever necessary. This phantom influence on society, the institutional origin of bluffs and gossips have only as a secondary goal the corruption of the journalist profession, but there are always available dependent, or having chosen the wrong profession, writing brothers and sisters to do the dirty political job. The general effect however is horrible: the institutional leakage of similar information makes society more aggressive, introduces rudeness, brutality and intolerance in relationships, pushes away from the social consciousness the important aspects of life and diverts the attention from the principal issues, changes the values of society and, what is worse, such information is of no use. The smoke-screen drawn in front of the society by its own representatives in the senior state authorities has found expressions of utmost parody and absurdity in the cases when the media have been forced to multiply informational pandemonium, ersatz pieces of information and sheer nonsense in such proportions and temporal duration that one is left with the impression that the politicians are openly striving to stupefy the people by means of pseudo-information. Especially drastic are the cases when the media propagandise demoralising examples of behaviour, when they recommend to the audience parvenu and vulgar demonstrations of prosperity as a life style. The eloquence of journalists of the occasion of Mr Dogan's wedding ceremony (leader of the Turkish party), not sparing the fact how months pregnant the bride was, has profaned a number of press editions and broadcasts, but it has been also an expression of perversion against the background of all the people who live in poverty in Bulgaria, and especially against the background of the misery of the Turkish electorate. Even though anonymous, the censorship and informational repression of senior state authorities against the citizens of Bulgaria have resulted particularly effectively in the state of journalism itself. And it is not a question of self-censorship mechanisms which now are more stronger than in the time of totalitarianism because they are motivated by the fear not of ideological but of economic repression. But the worse thing is that this seemingly Fourth Power becomes weaker and weaker, without any will of its own. It cannot be denied that the press and the electronic media environment have seen the return of fashionable life recording, forgotten for half a century, that there are a few attempts at investigative journalism and that all comprehensive editions and programmes pay due attention to the political commentary. And yet, there is something false and superficial about this seemingly beautiful facade. The recording of fashionable life is very often reduced to the reportages of vulgar parvenu wealth, not to mention the unwholesome taste for uncovering aspects of strictly intimate human relations by means of gossip and intrigue. Journalist investigations, if any, base their suppositions on dubious connections or on ready-made materials provided by different institutions. Behind the journalistic commentary one can find ideas suggested by politicians and the space of commentary is filled more and more often by politicians themselves, while the journalists are left with the role of interviewers who simply ask questions talked over in advance. On top of this, intelligence and professionalism, which on the whole are in shortage, are becoming more and more politicised and extremely one-sided. If we take for example radio and television, we shall see that the people there have forgot about the existence of Provisional Status for regulation of their activity which is supposed, on paper at least, to give equality to political tendencies and opinions which are broadcast. Lately, for almost a year, the two electronic media are going increasingly to the left and are coloured more and more in red. This is evident by the selection and arrangement of the news and by structural reforms which make room for new very biased broadcasts, like "Observer", and by the inner repression carried out in the two institutions to the taste of the socialistic part of the political spectrum."
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