събота, 1 март 2014 г.

The Media in Bulgaria: Business Enterprises or PR Divisions of Business Groups?

в сборника под редакцията на Evangelia Psychogiopoulou Media Policies Revisited : The Challenge for Media Freedom and Independence

Palgrave Macmillan Publishers 2014

Кратко представяне на статията:

The analysis shows that the business models that are predominantly in use by the media in Bulgaria have transformed the media outlets into publicity departments of business and political interests. Actually, they reveal a captured market: the media commonly engage in trading-in-influence practices, driven by their owners’ non-media-related business interests. The licensing practice of the broadcast media regulators demonstrates that reliance on political pressure has been the dominant strategy of the broadcast media to guarantee their market survival. Rather than seeking to introduce more competition in the media sector, to the benefit of media pluralism and free speech, the digital switchover process has been instrumentalised, and in consequence, discredited. Strong media dependence on public funds has also played a key role in ensuring the financial viability of operators, yet has considerably affected their independence. The non-market logic that generally defines media activity in Bulgaria has also been reflected in the fierce wars that have taken place between the media themselves. In these wars, a series state institutions were implicated, intensifying suspicions of the serving of vested interests. In short, the media in Bulgaria do not operate on the basis of business models that serve the interests of citizens; rather they obey politically connected corporate forces, which undermines free speech.