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

Abstract

A well-known problem with the media in Bulgaria is that most of the commercial media barely survive on purely market terms but rather operate as publicity and influence-generating devices of primarily domestic business groups. Instead of serving the citizens by promoting the values of freedom of speech and the freedom of information in a functioning democracy, the media in Bulgaria tend to engage in trading-in-influence practices, often serving other, non-media-related business interests of their owners. A brief overview of the characteristics of the Bulgarian media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) constitutes an optimum introduction to this key problem, exemplifying how the ‘business’ models in use have transformed the media into publicity departments of (often under-cover) business and political interests.