The price of media dependency: the media, banks and offshore financing

For Nikoleta, the main challenge to media pluralism in Bulgaria is the transparency deficit. This results in a media market in which everything is somewhat vague and unclear and happening with insufficiently accurate or reliable data. Another effect is the expansion of a media culture driven by unstable values and dependent upon different power constellations. The question at issue here is whether such characteristics are within the scope of democracy or whether they instead shape a quasi-democratic media realm.

Nikolay Stajkov referenced the case of a falsified interview from 2014, which was actually part of a paid advertisement in Bulgaria’s second largest newspaper, itself at the time owned by Delyan Peevski’s mother. Nikolay Stoyanov is part of the KTB Files team and has been a financial journalist at Capital for the last ten years. Nikolay looked to assess the CCB’s approach to influencing the media Calculations based on various sources from the period 2007-2014 suggest that the CCB spent over 0.5 billion Bulgarian lev on media projects. This included various approaches, from the official acquisitions of newspapers, television stations and their related distribution companies through the provision of maintenance costs, informal control over other media through proxies and funding media outside the group through loans. Combined these approaches had a huge impact on the Bulgarian market and, without even looking into the effects of their use for personal and corporate political purposes, enormously distorted the national media market. Any attempt to compete normally with publications which are financially dependent and can afford to work to a loss entails significant financial difficulties for other competitors. The lowering of ethical standards, with measures such as sales packages comprising adverts and positive coverage, further drains the resources of media outlets who refuse to participate in this model. Additionally, the use of media outlets to discredit opponents depreciates trust in journalism as a profession and this further diminishes support for the media. These are the main ways in which the CCB’s financial influence enabled it to suppress the Bulgarian media and to undermine their critical role in society, providing support to the banker Tsvetan Vasilev and the politician Delyan Peevski, without requiring them to purchase or silence all of the media outlets in the country.

Calculations based on various sources from the period 2007-2014 suggest that the CCB spent over 0.5 billion Bulgarian lev on media projects. This included various approaches, from the official acquisitions of newspapers, television stations and their related distribution companies through the provision of maintenance costs, informal control over other media through proxies and funding media outside the group through loans. Combined these approaches had a huge impact on the Bulgarian market and, without even looking into the effects of their use for personal and corporate political purposes, enormously distorted the national media market. Any attempt to compete normally with publications which are financially dependent and can afford to work to a loss entails significant financial difficulties for other competitors. The lowering of ethical standards, with measures such as sales packages comprising adverts and positive coverage, further drains the resources of media outlets who refuse to participate in this model. Additionally, the use of media outlets to discredit opponents depreciates trust in journalism as a profession and this further diminishes support for the media. These are the main ways in which the CCB’s financial influence enabled it to suppress the Bulgarian media and to undermine their critical role in society, providing support to the banker Tsvetan Vasilev and the politician Delyan Peevski, without requiring them to purchase or silence all of the media outlets in the country.