“I am a moderate optimist,” numerously said Executive Director of Sofia Media Development Center Ognian Zlatev about the future of mass media in Southeast Europe during his visit to AUBG on Tuesday.

Around 30 people, mostly JMC students, attended Zlatev’s lecture in the NAB Auditorium on March 31 entitled “Whatever happened to the Media? (in a robust, democratic Southeastern Europe)”.  Introduced by the organizer, Journalism Professor Phelps Hawkins, Zlatev talked about the media in Southeast Europe after the fall of communism and about the future of journalism in this region.

The Media Development Center (MDC) in Sofia started in 1998 to “promote the activities of independent media in Bulgaria and to foster capacity building of the media by encouraging good practice in journalism, ethics, networking and cross-border cooperation.” MDC (www.mediacenterbg.org) is a non-profit and non-partisan organization. Among other activities, it studies and encourages the development of the free media market, organizes and promotes discussions and conferences about and for the media, as well as trainings for media professionals and journalism students in Bulgaria and abroad.

Zlatev said that he is neither a journalist nor academician and this helps him to objectively overview media. 12 years of experience in MDC gave him “a good look on what’s going on in Southeast Europe.” 

“What happened here, never happened before in human history,” said Zlatev, referring to the almost 20 years of trial and error. “We were young and stupid, now we are old and stupid, maybe wiser.” Eastern European media wanted to quickly catch up with the century-long developments in other countries.

Zlatev said that the development of media since the 1990s had steep ups and downs rather than one continual spike. Right now, according to him, journalism and media are on decline worldwide, the new digital technologies being one of the main reasons. The media in the region are becoming more and more biased because of the dependency on economic interests of the owners.

In Eastern Europe, “the mindset of people is guilty more than any economic crisis” for the economic difficulties of the media. After deliberate separation from each other as well as objective information by the rulers for much of the 20th century, people in the region often do not react well to serious media products.

In the 1990s, media were developing in the Eastern Europe faster than anywhere else, but “with the same pace, they started to bankrupt,” said Zlatev. Afterwards big companies from Austria and Germany came to the market “with the idea to make big bucks quickly.” The big media companies did not and still do not interfere with editorial policy, so the media multiply popular products, such as soap operas, and gossip about celebrities.

On top of this, he said, serious media, initially supported by Western donations, did not learn to be self-sufficient timely. He gave an example of the Serbian B-92 station that started out as a pro-democracy medium and now the TV channel broadcasts both serious programs and entertainment shows like “Big Brother.” According to Zlatev, media should be specialized.

“We did not know, and still do not completely, how to build democracy,” Zlatev said. He agreed that it is hard to pursue journalistic ideals in not well established democracies, where you can “only hope that things will improve.”

Although the developed Western countries assisted the development of liberal states in Eastern Europe, the maxim “West is best” often did not consider local peculiarities when enforcing new principles. Even today, there is no critical mass of people to change the Bulgarian reality, Zlatev said.

To help change the situation, politicians have the responsibility to encourage civil participation through media. Another solution is national television funded by the tax-payer money and serving the interests of the people.