site.btaPolitical Parties' Media Exposure Discussed at Parliamentary Committee Hearing

Perceived imbalances in the media exposure which political parties get on Bulgarian National Television (BNT) and Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) were discussed on Thursday during a hearing of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) at the National Assembly Committee on Culture and Media.

“There is a very severe imbalance, because it should not only be about seeking the representation of all points of view, but also about giving the opportunity to each one of the political parties to speak,” said Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of the Vazrazhdane party and floor leader of its parliamentary group. He argued: “It is not right and not logical that the largest opposition force [i.e. Vazrazhdane] has no presence in some of the programmes, or only a symbolic presence in others. It is also not right that a political force comparable to us, such as Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria, has three, four, even five times greater presence in the media – in the state media.”

Culture and Media Committee Deputy Chair Angel Yanchev said: “We, Vazrazhdane, do not understand the politics of silence.” He noted: “What I tried to call for is not that CEM should act as some kind of censor, but that it should provide methodological support to the public television broadcasters through oversight, because they are sinking in a lack of understanding of what pluralism is, what a clash of opinions is. And for that reason, they are losing their listeners and viewers.”

MP Kiril Veselinski noted that his party, MECh, has been in the National Assembly since October 2024 and has had zero appearance on Panorama, BNT’s signature programme broadcast every Friday evening.

MP Toma Bikov responded by saying that it is impossible to invite all nine parliamentary parties to Panorama every time.

“We conduct focused monitoring on specific topics, not on specific appearances by one or another political force. The law does not allow us to do that, and we do not allow ourselves to do it either. In this sense, we carry out a fair number of focused observations. Right now, a third consecutive monitoring on the coverage of the euro is upcoming,” said CEM Chair Simona Veleva.

She added: “I want to underline strongly that neither CEM gives instructions to journalists about who, when, and how to invite, and from which political force those representatives should be, nor do the management boards and directors-general of the two public broadcasters give instructions to journalists about who and whom to invite.”

CEM’s Gabriela Naplatanova noted that the regulator is not supposed to monitor the political pluralism situation beyond what is written in the Election Code and the agreements signed with the Central Election Commission before each election campaign.

“It was a good discussion. It’s unlikely that there will be any concrete result, but still you did what you could,” MP Kostadin Hadzhiiski (Velichie), Deputy Chair of the Culture and Media Committee, said to the CEM representatives present at the hearing.