site.btaMedia Watchdog Lashes Back at PM Denkov's Criticism

The Council for Electronic Media (CEM) finds unacceptable the assessments and suggestions made by the Prime Minister about CEM, the media regulator said in a position, circulated on Tuesday. 

Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov on Monday held a Q&A session with members of the public and media outlets that was livestreamed on the official Facebook page of the Council of Ministers, in which he criticized CEM's work by saying: "What matters for combating disinformation is the functioning of the entities related to journalist ethical standards. The Council for Electronic Media (CEM) is obviously not doing its job. Journalists who report untrue facts and are probably aware that they are untrue cannot go unpenalized in some way". Asked for comment on a statement by CEM Chair Sonia Momchilova that "lies, too, have a right to life," the PM said: "The very fact that the CEM Chair can utter such a phrase shows that she is not in the right place."

CEM argues that what was expressed by Denkov shows ignorance of CEM's powers as defined in the Radio and Television Act; ignorance regarding the persons on whose activities CEM is competent; failure to understand that the professional standards for journalistic work, set out in the Code of Ethics of the Bulgarian Media, are monitored by the Ethics Committee (a self-regulatory body) of the National Council for Journalism Ethics.

The representatives of the Government and of Parliament would do well to take into account the findings and recommendations in each of the reports of the European Commission on the Rule of Law by adjusting their own behaviour with regard to the independence of the media regulator and of all media in the country, says CEM's position.

The Council for Electronic Media draws attention to the fact that in the past year it has carried out more than 24 000 hours of monitoring of television and radio programmes. Within the framework of its powers, it has also conducted eight focused observations on the war in Ukraine, which include analyzing the problem of disinformation.