Author: Alexander Detev
You are joining the project “Off the air“ together with Maria Tsantsarova. Why is it important for this project to succeed?
Nikolay Staykov: The deterioration of the media environment in Bulgaria necessitates it. It also opens up this opportunity - to have a project that is funded directly by the audience. We are not the first, but I hope that this model will be sustainable. So far, the reactions have been extremely positive.
The influence on editorial policy has long been evident in the large media in Bulgaria. We have witnessed their withdrawal from major topics and genres - the first victim was investigative journalism. This is also my great sorrow. We need to think about the recent landmark investigations on major television stations. We are also seeing a retreat in terms of objectivity and dependence, and there are many reasons.
For years, we have been witnessing the delegitimization of journalists in general. Why is it important for the audience to support the media financially and become the employers of journalists?
Nikolay Staykov: The easiest answer is the most correct - if the truth is important to us, we must support independent journalism. There are too many substitutes for journalism in Bulgaria - there are too many pseudo-journalistic sites that offer a surrogate product. It looks like journalism, but in practice it is not, because it serves political and economic interests. The environment is extremely noisy and polluted, and probably that is precisely why we encounter great support from both colleagues and our potential viewers and readers. The time has come for a free media that is directly funded by the audience.
„Truly sensitive topics are drowning“
In what directions is it crucial to carry out investigations - which networks and interests must be unraveled in order to protect the public interest and public funds?
Nikolai Staykov: Everyone. I want to give an example of surrogate products: very often they sell „investigations“ how non-governmental organizations are funded, for example. It is an important topic for me, because for the last more than nine years I have been part of such an organization - the „Anti-Corruption Fund“ (ACF). Very often we saw „investigations“ against organizations like ours that did not follow the basic principle of journalistic investigations - to reveal a truth that someone is trying to hide. For the financing of the non-governmental sector, information was provided taken directly from the reports and websites of the organizations and donors.
Another very interesting surrogate product is the so-called investigations in cooperation with institutions such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office. In them, a journalist is provided with materials on ready-made investigations submitted to the prosecutor's office. He kind of films the pre-trial proceedings. It has action, suspense, participants and looks like a journalistic investigation, but a spokesman for the prosecutor's office also appears in it and starts talking about the work of his colleagues in a positive tone, well-dressed, smiling. While this is happening, the truly sensitive political and economic topics in society - for example, those on which I worked - "The Eight Dwarfs", "The Notary", the Corporate Banking Case, "Uncle Trevichko", etc. - sinking.
„The Family is regrouping, but it's still there“
„The Eight Dwarfs“, „The Notary“ and the so-called influence brokers in the judicial system are once again in the focus of public attention due to the scandal with the Bulgarian European Prosecutor Teodora Georgieva. Petyo Petrov is missing, and Martin Bozanov is dead, what is happening with the „family“ in the judicial system and these influence groups, how do they operate today?
Nikolai Staykov: „The Family“, as it became popular during the leaked conversations from the previous maneuvers in the prosecutor's office (around the overthrow of Ivan Geshev - editor's note) has regrouped, but it's still there. The most important question is what happens to the main asset of this influence network - the archives of compromising evidence. Both I and my colleagues in the ACF, including Minister Yankulov, have been raising the topic of where the archives of Euroto and Notary are very seriously. We sounded like the authors of conspiracies on this topic, explaining that this compromising evidence is elsewhere. Until the moment when the European Prosecutor Teodora Georgieva was ostentatiously shot down with the extraction of the video from Pepi Euroto's office from these same archives.
Currently, everyone who has ever had contact with this “family“ is terrified that they too could be shot down in this way. Currently, the “family“ is even stronger. When we first exposed it in 2020, it only had a deputy chief prosecutor, and currently it has a chief prosecutor and a Sofia city prosecutor.
Will this be your first topic in “Off Air“?
Nikolai Staykov: I really hope that we are not alone, and that other colleagues will continue to work in this direction. Corruption investigations achieve the greatest results when not just one media outlet, but as many as possible work together in one direction. I want to remind you of “Apartmentgate“, when there were resignations every day. One of the reasons was the enormous pressure on the institutions to react, which was exerted by journalists from many media outlets who worked together.