The degree of political demagoguery is incomparably greater today than it once was. Accordingly, the service staff in the face of the media suffers from exactly this disease.
This was commented to the BNR by the journalist Ioto Patsov, a correspondent of “Worker Affairs” who, together with Lyuben Antonov, entered the forbidden radiation zone during the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
„I wrote a novel because I was shocked by the events in Bulgaria during the Revival process. It seemed to me that nothing more terrible could happen to the country than what I then witnessed. It's just that I've witnessed, since then, how Bulgaria forgot all its achievements in the name of dubious propaganda of things that are absolutely unattainable”, said Ioto Patsov.
„I am very disappointed in my best hopes. This is what a person who has passed the middle of his life is telling you, and I have no doubt that young people like you look with hope and confidence, added the journalist.
According to him, “today's journalism and media are more unfree than those before 1989"
„Because self-censorship existed in our country, but it was the result, to a large extent, of personal convictions. Self-censorship today is the result of conforming to the status quo, and in an unforgiving way. There is an information blackout, I believe, on multiple topics. There is an information blackout regarding the events in Israel, the war in Ukraine, BRICS, China, etc. We cannot choose the information and the information sources, and this is also the result of the information blackout, said Patsov.
Patsov and Lyuben Antonov entered the forbidden radiation zone of Chernobyl and were then placed for treatment in a hospital in Makarov.
„For Chernobyl, to mention the heroism of some of the people who still put their lives on the line to prevent the worst, if this is white propaganda, I am all for talking about these people. Because just as the monstrous carelessness of a vicious practice caused Chernobyl, so the heroism of brave men prevented a terrible catastrophe," commented the journalist.
"At the hospital in Makarov, Antonov and I met and took pictures with two of the boys - a fireman and a policeman, who were living their last days because they had entered, despite the ban, to save their dead comrades. Coincidentally, we were spared radioactive contamination because the prevailing winds blew the bulk of the cloud in other directions – northwest.
If this is true, Bulgaria was not exposed to intense pollution. Propaganda works both ways, and the tales of giant lettuces and a secret intent to exterminate us are theories that have no basis in fact. Lyuben Antonov and I survived one such entry into such a zone and that is a fact."
"I have no idea what the Bulgarian elite ate and drank. We were given special care at the hospital. We were on a special diet, we were examined and our health was guaranteed. They fed us a diet for cosmonauts to prevent the effects of radioactive factors," Patsov said.