The rulers in Bulgaria know how to skip uncomfortable questions. The leader of the DPS-New Beginning is the most skillful with his "lap", "greasy coffee", "Mr. Cash", "poodles"... Elsewhere, the opposition criticizes the government, in our country it is the opposite.
There is no good government in itself, says Chomsky, and in order not to lose its democratic appearance, it must be under constant media control. Therefore, a decisive political battle in democracies is for the government to be under the control of the media, instead of the other way around, as is the case in dictatorships. The temporary outcome of the battle is measured by the annual freedom of speech rankings. The decline in them shows that the authorities (legislative, executive, judicial, presidential, economic, behind-the-scenes) manage to hinder the critical function of journalism.
How is conformism created in society
There are various forms in which it does so, the most direct of which is pressure (with dismissals, threats, slap-in-the-face cases, etc.) on journalists who are willing to investigate those in power and ask them uncomfortable questions. But the damage from the pressure is not only on those on whom it is exerted, but - even more so - on the others, in whom it triggers an instinct for self-preservation that leads them to media conformism. Their opinions, filtered through the “fear of retaliation“ filter create false perceptions of the audience, mislead them, so that the damage ultimately falls on all of you. To protect yourself when you find that the interviewer is keeping quiet about uncomfortable questions (the comfortable ones are not journalism, but political PR), simply change the channel/newspaper/website.
An even easier way for politicians to avoid uncomfortable questions is to skip journalism altogether and retreat to their social media pages, from where they can speak to the public. In this way, they take away the public's voice, because it speaks through journalists. When there is no one to object to them, politicians begin to believe in their infallibility until they are beaten into an autocracy. Especially if they have a factory production of likes and flattering comments. Such communication is intra-electoral – disinterests the wavering and hardens the already hard core. Even if it gives a lead in the elections, it is due more to the controversial influence of social networks than to the undeniable qualities of a politician, and his victory is shared with the rulers of the networks.
Musk immediately stood by Trump with the firm intention of exercising power together. And behind Georgescu's initial success in Romania, Putin's smile was visible. In Bulgaria, we are still playing (more and more) with physical vote buying (reference Pazardzhik) and we do not have an eloquent example of virtual intervention, but the expectation is that the pro-Russian candidate may provide it in the upcoming presidential elections.
The briefing as a method for bypassing the media
One way or another, Bulgarian politicians in power have learned to bypass - by jeep or on foot - the traditional media. It has become a trend for leaders such as Boyko Borisov, Rumen Radev, Delyan Peevski, Ahmed Dogan, Slavi Trifonov not to give interviews to national television stations and generally to avoid - from insistently to completely - journalistic formats. As a “compensation” they managed to impose improvised briefings, most often upon entering or leaving the National Assembly and at public events, where the desired interlocutor can possibly be quickly and incidentally “briefed“.
The Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language says about the briefing: “A short meeting with journalists to summarize current, up-to-date information from an institution“. The word “briefing” is also used shows that communication will be frankly unequal along the “top-bottom” axis: the talking head of a politician appears from above above a forest of microphones in the hands of reporters who jostle and shout to gain his favor. And he is in a position to choose the moment to leave and the questions to answer, never more than one or two per media outlet.
Thus “conditionally“ blames the critical function of journalism, because it requires a series of questions, in which each subsequent one is asked according to the weak points in the answer to the previous one. The briefing offers exactly the opposite model - that of sensational journalism. It encourages colorful phrases and labels (there is no time for more complex thoughts) that cross ethical boundaries (otherwise they will not be remembered). And you are all the more efficient, the less you “crack”, so that you can afford to say something that others do not allow themselves. Rhetorical causticity displaces factual persuasiveness. Here the leader of “DPS-New Beginning” is the most skillful with his “lap“, “greasy coffee“, “Mr. Cash“, “poodles“, “drebey“, “nenoirs“, “railings“rdquo;””””””& It came quite unexpectedly from the ITN against the backdrop of their own media and political practice, which has turned playing with "another's personal life" into a livelihood (just think of the sketches with Lili Ivanova's age). But even if we forget this, it is still difficult to accept that something suddenly happened to them and they became concerned about the right to personal privacy, because the bill lacks one essential exception. Those who perform a public role - especially a politician and especially in government. They must have an incomparably lower threshold of personal privacy so that the society, which depends on their decisions, can know how sincere their public role is, i.e. to what extent it corresponds to the values and behavior in their private lives.
It is precisely there, when they do not wear a mask “for the people”, that investigative journalism is able to discover “shameful secrets” that explain their overt actions. The shameful secret of the bill is that it wanted to prevent exactly this. So that journalists can never investigate those in power when they do something illegal, because these people in power will naturally not do it publicly, but in their “free time”, which belongs to their private lives.
The bill was withdrawn, but the ruling party has another tried and tested method of protecting itself from criticism - by redirecting it to the opposition in the person of the PP/DB. Contrary to all logic, because it is in the public interest for the media, together with the opposition, to limit the bad practices of the government. Instead, the PP/DB are attacked throughout the public arena, as if the government, the services, the prosecutor's office were theirs…
A rehearsal for the presidential vote?
And it's no wonder it turns out that although they didn't buy votes in Pazardzhik, almost everyone else did, which will only benefit those who really did. And this looks like a "dry rehearsal" for the presidential elections - it's very likely that the battle there will be between a bought and a virtually manipulated vote, especially if the citizen sleeps disgusted.