No one could have ever imagined to see a show like this aired live – Bulgarian police occupying a TV studio and trying to prevent a broadcast.

The reason? Just because the TV7 channel has an outstanding debt that must be repaid! As if others, including TV stations, are free of debt.

We are back to the 1970s – in Chile, Portugal, Greece, Africa… No, that’s impossible, probably what I saw was a dream -  a bad, ugly, absurd and unbelievable dream.

No, it wasn’t a dream!

Even the simplest arithmetic is showing that a TV channel off air is worth just a fraction of the value of an operating one and no PC server, computer, camera or whatever else piece of hardware could repay any debt. This means that if someone has aimed to score a goal for a certain political or business team, he has actually scored a huge own goal.

But it wasn’t just someone's blunder. It was someone scoring into Bulgaria's own net.

I won’t speak about the arrogant and outrageous behavior of police, sequestrators, bailiffs and all sorts of outside people toward the journalists and officials of TV7 – a channel that has been particularly balanced and professional over the past year. I’ll also swallow somehow the issue of the freedom of speech – the mother of all freedoms in modern democracies. I’ll do that even though it’s very hard to swallow. I’ll even try to forget this blatant act of petty revenge – God knows by whom and God knows for what.

What I call own goal, however, is the video footage already being aired by all international television networks.

I can’t imagine even for a second what foreign viewers would think watching this footage, I just can’t do that.

And because a considerable part of the lives of all of us and particularly those involved in the PR business has been devoted to proving what a magnificent country Bulgaria is, what great ambitions we Bulgarians have, how well motivated, educated and super-intelligent we are (this is the truth and I will forever repeat it) – today’s own goal, these ugly and absurd scenes deprived us of the few arguments we had at our disposal to prove our point.

No power on Earth could convince someone who has seen this footage - anywhere in the world – that Bulgaria is a democratic country. We could pour millions of dollars, hundreds of millions, into tourism, investment and education advertisements abroad but they will be unable to wipe the shame off the face of Bulgaria, the country we love and prize so much.

And it is this feeling of shame that has introduced a new word into the Bulgarian language.

In the place of the tiny and fragile image we’ve had in the eyes of the rest of the world now we have something else.

We have a no-image.

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