Bulgaria's Corruption Ranking Hits a New Low in 2024
Bulgaria continues to struggle with high levels of corruption
Propaganda items in media outlets have increased 30-fold from the summer of 2013 till the end of 2016: this is according to the findings of the Foundation for Humanitarian and Social Research, quoted by BNR.
In this survey ‘’Antidemocratic propaganda in Bulgaria’’ the organization identifies four main topics underlying this kind of propaganda: the demise of Europe; the rise of Russia; the corrupt political class in Bulgaria; the United States and NATO as a global hegemon and puppeteer worldwide.
To sum up these conclusions, the foundation first explored 3000 websites. The team found eight of them that provide particularly strong examples of propaganda, and went on studying 3000 articles carried by these websites. It has turned out that the four main themes were most commonly discussed by PIK news agency, A-specto Magazine, the websites Glasove, Russia Today and Pogled Info and the newspapers Trud, Duma and Weekend.
Propaganda language in media tends to intensify in connection of certain events. And while until 2013 it was almost non-existent, the emergence of Kiev’s Maidan unleashed a wave of manipulated information. That same year saw civil protests in Bulgaria against the appointment of Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security.
Antidemocratic propaganda peaked during the annexation of Crimea, the first anniversary since the annexation, the statement of Angela Merkel about refugees, Russia’s intervention in the war in Syria, the NATO summit in Warsaw and during the presidential elections in Bulgaria.
And while media in Bulgaria have increasingly turned into manoeuvring ground of hybrid warfare and are becoming more tangled in oligarchic and political dependencies, Bulgaria has once again occupied the infamous position of the country with the least media freedom in the EU.
The new Reporters Without Borders world index has ranked in 109th due to that it is dominated by corruption, and a merger of media, politicians and oligarchs including Delyan Peevski, an owner of a media group of six newspapers and controlling 80% of the distribution of printed publications.
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