Judging editors

There are places where editors in reach of judges who find their verdicts publicly questioned would summon said editors to chambers or open court, and quite possibly send them down to cells to contemplate the error of their ways. But Bulgarian judges do not have British editors in their reach.
 
(Although some editors should be a bit tougher on the fact-checking, as I have seen innumerable matters of record screwed up, such as whether Shields was on his way to or from that Champions League match, which at least one report placed incorrectly in Bulgaria instead of Turkey. Does that matter, you ask, in the broader scheme of things? To journalists, it is supposed to.)
 
What about the Bulgarian media? British media organisations that phoned The Sofia Echo were eager to know what the word was on Main Street Bulgaria. Sorry to disappoint anyone for whom the story loomed large, so I shall say as gently as possible that Main Street Bulgaria was striding on with other thoughts on its mind and not much more than, in most cases, passing irritation at Straw’s decision.

The fact is that, especially after Shields was transferred to a UK jail, the Bulgarian-language media lost practically all interest in the story, doing little more than occasionally reporting UK media reports about the saga -- but we've already mentioned Google news.
 
The Shields pardon story was mentioned in the opening headlines of that day’s 8pm news bulletin on the national public broadcaster but was consigned fairly low down in the running order, considering that there were several stories of much more compelling interest, among them the fact that Prime Minister Boiko Borissov was in Brussels lobbying the European Union.
 
Not many Bulgarian-language news websites offer individual hit counters on stories. One that does is Dnevnik.bg, and by the morning after the Shields pardon, the story had reached second-most-read status – but had only about 25 per cent of the impressions gained by a story that broke much later, the outcome of the Bulgaria-Netherlands volleyball match; while very close behind the Shields story, and gaining fast, was an opinion piece by a Dnevnik writer critical of President Purvanov’s political stunts against the Prime Minister. By noon, the Shields story had dropped out of the top five altogether, although the crit of Purvanov was doing rather well, and was in second place.
 
That unscientific measure of public opinion, reader comments posted under stories, showed that most of those who bothered to write down their thoughts were anti-Straw and anti-Shields, meaning that the pardon was written off as a cynical political move by a politician whose party cannot afford to lose votes (that is a polite translation and summary).
 
Pro-Shields campaigners liked to liken him to the Bulgarian nurses in Libya held for years on fake charges and run through kangaroo courts, but one reader who commented on the Shields pardon story on another Bulgarian-language website likened it to the case of Maxim Staviski, the Bulgarian two-time world champion ice skater who caused a death and serious injury while driving under the influence of liquor. The person who wrote the comment implied that, as Staviski had got off lightly, with an order to pay compensation to the families of the victims and no jail time, Shields had got the benefit of public influence.
 
Among the comments, there should be no failure to mention those who interpreted the decision by Straw as a further indictment against Bulgaria’s court system, already much-criticised by the European Commission, among others. But the majority were of the belief that it was politics, and not natural justice, that had propelled Shields from behind the prison bars. I feel no need to translate and repeat the somewhat more extremely abusive comments about Shields. But it was notable that one website’s background case file on Shields, compiled long before the pardon, had at the bottom of the page a link to "other football hooliganism stories".
 
Only one television station did a voxpop on the Shields pardon (voxpops, of course, have the same statistically representative authenticity of website forum comments – that is, none) and those shown on the station’s late bulletin wrote off Straw’s decision as an act of political desperation.
 
That, as they say, is the story so far. Many questions remain, such as the commonly-asked one that if Shields was not guilty, will the other frequently-named suspect be prosecuted? Can this person be put on trial at all, or does the Bulgarian conviction still stand, thus barring the opening of a new prosecution for the same offence? Surely such a prosecution can take place only in Bulgaria, and will those who doubted the courts the first time trust them a second time, and if so, why? Shields was ordered to pay compensation – does the pardon mean that he can get it back, and if so, from whom? Does the Straw pardon expunge Shields’s criminal record, and if it does, in just one country or both?
 
These are serious questions, and it is time for media reporting drained of emotion and prejudged opinion, and seeking what everyone has wanted since that summer night more than four years ago – the true facts.