Is there press freedom in Bulgaria?
Press freedom in Bulgaria exists to the extent that it exists everywhere else in the world. I think that we should not look at press freedom in Bulgaria as something isolated from the criteria that exist in Europe and the US and in all other democratic states. There is no such thing as complete and total freedom, not only in regard to press freedom, but to freedom in general. Freedom is always limited by something, and these limitations are a product of human civilisation. Without such limitations, I think, society could not exist. That is why total press freedom does not exist because otherwise it would threaten the foundations of society. In the past 15 years in Bulgaria, certain rules and criteria about press freedom have developed, and I think that we meet the criteria for press freedom in EU countries and the US. I think this one of the first gains of democracy in Bulgaria after the changes in 1989.

Was the reaction of Bulgarian society appropriate after the blast at the apartment of Vassil Ivanov, investigative journalist from Nova Television?
I think that all the reactions were correct and timely. All Bulgarian institutions expressed their discontent about the blast. I think that the overall reaction of society was appropriate because such incidents damage most of all not press freedom, but the image of the country both at home and abroad.  I think that in any country, such news does not speak well for relations within that country, and in regard to respect for state institutions. Such an incident says only that those people who ordered the blast and carried it out have no respect for the state. If you have respect for society and the state you would never commit an act of vandalism, such as this blast.

All Bulgarian media united in support for Ivanov after the blast. Are only incidents like this capable of uniting the media in the country?
 I do not think that only such incidents are capable of uniting the Bulgarian media. There are even formal organisations uniting the media in Bulgaria. These organisations, whenever necessary, always issue statements when it is relevant to do so. I am talking about the Union of Publishers in Bulgaria and the Union of the National Electronic Media. Their positions on important issues are generally always correct, because they reflect the people who participate in these organisations. These are educated, intelligent people, who have a broad view on the processes going on in our society.  So such unity is a fact. The Code of Ethics was adopted by the media more than a year ago and this is something that should not be underestimated. An incident on such a scale influences society because it is unexpected.  If only 24 hours before the blast, there had been a poll on whether people expected an attack on a journalist, you would have seen that the answer would have been negative. That is why the reaction of society was so strong, because the blast was so unexpected. Thank God that there were no victims. For us, it is more important to remember such incidents, to remember when we react in such a way as a society. I think that in the past few years, the collective memory of society and the media and why not, of business, has been very short. Something happens, and after only a few weeks, we forget about it. People only remember such things when they have a reason to do so. The same happened with this blast. People just stopped talking about it. The media are also to blame because they do not follow the story to the very end. At present, as a human being, I am interested in what has happened to the people whose apartments were also damaged by the blast. Did someone repair their homes, do they need additional help with something? There is no information about it. Even Nova TV, which has been directly involved through Vassil Ivanov, does not show anything. This surprises me as a journalist. If I was news editor at Nova TV I would have assigned a reporter to stay at the damaged building every day and to report what was going on there.

You mentioned the Code of Ethics of the Bulgarian Media. Should there be some other form of guarantee of press freedom in Bulgaria? State guarantees?
There is a law that regulates the broadcast media. There has been quite a discussion in recent years whether there should be a law on the press. In Germany, for example, there is such a law, but here we do not have one. The professional community thought that with the signing of the Code of Ethics, this discussion had been put to an end. My personal opinion is that within at least the next 10 to 15 years, we shall not be able to talk about a law on the press in Bulgaria. Something very extraordinary would have to happen for a new discussion to be started on the issue. I think that at present the existing regulation is enough. We do not need the state to guarantee the press. In the end the market acts as the regulator. However, more work is needed in teaching society how to be more tolerant towards the media because the media is entirely dependent on the market and the readers. If a paper does not sell well, it goes bankrupt. The same applies to TV stations. The only way to get rid of the yellow press in Bulgaria, which causes so much damage to the country, is for people to stop buying such papers. If we are interested in lies, gossip and intrigues, this means that we give market opportunities to these papers, not only to survive, but to profit from us as a society. I do not think that going to court will solve the problem. We saw what happened with the court action that (television personality) Slavi Trifonov started against one such paper. Nothing happened. I tried several years ago to sue a paper and nothing happened as well. However, I realised my mistake, and made peace with colleagues involved, and with some of them, have become good friends.

You were a popular TV face for more than 10 years as a leading journalist at Bulgarian National Television (BNT). Were there times when pressure was put on BNT, or there were attempts to influence your editorial policy?
There has always been influence on the media, and always will be. No one should fool himself that there is no influence on the media anywhere else in the world. It is another thing as to whether this influence changes the media or its policy. BNT had a monopoly on the market for 10 years. bTV appeared in 2000. Before that, we were the only television station in the country and the eight o’clock news, which I led, had an audience of three and a half million viewers every night. Given this, it is completely logical that there was pressure on BNT and attempts to influence its policy. This was pressure almost daily, especially when some political event was happening. Back then, the popular view was that something had happened only if it was shown on BNT. I can say that the team with whom I worked stood its ground. We had never allowed foolishness or lies to be aired on the news. We never allowed someone to make fools out of our viewers. I will give a very important example. January 10, 1997 (protesters calling for special elections surrounded Parliament, with the then BSP government and MPs inside, and the building was set on fire). I was on duty then and the fire in Parliament was still going on, but we still did not have enough information about what really was going on there. Back then one of the executives of BNT, I will not say his name, stopped in the hallway and asked me to issue a statement on the news condemning the people who had gathered. (He said that) I had to say that democracy was in danger, that this was a coup d’etat, and so on. I told him that I was not going to say this to the viewers because it was not part of my duty as a newsreader to give evaluations of situations. I offered that he, in his capacity as a leader of BNT, went live to say these things. I offered him five minutes of air time. He just looked at me, turned around and left. There is always a way to protect yourself and your colleagues. I think that it would have been a big mistake if I had agreed to issue that statement then, without knowing the facts.   
             
You have worked for BNT, then as spokesperson for the Simeon Saxe-Coburg government (2001-05) and today you are the spokesperson for the Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC). What is the difference for working in the media, the government and now in the private sector?
The common thing for me working as journalist, state official and now in the private sector is that I have always been working in public. I have always been talking to society. The difference is, of course, in exactly what I am saying to society. As a newsreader for 10 years, I was the man who had to give the news to the public. I was someone reporting the news. When I become spokesperson for the government, I joined the other side.  Now I had to be the one telling the news to the media and the public. This is a lot more difficult than being a journalist because I had to present the policy of the government in a way that it could be accepted positively by both the media and the public. I had to make clear to people the motives behind every government decision and the consequences that will follow it. This is a very difficult task especially when we are talking about measures that are not popular. However, an unpopular decision has to be explained in a popular way. That was the case when we decided to enter Iraq as part of the antiterrorist coalition. That was unpopular decision, but it was the right one back then, although there were countries in Europe who had other stances, such as France, Germany and Russia. We managed to maintain good relations with everyone, and I think we did well. You must bear in mind that such a decision might cost the term of a government, as was the case in Spain. The difference for me now, as spokesperson for BTC, is only the name. Here I once again have to present a certain policy to the public and talk and explain decisions and measures and why they had been taken and motivated. Of course the political value of what I was saying as spokesperson for the government was way bigger. Every mistake could have cost the state dearly.

Do you think that after Bulgaria joins the EU something will change in the communication between the media, business and the politicians?
I do not think that anything will change because we already have some traditions in this regard. I do not think that Bulgaria is experiencing something different to the EU countries. Look at Italy. Berlusconi is the biggest media tycoon there, and you will not hear criticism of him from his media. I think we are way ahead of Italy in this respect. In Bulgaria, you can hear almost every media outlet criticising both the government and opposition, without fearing anything.   
 
What is your view of press freedom in the Balkans? 
From my trips with the then prime minister Saxe-Coburg, I can tell you that, for example, Greece as an EU member has good standards of communication between the media, society, and the private sector. The business that controls the media in Greece uses, to some extent, the same standards as Berlusconi. We are lucky here in Bulgaria that we do not have a businessman of such a scale, someone who owns newspapers, TV and radio stations. The owner of bTV, Rupert Murdoch, would never try personally to protect particular interests in Bulgaria through his media. Nova TV is owned by Greek businessmen, but I do not see it propagating Greek policy in Bulgaria. It is slightly different with the newspapers, because it is always very easy to tell which paper supports which policy. There are left-wing and right-wing papers in Bulgaria and we all know about them.

In Serbia after Milosevic, the media started its natural development. Romania will join the EU together with Bulgaria and we see that the standard of press freedom there is satisfying. I do not want to comment on the situation in Macedonia, because it is a little bit too complicated.