Land of mafia, real estate investment hotspot, tourist destination - these are some of the images of Bulgaria presented in the foreign media. As it progresses along the path to the EU, Bulgaria is increasingly finding itself in the spotlight, for better or worse. PETAR KOSTADINOV, DANNY DRESSER AND BORYANA DZHAMBAZOVA examine how Bulgaria is faring in media coverage by its Balkan neighbours and further afield.
BULGARIA’S profile around the world is patchy, to put it mildly. In the United Kingdom, the recent increase in the amount of coverage of Bulgaria in the property supplements has not altered the fact that any mention of the country still draws a bit of a blank from most people. Elsewhere, there are degrees of ignorance about Bulgaria in the media and among the general public that vary from country to country.
It was ever thus, but the current situation must be seen in the context of recent efforts to bring about a revolution in the country’s PR. The Branding Bulgaria project, which came to fruition in April 2003 after a long consultative process, launched itself on the world with the stated intention of turning things around. It was a joint project on the part of the British Council, the Euro-Bulgarian Cultural Centre, and a team of consultants and representatives of all areas of Bulgarian life, with a strong input from Alan Durant, Professor of Communication at the University of Middlesex. There was a series of workshops and debates in the lead-up to the project’s unveiling. Leah Davcheva, the British Council Sofia-based manager of the programme in 2003, said that outdated misconceptions about Bulgaria could be addressed by highlighting the entrepreneurial spirit of the country’s people, using the area of Trigrad in the Rhodopes as a showcase for that. Ian Stewart, director of the British Council Bulgaria, emphasised the importance of avoiding cliches about yoghurt and rose oil.
The well-known journalist, editor and media expert Georgi Lozanov, who is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Journalism at Sofia University, commenting in general on the PR efforts made in recent years by the Bulgarian government and others, says that they have mainly been old-fashioned and ineffective. “In these days of globalisation and disappearing borders”, he says, “Bulgarian people can create either a positive or a negative image of the country. We are famous around the world for our intellectual capacity, but also for crime.” He believes that the best PR agents are the people themselves.
Ordinary members of the public agree with this view. Vesselina Smith, (31), told us when we chatted to her on a Sofia street, “Organised crime and the recent murders are the main topics about Bulgaria in the foreign news media.”
The follow-up to Branding Bulgaria has taken many forms, including a website at www.experiencebulgaria.org, which continues to provide information about the country, and summarises some of the work that has been done in the wake of the project. One notable exercise was the 2004 survey by Manchester Business School, which gauged perceptions of Bulgaria among British students.
It seems to be the case, though, that, two-and-a-half years after the project working group reported, there is still much to be achieved. Many of the old stereotypes persist.
This year, Bulgaria has featured a few times in the British media. In the early summer, the violence of Liverpool fans in Varna, where they’d stopped off on their way home from their team’s victory against AC Milan in Istanbul, got plenty of attention; not least because the 19-year-old Michael Shields, sentenced to 15 years for an attack on a local barman, vociferously protested his innocence, and was given much credence by the British tabloids, who focused on the supposed injustice of his treatment at the hands of the Bulgarian courts. However, journalist Kosta Stefanov, of the BBC’s Bulgarian section in London, is confident that the case will not tarnish Bulgaria’s image in the UK.
Football again provided an occasion for Bulgaria’s entry into the British headlines in the early autumn, when Lokomotiv Plovdiv played Bolton Wanderers at the Naftex stadium in Bourgas. The Wanderers’ official programme for the match featured a section entitled All Things Bulgarian, which contained some supposedly useful background “information” for the fans. Among the absurd and misinterpreted “facts” was the claim that Bourgas was famous in the past for its vampires. We can only assume that the writers of the piece got the Transylvanian myths about Vlad the Impaler (aka Count Dracula) mixed up in there somewhere, although it’s hard to work out quite how they managed to do that. Wanderers’ fans were also helpfully informed by their club that the citizens of Plovdiv were proud people, despite being descended from “criminals and beggars”. None of this escaped the attention of the Bulgarian sports media, who reported on this ridiculous misrepresentation of their country.
Accompanying the Wanderers on their visit was Spectator journalist Tom Walker, whose article Bulgar and Nasty appeared in the weekly magazine on October 8. “Bulgaria,” he writes. “I’ve been twice now and confess I can never quite understand who runs the place, nor why so many Brits trust it as a retirement home.” Walker continues in this vein, constantly returning to the main thrust of his very narrow commentary, which is to the effect that Bulgaria is basically a corrupt statelet in the hands of a few violent criminal groups. His view of the people of the country is summed up by the impression that traffic on the country roads is characterised by “the occasional Lada filled with angry-looking peasant types”, and he does not even bother to get the name of Veliko Turnovo right, referring to it twice as “Veliki Tarnovo”; nor does he know his rakia from his raki. Different country, mate! Different drink! Many ordinary Bulgarians are aware of this kind of carelessness. As Philip Gologanov, (20), told us on the street: “Most foreigners don’t differentiate Bulgaria from other Balkan countries.”
Walker rightly points out that property is big business in Bulgaria nowadays, and that British incomers to the market have massively fuelled the boom. However, he does not miss the chance to sum up what he sees as the Bulgarians’ cynically mercenary attitude to the phenomenon by quoting a source who claims that the motto of the property business is: “If someone wants to sell at 150 000 euro, put it on the market at 180 000 euro because some idiot is bound to buy it for more”.
A week later, a British resident of Sofia, Neil Connolly, put Walker right on one or two points in his letter to the Spectator. Connolly put forward a much more realistic and balanced view of Bulgaria, which must surely be closer to the opinions of most foreign visitors and expatriates. He attacked Walker’s shallowness head-on, saying that Bulgaria is “a wonderful place for a holiday, and one of the safest countries I know.”
It is certainly true that, in the UK, there has been a general growth in interest over the last few years in overseas property, and Bulgaria is among the most popular territories for investment. The Sunday Times journalists Richard Woods and David Smith claim in their article Is the Global Housing Bubble Set to Burst? (June 19) that “Bulgaria is the next costa del cash”.
However, negative reporting about Bulgaria is not confined to countries as distant, geographically and culturally, as the UK. On the contrary, the country often gets a bad press much closer to home. On November 21, the Serbian weekly Nin published an article about Bulgaria, in which the writer claimed that the Bulgarians were poor, tired and had sexual problems. The feature continued with a portrayal of Bulgarian life in which most people spend nearly all of their salary on food, drive cars that are at least 10 years old, and rarely go to the theatre. The writer obviously hadn’t tried to buy a ticket for Hashove at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia, which is sold out a month in advance. We are to take it, perhaps, that the average resident of Belgrade goes to the theatre no fewer than four times a week. The article’s next assertion is that it will take Bulgaria 63 years to reach a “European” standard of living, and that the only benefit enjoyed by the people here is a visa-free travel regime in Europe which they can’t take advantage of anyway because they’re too poor to go anywhere.
Georgi Lozanov gives some insight into this phenomenon. “Research shows that the image of Bulgaria is more negative in neighbouring countries than in, for example, central Europe. This is due to the fact that there is constant competition between the Balkan nations for hegemony in the region. There is a continual revision of the historical and geopolitical facts, which encourages nationalistic and chauvinistic opinions. Nations who are not pleased with their present always look back at their past.”
On the streets of Sofia, Mrs. Yakova, (49), told us that “Most people know very little about Bulgaria, but in Turkey, for example, they all know that we’re poor.”
Once again, Georgi Lozanov gives us an angle on the whole picture, which sums it up. He says that the media in other countries still use stereotypes and cliches to define the character of contemporary Bulgaria. Moreover, he believes that Bulgaria conjures up a generic image of the Balkan “type”. It appears in the eyes of the world as a place without established standards and stability, where the process of modernisation is still going on.
Bulgaria through the eyes of its neighbours
THE image of Bulgaria in the media of its neighboring Balkan countries can be characterised as being motivated by their own interests. According to a study published in June 2005 by Bulgarian Media Coalition (BMC) and Market Links Agency, entitled Foreign Media’s View on Bulgaria, a project carried out in accordance with the communications strategy for Bulgaria’s accession to the EU, Romania is the leader among Balkan countries in regard to the volume of media publications about Bulgaria. This can easily be explained by the fact that the two countries are scheduled to join the EU on January 1 2007, so a certain sense of competitiveness exists between them.
The publication topics with a negative aspect focus mainly on Bulgaria’s efforts towards EU membership and how the country’s progress can influence Romania’s EU membership. An example of this can be seen in Romanian newspaper Romania Libera, in an article entitled Bulgarian Mafia, Problem for Romania?, published December 5. The article centres on the criticism that Bulgaria received from the Union for its handling of organised crime. The paper warns that Bulgaria’s crime problems could lead to the postponing of Bulgaria’s accession to the EU. “Such a decision would probably affect Romania, which could pay for a fault not of its own, because of the unfortunate tandem with Bulgaria,” Romania Libera said.
Bulgaria’s foreign policy in regard to NATO is also at the centre of Romanian media’s attention, since the two countries are members of the alliance. On December 9, Cotidianul newspaper ran the headline: “US military bases in Romania cause envy in Sofia”. The article focused on the Romanian decision to deploy US military bases on its territory, while Bulgaria lagged behind with such an agreement.
However, in general, the positive attitude towards Bulgaria in Romania exceeds the negative, according to the study. Another issue that receives attention in Romania is Bulgaria’s nuclear energy. The two countries have a history of ecological conflicts between them as Bulgaria’s Kozlodui nuclear power plant is on the border with Romania and it has often been described as a threat to the region.
Besides the EU topic, Romanian media is interested in several other issues such as Bulgarian involvement in Iraq and the trial of Bulgarian medics in Libya, accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus. The Libya case is one of the most positively portrayed subjects when it comes to Bulgaria in the Romanian press. Romania as a future EU member, shares the Union’s position on the innocence of the medics, and repeatedly publishes material about the case.
Bulgaria is most commonly found in the context of the EU in all the other Balkan media as well.
Since only Greece is currently a member of the Union, and all the other Balkan countries have expressed a willingness join, Bulgaria’s road towards the EU is being monitored carefully.
The most negative portrayal of Bulgaria can be found in the media in Macedonia and Greece. As part of former Yugoslavia, Macedonia has its own problems searching for national identity and the attitude towards Bulgaria often varies from positive to highly negative. Greece on the other hand is interested in Bulgaria’s capacity to handle organised crime since the borders between the two countries will fall after Bulgaria joins the EU in 2007.
Among the negative issues in the Macedonian media are corruption in Bulgaria, visa relations between the two countries, nationalism in regard to the ultra-nationalist party Ataka, which took fourth place in the June 25 parliamentary elections, as well as human trafficking and illegal migration. Again, the positive attitude is focused on Bulgarian foreign policy regarding the EU and NATO and the trial in Libya.
The Greek media, on the other hand, is dominated by reports on the business climate in Bulgaria. At least once a week, an article on the subject of the business environment is published in local media. The Greek newspaper Naftemporiki is an example of this, with its constant articles on the Bulgarian business climate. The Greek interest in the issue can be explained by Bulgaria’s imminent EU membership and the economic possibilities that the country provides for Greek business.
The increasing number of Greek tourists visiting Bulgaria means that the country also receives media attention in relation to tourism. Bulgaria’s economic development has turned the country into a tourist destination that attracts tourists from traditional summer destinations such as the Greek islands. Bulgaria’s ski resorts are also a subject of attention and these receive mixed reports. Besides business, the Greek media reports on Bulgarian organised crime, and criminal activities with Bulgarian involvement abroad.
In the sector of people trafficking, Kiriakitiki Elefterotipia reports that Bulgaria is the key to the traditional corridor for people trafficking between the Balkans, Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe.
A certain “media comfort” can be noticed in Turkey when it comes to Bulgaria. Turkey has recently started its long-desired procedure for EU membership, and the idea of having one more EU member as its neighbour is the key factor in Bulgaria’s image in the Turkish media. Tourism and the business climate dominate Turkey’s positive interest in Bulgaria, while the country’s issues with minorities and people trafficking receive negative attention .
However, the fact that Bulgaria has the Movement for Rights and Freedoms party in the ruling Government coalition, which represents mostly Bulgarians of Turkish descent, is a certain advantage for the positive image that the country has in Turkey.
Among the conclusions that can be drawn from the BMC Market Links survey, is that the image of Bulgaria is actively presented in the media of neighbouring Balkan countries almost everyday. A tendency for the increase of reports focused on Bulgaria exists, which increases the number of positive portrayals. Subjects of high interest are Bulgaria’s EU membership and its economic development. However, the image of Bulgaria is not synonymous in any of the Balkan countries. Positivity and negativity interweave, which cannot be regarded as unusual for neighbouring states.
Romania is a harsh critic, but in general, diplomatic, neutral and positive attitudes towards Bulgaria prevail.
“In general it does not matter whether the attitude towards Bulgaria is positive or negative. The important thing is to know if foreign media publications on Bulgaria make the country discernable,” says Ivan Krustev, a politicàl scientist from the NGO Centre for Liberal Strategies.
For more information, go to: www.bmc.bulmedia.com
