Ahead of April 8, World Day of the Roma, YANA MOYSEEVA examines the depiction of the Roma minority in the Bulgarian-language media.
On June 16 2006, an article in Bulgarian-language top circulation daily Trud read: “Two Roma men abducted a young girl”. Headlines such as this are a common sight in Bulgarian tabloids like Trud. Three pages on, another article said that as of June 19, people would be able to send complaints to the ethics commissions of the electronic and print media if they had been offended by a media report. Trud is one of many broadcast and print media that have signed the Bulgarian media code of ethics. By having done so, one of the undertakings made was:
“Respecting the right of everyone to live in safety, we will not publish any materials provoking or aggravating hatred, violence and any form of discrimination (article 2.5, paragraph 2.5.1 of the code). We will not specify the racial, religious, ethical background, sexual orientation, mental or physical condition, if these facts have no importance to the meaning of the information (article 2.5, paragraph 2.5.2 of the code).”
There is an obvious contradiction in the actions of this newspaper. On one page, it informs its readers of their new rights to report offensive material, when just three pages earlier it had specified the ethnic background of someone who allegedly had committed a crime. Inclusion of the detail appears to be a clear breach of article 2.5, paragraph 2.5.2 of the code of ethics that his/her paper had signed.
The incident is typical of the contradictions within many Bulgarian media – the desire to inform is there, but the skills to do so properly, not quite. Some Bulgarian media – mostly print – are serious cases in this respect.
After 44 years of a totalitarian regime, in 1989 Bulgaria pronounced itself a democracy.
As in any other democratic country, freedom of speech was one of the most welcomed aspects of such a political system. But the media in Bulgaria adopted a somewhat twisted understanding of this concept. After almost half a century of communist-restricted media, journalists found themselves in a position where they could say absolutely anything. At the same time, there was no fear of the consequences either, given that there was little formal control of what was being said. Journalists who up to that point had a list of subjects deemed suitable for public airing, stepped into democracy with little knowledge of the obligations and responsibilities which free speech carries in established Western democracies. Balance, objectivity and self-control meant little.
With the attraction of novelty, tabloids such as 24 Chassa and Trud became extremely popular thanks to sensationalistic techniques and “outrageous headlines ungarnished by facts”, in the phrase of post-communist media critic Bryon Scott. Journalists discovered a successful formula for selling copies and sales were all that mattered. The Roma minority, who suffered most heavily the economic consequences of the new system, soon became tsiganite (the gypsies) in the media and the perception of them as a thorn in the side of society was aggravated. Headlines of the type “a Roma killed”, “a Roma raped” echoed the resonance of hate speech.
Some Bulgarian media, predominantly print, continue to rely on such sensationalistic headlines. As the Trud example demonstrates, publications regularly and tendentiously emphasise the ethnic background of a person where this has no relevance to the story. At the same time, when a crime has been committed by a non-Roma Bulgarian, headlines say something alone the lines of “a man killed...” or “a man raped...” without specifying ethnic identity. In such cases sometimes it is hard not to ask oneself what is more important – that a man has been killed, or that the person who killed him was a Roma? The problem is being “ethnicised”, when it is in fact purely social.
The issue of hate speech, or language that promotes racism, discrimination and negative stereotypes, is constantly raised by human rights activists inside and outside Bulgaria. With very few exceptions, Roma people are usually portrayed as “the villains”. To Bulgarians, Roma are portrayed solely as people who steal, beg, attack, rape, kill, fight and sell drugs. Says Tema magazine journalist Kalin Purvanov, “the media simply multiply what people say about [the Roma] in everyday life. By this they don’t necessarily mean to incite further bad feelings, but they don’t do anything to refute the opinion either”.
So who monitors the language of the media and makes sure that there is at least some kind of balance in media reports? The answer is everyone and no one. The Ethics Code of the Bulgarian Media, The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, The Penal Code, the Commission for Electronic Media (CEM), The Commission for Protection against Discrimination, The Anti-Discrimination Act – they all are supposed to sanction incorrect used of language. But in reality, hardly any of these are ever seen to work.
According to Roma journalist Emilia Dancheva of Radio New Europe “if you want to complain of something that you feel personally affected by, you go to the Commission against Discrimination, they potentially take the case to court and then ... nothing happens. If no one yet has been punished, it means that someone is not doing their job properly”. In reality, the enforcement of legal standards in the case of the media, however, is obstructed by difficulty in providing adequate proof. The media get away with saying that a text was not intended as an insult, but on the contrary, provides objective information. No media or journalist has ever been found at fault by any of the existing controlling or legislative organs, according to a 2002 report by the ACCESS Foundation. Since then there have been an abundance of cases showing that the situation remains unchanged.
In the past more than two years, cable television channel Skat gained popularity with programmes like “Ataka” (which became the electronic mouthpiece of what later became the nationalistic party Ataka), “Between the Lines” and “All Bulgarians Together” were two of Skat’s programmes that were criticised for systematic incitement to hatred and ethnic intolerance. A relatively mild example of the language that was used on the shows is referring to the Roma as “the gypsies” and “the swarthy” by Ataka show presenter and later party leader and MP Volen Siderov. He is also known for extremist statements such as “Say NO to the tsiganisation (gypsification) of Bulgaria” and “the gypsies are genocide to Bulgaria”.
Skat has been monitored by a number of human rights NGOs like the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) and CEM. CEM is supposed to impose sanctions in cases of hate speech used in the broadcast media. CEM has claimed that Skat has been sanctioned a number of times. But there has been little evidence of these sanctions (whether there were financial fines, orders to offer public apologies, or taking the channel off air for a period of time). The bottom line is that Skat and its programmes are still on air and the repertoire has in fact worsened. The channel continues to openly incite racism and discrimination against certain ethnic groups, such as the Roma and the Turkish minority.
Skat is an extreme example. Most media go as far as pointing out that a crime has been committed by a Roma, which expectedly, and maybe to a great extent subconsciously, creates a completely negative image of the Roma among Bulgarians. The fact that the voice of the Roma people themselves is hardly ever heard in the media does not help, especially of those who are any different to the generally negative stereotype of the Roma.
We hear about the Roma most often when there are bad news stories involving people of Roma origin. There are supposed to be certain journalistic standards about how to write and produce radio and television programmes in a multiethnic society. But generally, most Bulgarian print media condemn the Roma, while the broadcast media tend to be indifferent. Because by statute they are public broadcasters, Bulgarian National Television, and radio programmes Horizont and Hristo Botev are obliged by the Radio and Television Act to have some minority orientated programmes. Nonetheless, profit is a factor for them too, and ratings largely determine programming. Even though some Roma programmes do exist, they are fitted in less popular media outputs (such as Radio Hristo Botev, Radio New Europe, 7 Days TV) and less popular time slots.
Yuliana Metodieva, a journalist for the BHC’s Obektiv magazine, says:
“The commercial media work in such a way as to appeal to the majority. What does the majority like? The ‘black’ Roma who steals and lives off of social benefits and – on the other side – the Bulgarian, who is the better one – an easy way to build up our own (Bulgarian) confidence. Bulgarian media need to realise that the Roma voice, the Roma journalists, and Roma subjects must not be separated. These are European standards.”
The situation regarding existing print media for and by Roma is just as bad. Antonina Zhelyazkova of the International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations (IMIR) claims that there are a number of regional and national Roma newspapers. But practically, such publications are never seen on newspaper kiosks. Vassil Chaprazov, a Roma journalist and publisher of Roma newspaper Drom Dromendar and O Roma magazine, believes such Roma publications are hidden as soon as they are received from the distributor. “My newspaper and magazine only continue to survive because they are sponsored by the Soros foundation,” he says.
The thought that someone would not want to even see Roma newspapers alongside Bulgarian papers is ludicrous and yet true. It speaks of a kind of extreme form of racism, which many Bulgarians would deny embracing. In this respect, it is probably not surprising that Roma journalists are so rarely to be seen or heard on mainstream media.
Emilia Dancheva, a Roma journalist at Radio New Europe, says “Everything is based on stereotypes. The Roma are looked at with mistrust, as non-professionals. Even if they want to prove that they too are skilled, the prejudices surrounding them don’t allow them to do so.” This comes as no surprise as an interview with young Roma students in journalism revealed how nervous they feel about the moment they have to start working in the media.
Hristina Georgieva (18) and her classmates are convinced that when, in a few months time, they take work placements at various media, they will be discriminated against in one way or another. “Even though people will be nice to us, they will always have this thought in mind ‘yes, but... she is Roma’ and I know that this will show in one way or another,” says Georgieva. But she and her classmates are determined to show all the willpower necessary to break stereotypes.
However, it should be noted that some media no longer rely on the sensationalistic technique to sell. According to the BHC’s Metodieva, daily newspapers Dnevnik and Sega are positive examples of commercial print media which do not publish discriminatory texts and do publish more “Roma friendly” items. However, Metodieva says that initially these publications did have to overcome their own reluctance to write alongside Roma journalists. Metodieva says that to start with, this happened through financial persuasion. The World Bank organised a media sponsorship contest where the winning publication would be obliged to have pages where Roma journalists would write about Roma-related issues. As Metodieva says, even if money has to be the driving force (at least to begin with), what is important in due course is for more-objective and non-Roma-hostile texts to gradually become common.
Ivan Bedrov, a journalist at bTV (who is known for being ethnically tolerant) says “in the Bulgarian media now there is everything: just as the ‘Roma beat to death a boy’ story may be found, other publications give a fair and professional report”.
This is an early stage of some kind of success. That some media will continue with sensational, artificial and exaggerated stories, is a fact. But it is vital to increase the number of media who, like bTV, BNT, Radio Hristo Botev, Radio New Europe, Dnevnik and Sega newspapers, offer a fair presentation of the Roma, or any other minority for that matter. The Bulgarian media face the challenge of promoting intercultural programming and “diversity reporting”, in order to make media output appealing and suitable for a multicultural audience, such as that in Bulgaria. With help from the media that has already achieved a change of attitude, the image of Roma may eventually improve and with it, the opinions held by Bulgarians.
