Galery

1

For me the major problem in the present and in the near future it is the lack of adequate education. In my opinion education in Bulgaria is currently the most unnecessary thing that could exist. It is working worse than the health care system, the prosecutor’s office and the police. In Bulgaria, there is no education. My best friends are teachers and they know it. There are good teachers, but they are lonely birds. The situation is now such that students are copying en masse during the school leaving examinations, schools have lists of students to receive subsidies and salaries and there is no single student in the classrooms. Adequate education should teach people how to think, not what to think. The more educated people there are, the more thinking there will be. Education should be of practical relevance. It is now too far from reality. The good thing is the Internet and the information on it so that not everyone is narrow-minded.

Have social networks seized the function of traditional media?

It depends on the media. Social networks have helped those media that hear the voice and concerns of people in the street. Thus, a young media can quickly create a community of people. They have not helped and have even hurt those media and individuals who do not like to hear the truth. I do not mean that social networks represent Bulgaria but the interaction with readers there is a very big plus.

Is the opposite effect present, namely readers’ trust in everything that is shared on social networks to allow people to be easily manipulated?

The most recent example that I can think of is the attempt to play with the racist card, for example a title like "50 Gypsies beat a mother in Borisova gradina (Boris’ Garden)." This inflames passions before many people realize that the information is false.

In this regard, do we have a good reading culture?

Bulgarian Internet users have an extremely poor reading culture. They do not know how to gather information, where to find it. People have learnt to like different titles, especially if they are written in capital letters, in a scandalous way. They comment on them with enthusiasm and do not check whether what they are commenting on is true. They have not learnt to select their sources of information and filter out the information. This is like being at a buffet and putting everything on the plate, thus making a hotchpotch in the end. Another thought that I like in this direction is that obtaining information from the Internet is like drinking water from a fireplug. I have put it on my desk to be careful with what I write. Readers in turn should be careful with what they read, seek reliable sources and media that have proven to be independent over time.

The problem with uncritical thinking is that when a reader finds different news about the same event he or she accepts the most radical item of it, the one with the most blood in it, without verifying the sources. I have experimented with my friends to see if they realize that when some information is quoted its source must be indicated. People are not at all impressed if such information is present. Since it is written, it is true, even though no source is specified. If readers have no critical thinking, in no way can they distinguish between true and falsified news. They just accept someone else’s point of view that they have read on a website.

How about sources verification on the part of the media?

It is imperative that serious media verify their sources. Publishing information that is not personally verified means inability to develop a good network of correspondents. Few media can afford to have correspondents in small villages and towns.

Often we see that even reputable media and experienced journalists do not cite competitive media or blogs from which they have taken a photo or some information. What is the reason for this?

Recently a photo of my report was reprinted without the consent of the media in which I am working. The information from the report was used in a television broadcast and its host said that she "had read somewhere." We find it very difficult to give someone credit for his or her work. Citing is very difficult. There is the journalistic code of ethics but it is not observed. There is no elementary solidarity in the profession. All journalists know each other more or less, we constantly see and help each other but we do not cite each other afterwards. This is ugly! I dream of the day when local TV stations will begin to use the reports by a local competitor when they are not the first to inform of an event or have missed it instead of letting major events pass as if they have not happened just because they have failed to cover them. This is a bad policy because it deprives readers and viewers of valuable information. The struggle for "a piece of the pie" of the media market is in the foreground, not the function of the media to inform.