Election debates, politicians as "cuckoos from a clock" and journalists as politicians' PRs – commented on "The Network" on the program "Hristo Botev" Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov, lecturer at FJMK, former chairman of SEM.
What "horrors" journalists during an election campaign?
"Consciously or unwittingly become complicit in manipulations and thus hinder the informed choice of the people who will vote. But for something to be media, someone has to be editorially responsible for the content. In this sense, social networks are not media and are very dangerous if they are perceived as media. When journalists bring this editorially irresponsible information from social networks to a media outlet, then citizens can be misled because they have another type of trust in the media.
Journalists can become conductors of various strategies that pass through the media, and the choice of wavering voters depends on this. When politicians publish information on social networks, it is good to publish it on the official websites of their parties, so that it can be proven reliable. If journalists use as a source a statement of a politician on a social network, they should contact him to confirm this information. Because in social networks, emotions often supersede facts. This picture is highly dangerous for the informed choice of citizens and journalists should not carry it in the media."
Pre-election debates and relations with politicians
"Because of the way the relations between the media and politicians are formed in the pre-election period, we don't actually have real debates. We have some cuckoo-like politicians coming out of the clock, who, coming out of the clock, say something, then hide, and the next cuckoo comes out of the next clock. This is because no real mediating role is given to the journalist. In the contracts that are concluded, it is tacitly understood that in this pre-election period, politicians should be left as much as possible to express themselves, as they themselves understand, their public communication. Or are all the things politicians say so taftological and banal that they actually demoralize the choice, not motivate it."
Four problems for journalists
The first problem is the politically dependent journalists, who are actually promoters of a certain political force and its ideology. The second is the contracts that practically turn journalists into conference hosts. And professionalism requires politicians to be placed in media discomfort. Especially in an election campaign. I can see some effort to ask uncomfortable questions, but the tendency is that pre-election interviews are more political PR, because the logic of politicians is that, by paying themselves, they should be provided with comfort. But in addition to the paid ones, there are also unpaid forms that go under the same motto. The replacement of political journalism with political PR is actually the second problem.
The third is social networks, which we discussed above. But it should be added that through social networks, politicians themselves exclude journalists from the sphere of communication. This is done even by political subjects who consider themselves to be bearers of democratic values – to close their social media campaigns. I'm an enemy of that, because whatever suspicions we have about journalists, generally they have a very important job to do – on behalf of the audience to talk to politicians. This is a completely different communication than writing something on social networks or posting a video there."
All politicians are mobsters, don't vote
"When you don't vote, you're actually voting for the biggest hard core. In fact, when someone gets people to not vote, it's usually about this vote arithmetic. If the voter thinks carefully, he will realize who not voting is voting for. The other thing that is very important is that the image of politicians is not reduced to their momentary statements when they are the result of exchanging mutual blows. Journalists need to see the big context and what is the news value of what a politician says. Only then will this thing gain popularity – not just because some politician said something, but to see what meaning is said. Then this meaning must be put into context. Otherwise, journalists turn figures and political processes into factors, from which one should rather beware. This is actually the editorial responsibility and professional duty of journalists – to give the voter a chance to orient themselves, not to make all the noise until the voter's head explodes and he loses track. Or at most to come to the conclusion that "everyone is a masker"."
"All are mascaras"
"We have forgotten to whom the words "all are mascaras" belong. They belong to Bai Gagno, and we have forgotten that Bai Gagno is a caricature, an image of denunciation of behavior. Aleko Konstantinov presents this image to dissuade people from doing so. There is no greater escape from the responsibility of civic duty than to say that "everyone is a masker".
Elections are a topic that stands before your eyes and you have to judge what is good for you and the community based on the history of the transition. Because politicians really like to act as if they were just born on the political scene. But this political scene is clogged with internal genealogies and connections between political behavior and forces that can be traced back to the beginning of the transition, and before that."
The Context
"Context is much more important than the text that politicians produce, because their text is always for their own benefit. They keep promising – we will do so, everything will be for the best, we are good, others are crooks, etc. That's what they're talking about. In this sense, the text has no meaning, the context does. For example, if we take the protests of 2020, which had their questions. These questions are no longer being asked of the politicians against whom the protests were directed. Uncomfortable questions must be asked. Including those sanctioned under Magnitsky – why did it stop being important?
Instead, politicians are swaddled in pink diapers like some kind of political diapers that the media hypes up. It is only right that politicians should be confronted by their own long moustaches.
The point is for people to be interested and when they vote in elections, to vote politically, and not to reduce elections to private relationships and to private individuals, and to yellow them. It's like they're discussing the neighbors on the block – who is what, etc."
Politics, history, geopolitics should be seen
With these elections, we are largely deciding the future of Europe and our own. Will it move towards some autocratic regimes, which is a very clear risk, or will liberal democracy retain its model, which we have been striving for for so many years and hoped that we would become a part of it."