Abstract
After 45 years of communist rule, Bulgaria became a democracy in November 1989. This ushered in a set of reforms, both productive and counterproductive, for the country’s further development into a transitional democracy. Media in Bulgaria, considered the Fourth Estate of a democracy in general, has come under the spotlight not only in the period after the rise of democracy, but also after Bulgaria acceded to the European Union (EU) in the beginning of 2007. Despite the implementation of the unprecedented Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) to ensure Bulgaria complies with its political, social and economic obligations to the EU, the media in Bulgaria has fared poorly and is considered largely “unfree” despite the role of the media being highlighted in the CVM as crucial for democracy. This dissertation uses the literature available on the basis of select benchmarks for media freedom to analyse media freedom in Bulgaria before and after joining the EU. These benchmarks were identified based on a thorough literature review of media freedom in Bulgaria and media freedom worldwide to determine nine criteria for evaluating media freedom against. The benchmarks identified were: legislation; judiciary and the police; physical attacks; detention and harassment of journalists; self-censorship; media as agenda setters; accountability; rule of law; concentration of media ownership; and advertising and sources of financing. Each benchmark consists of several criteria for evaluating media freedom and these criteria were applied to the case of Bulgaria with a numerical score. A score of 1 indicates positive developments in efforts to improve media freedom; a score of 0 indicates some positive and some negative developments in efforts made to improve media freedom; while a score of -1 indicates negative tendencies, practices and circumstances, which indicate a media that is largely unfree in the country. The dissertation finds that during the 13-year period since Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union until 2020, despite checks and balances being implemented through the CVM mechanism, the state of media has shown an overall decline.