Abstract
Democratic backsliding has been on the rise globally, including in the established and transitional democracies of the Global North, with populist leaders adopting similar practices of undermining the epistemology of journalism or attempting to capture news media outright. A representative survey with 391 Bulgarian journalists conducted as part of the Worlds of Journalism Study in 2021–2024 shows that corruption through the misuse of European and national funds has become one of the main survival mechanisms for their news outlets. This is complemented on a personal level with the finding that nearly two in five journalists have been forced to hold a second job, which has often led to conflict-of-interest issues. The Bulgarian case study is an excellent illustration of the consequences of a 13-year-long rule by populist leader Boyko Borisov and concurrent practices of Berlusconization and media capture in this Eastern European country, which for over a decade (2011–2022) had the lowest press freedom ranking among all European Union member states. The study shows an increased recognition among journalists of the power of journalistic agency, that is, their own role in the media capture process. The link between journalistic agency and media capture is of essential importance but has not been studied sufficiently.
Introduction
Democratic backsliding has been on the rise globally, including in the established and transitional democracies of the Global North with populist leaders adopting similar practices of undermining the very epistemology of journalism (Carlson et al. 2021) or attempting to capture news media outright (Mungiu-Pippidi 2012). These negative trends have led to claims about “a global democratic recession” (Carothers and Press 2022: 3). A key explanatory factor has been “the central role of leader-driven antidemocratic political projects” (Carothers and Press 2022: 1). Any democratic backsliding leads to substantial consequences for freedom of expression and the role of journalism as a discursive social institution (Worlds of Journalism Study 2023). In line with wider geopolitical and structural trends, the academic focus on this interrelation between democratic backsliding and journalism has predominantly been on the United States with Donald Trump’s presidency providing plenty of material for analysis (e.g., Carlson et al. 2021; Gutsche 2018; Jacobs 2019). Central and Eastern Europe, however, as a region has been engulfed much more consistently in these negative trends with populist leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Bulgaria’s Boyko Borisov demonstrating impressive political longevity. The unstable media and political landscape also make Bulgaria a breeding ground for disinformation campaigns particularly by Russian propaganda during the full-scale war in Ukraine that started in February 2022 (Nikolov 2023). The present article shows the consequences of a 13-year-long populist rule and concurrent practices of Berlusconization and media capture on journalists’ perceptions of the state of journalism in their country, including working conditions and corruption practices in the media. Berlusconization is the process named after the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of politicians trying “to obtain favourable positions through buying media outlets and [using] them for promoting their political careers” (Coman 2010: 588). The article enhances the media capture framework by exploring the role of journalistic agency in the process through focusing on journalists’ perceptions of corruption and their own role. The state of journalism in Bulgaria according to journalists is dire, manifested in a significant decline in the number of journalists, increased precarity and toxicity of the profession and a main survival strategy of relying on corruption practices with the main one being EU and national funding with an added “information/media comfort tax”—essentially public office payments for favorable coverage. The case of Bulgaria illustrates wider trends of the impact of populist rules and democratic backsliding on journalistic roles and working conditions not only about broader sustainability of journalism as a business and as a social institution but also about journalists’ own role in these negative processes.
Democratic Backsliding and Populism: The Case of Bulgaria
While the democratic backsliding of global powers such as the United States has attracted a considerable amount of scholarly and popular attention (e.g., Diamond 2019; Foa and Mounk 2017; Grumbach 2023; Ginsburg and Hug 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Merkel 2020; Norris 2017), due to larger societal structural issues both within academia and journalism, Central and Eastern European countries do not feature as prominently on academic and media agendas. One major difference between the United States and countries such as Hungary and Bulgaria is that the strength of U.S. democracy and the existence of proper accountability mechanisms have somewhat restricted the damage Trump could inflict on democracy and journalism during his first term compared to populist leaders like Orbán in Hungary and Borisov in Bulgaria. Trump shook the democratic foundations of the United States and undermined the very epistemology of journalism (Carlson et al. 2021) but he also faced considerable opposition in society and media despite being re-elected in 2024.
Orbán and Borisov have been persistently re-elected and have thus been in power for over a decade, inflicting extensive damage on democratic practices in their countries (Indzhov 2024; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; Połońska and Beckett 2019). Moreover, they represent the “unprecedented growth in the number of regimes that are neither clearly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian” (Diamond 2002: 25). Different labels have been used for these regimes, which arguably outnumber the proportion of established democracies worldwide—third wave or “post-third wave” of democracy/democratization, “illiberal democracies” and/or hybrid regimes with considerable differences in the degree of democratization and/or authoritarianism (for a summary, see Gray 2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Studying the impact of this type of hybrid regime and populist rule on journalism in transitional/young democracies tells us a great deal about the consequences of media capture and populism on journalism as a social institution. Our understanding of populism is “ideational,” that is, conceiving of it as a discourse, an ideology, or a worldview. As Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017) argued, populism is “a thin-centered ideology,” which is malleable and can take different shapes and forms in its different manifestations. Populist politicians generally ride the wave of the discourse about the importance of “the volonté générale (general will) of the people,” but populism has been detrimental for liberal democracies, leading to processes of “de-democratization” such as in Hungary or even the breakdown of the democratic regime like in Peru (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). Studying the relationship among populism, democracy, and journalism is crucial at a time when there has been an increase in the number of such regimes, contributing to a “global democratic decline” (Gorokhovskaia et al. 2023).
Commentators even argue that the “ruling paradigm” in Central and Eastern Europe has been changed from democratization to autocratization (Agh 2022; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019), defined as a “‘constructive’ process of laying the foundation of a new polity through the oligarchization based on the politico-business networks in the formal and informal institutions” (Agh 2022: 1). While Bulgaria’s example is not as extreme as that of Hungary, and recent V-Dem Reports (2024) suggest a positive change after Borisov is no longer a prime minister, the impact of his 13-year rule on journalism is indisputable, as we have demonstrated here. Bulgaria is a case study of “political-oligarchic” media capture that in the 2010s followed the democratic and market periods of the 1990s and early 2000s (Indzhov 2024). The foundations of Bulgaria’s enthusiastic embrace of populism were laid in the tumultuous early years of post-Cold War democracy marked by a political and financial crisis in the 1990s and growing disillusionment with the political classes. Thus, when the king in exile Simeon II Saxe-Coburg-Gotha returned to the country in 2001, he promised to “fix” Bulgarians’ lives in 800 days (Slavtcheva-Petkova 2016). Within months, he became prime minister after his newly formed political party in his name won the parliamentary elections. As Zankina (2017) wrote, “after a decade of political instability and economic hardship Bulgarians were overcome by transition fatigue, disillusioned with politicians, and impatient with the democratic process. They were looking for a savior” (p. 61). Simeon II was that savior and his return to Bulgarian politics marked “the birth of populism in post-communist Bulgarian politics” and the “personalist party model” (Zankina 2017: 61).
Borisov was Simeon II’s protègè. As his bodyguard, he impressed him so much that the king-turned-prime minister appointed him as Chief Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior in 2001. Borisov resigned in 2005 and became the mayor of the capital, Sofia, after running as an independent candidate. In 2006, he formed his political party—GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria), which won the 2009 parliamentary elections and Borisov became prime minister. As Smilov (2008) wrote, “GERB’s main resource was the personal charisma and appeal of its leader” (p. 18). He was first elected in 2009 and served as prime minister until 2021 with brief interruptions in 2013 and 2017 while snap elections were arranged after his resignations. His political party won the 2024 elections and at the time of completion of this article, there was still no government formed, but there were speculations about Borisov returning as prime minister. Both Simeon II and Borisov exemplified a brand of populism, labeled by Smilov and Krastev (2008) as “soft” populism, namely one that does not “contest the principles of democratic governance” (Zankina 2017: 189), but it challenges the “existing systems of representation and mainly to the existing party system” (Smilov and Krastev 2008: 9). Soft populism is not innocuous because it “threatens the very foundation of democratic rule which is a priori value-driven” through the “increased use of informal power coupled with procedural but value-empty adherence to democracy” (Zankina 2017: 189).
Media Capture, Corruption, and Journalistic Agency
This use of informal power was clearly manifested in Borisov’s relationship with the media. One notable difference between Borisov and his predecessor was that Saxe-Coburg-Gotha underestimated the role of the media, and his political career suffered because of that. Borisov did not make this mistake. He built a strong and long-lasting relationship with media owners and publishers, facilitated by a prior process of withdrawal of big foreign investors and the appropriation of media companies by local owners intertwined in a complicated web of political/financial relationships (Slavtcheva-Petkova 2016). The most notorious media owner in Bulgaria’s recent history has been Delian Peevsky—an oligarch, former deputy minister and member of Parliament, who was sanctioned for corruption by the U.S. Department of Treasury in June 2021. He was labelled as “mini-Murdoch” and more importantly as “one of the greatest threats to media freedom in Bulgaria” (Antonov 2022). He is still the leader of the fourth largest political party in Bulgaria—Movement for Rights and Freedoms—New Beginning.
For over a decade up until 2023, Bulgaria had the lowest press freedom ranking according to Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) annual press freedom indices. Even RSF’s 2024 report states that “press freedom is fragile and unstable in one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the European Union.” The report mentions the unstable political environment and the many pressures journalists experienced as a result of Borisov’s time in office: intimidation from politicians, administrative and judicial pressures, and use of media outlets for exercising political influence. The Reuters Institute 2022 Digital News Report showed only 15 percent of people “thought the Bulgarian media sector is currently free from undue influence from business or politics, in part because behaviors learned in the Borisov era persist” (Antonov 2022: 68). The 2024 report also demonstrated that “low levels of trust in Bulgarian news are a longstanding feature and derive from a high degree of political polarization—currently fuelled by differences over the Russia/Ukraine war—and a sense that media companies’ independence is compromised for economic reasons or by businessmen with close links to politics” (Antonov 2024).
Bulgaria is a perfect example of media capture defined by Mungiu-Pippidi (2012) as “a situation in which the media have not succeeded in becoming autonomous and manifesting a will of their own, nor able to exercise their main function, notably of informing people. Instead, they have persisted in an intermediate state, with vested interests, and not just the government, using them for other purposes” (pp. 40–1). In the postglobal recession period, the majority of media outlets were indeed appropriated for political rather than pure economic reasons (Schiffrin 2017). The pandemic further exacerbated these challenges to press freedom with journalists encountering “some new limits to attending and reporting live events, including delays from official institutions that provide vital information, and refusals from interviewees to take part in important current affairs programmes” (Price and Antonova 2022: 133) as well as increased precarity globally and trends of intertwining of the pandemic with the democratic backlash (International Federation of Journalists 2020; Pajnik and Hrženjak 2022; Price et al. 2024). While media capture is a much more complicated process than an outright state “capture” of the media, fundamentally, it distorts “the main role of the media: captured media outlets emerge to trade influence and manipulate information rather than to inform the public, a phenomenon hard to fit into the classic government-perpetrator and media-victim paradigm” (Mungiu-Pippidi 2012: 41). Corruption is an intrinsic aspect of this model as it is through corruption, namely “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (Transparency International 2024), and its normalization, that these problematic relationships among media, governments, state and local authorities, and businesses persist. A small-scale 2019 study with thirty-five journalists showed Bulgarian media was “plagued by corruption” (Price 2019: 71). As Schiffrin (2017) explained, government “capture” is a tool for government influence and persuasion or a carrot-and-stick approach as those who do not succumb to the attempts to be captured, are duly punished.
As a whole, studies adopting a purely media capture framework have investigated the manifestations of this process in different contexts but have not really explored the role of journalistic agency (Schiffrin 2017). Thus, while Mungiu-Pippidi’s (2012) definition implies a degree of agency through the claim that “the media have not succeeded in becoming autonomous and manifesting a will of their own” (pp. 40–1), studies in the media capture framework do not really explore the extent to which the media in general and journalists in specific have tried to exercise a will of their own. Instead, they focus on structural factors and forces and the impact on journalism as practice. While agency, especially in the framework of Bourdieu’s (2005) field theory, can have many manifestations, we focus on editorial autonomy and influences to journalists’ work as well as any references to their agency in relation to corruption practices in journalists’ responses to the open-ended question about corruption practices they have evidenced. Editorial autonomy is hereby understood as a professional ideal in relation to the freedom journalists have in “selecting stories they deem newsworthy and in emphasizing certain aspects in their stories” (Hamada et al. 2019: 133). Autonomy can be affirmed or obstructed by a range of influences (Hamada et al. 2019: 134). Stronger media capture is likely to be linked to weakened autonomy and a stronger degree of influences. We trace the changes in perceptions of autonomy and influences affecting Bulgarian journalists’ autonomy across time and in comparison with the other countries taking part in the Worlds of Journalism Study. Autonomy alone is insufficient as a measure of agency. WJS2 showed that Bulgaria had one of the highest degrees of autonomy among the sixty-seven countries studied, but journalists also mentioned various constraints they faced in their work and described the state of journalism in their country as “dire.” They engaged in a process of “self-othering”—“a resilience technique. . ., which involves a strong condemnation of the ‘dire’ state of journalism and distancing from the unethical practices that plague their profession without assuming any responsibility” (Slavtcheva-Petkova 2018). Five years later in WJS3, journalists were much more willing to talk about their own role in the process of media capture.
The research questions this article addresses are
RQ1: What are the manifestations of the media capture process on journalism in Bulgaria according to journalists’ own perceptions in 2016–2022?
RQ2: What role has corruption played in the media capture process in Bulgaria according to journalists’ perceptions in 2016–2022?
RQ3: What is the role of journalistic agency in the media capture process in Bulgaria as manifested through their (a) own role in the corruption practices, (b) changes in journalists’ perceived autonomy, and (c) influences over their work in 2016–2022?
Methods
This article presents findings from a national representative survey of Bulgarian journalists as part of the 2021–2024 Worlds of Journalism study—a collaborative project, including more than 300 researchers from 120 countries. The Bulgarian survey was conducted in 2021–2022. Out of a total population of 3,800 journalists (National Statistical Institute 2021, personal communication), 1,049 were invited to participate. Three hundred and ninety-one completed the questionnaire online, by phone and in-person (37.3% response rate, confidence level 95%, confidence interval 4.69%). The sampling method was purposive quota sampling of organizations and simple random sampling of journalists. The aim was to achieve a national sample of news media that reflected the structure of the media system. The indicators used were media type, content orientation, reach, and ownership. Of the 391 interviewed journalists, 61.6 percent were women, 79.3 percent held a degree from a graduate programme, and 21.7 percent—a bachelor’s degree. The mean age was 49.81 years old (SD = 11.6). The survey was conducted by the Bulgarian professional marketing and social research company Alpha Research. The project received ethical clearance from the University of Liverpool, and all journalists provided written informed consent.
The quantitative questions were analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics 28. The qualitative questions were thematically analyzed by using the constant comparison method. Thematic analysis is one of the most flexible methods of qualitative textual analysis, which “can potentially provide a rich and detailed, yet complex account of data” (Braun and Clarke 2006). It is “a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data” and is “essentially independent of theory and epistemology, and can be applied across a range of theoretical and epistemological approaches” (Braun and Clarke 2006: 78–9). The procedure included six stages of coding: familiarization with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report (Braun and Clarke 2006).
Further to the statistical analysis in SPSS, an exploratory data analysis was performed using the following Python libraries: pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, and seaborn (McKinney 2010; Harris et al. 2020; Hunter 2007; Waskom 2021). This analysis was carried out to describe and visualize the data to complement the other forms of analysis and to contextualize the findings from Bulgaria with the rest of the world. At the time of submission of the article, the full WJS3 dataset was not yet available. Only a subset of forty countries out of expected seventy-five had submitted their data so this article does not aim to present the global dataset but to identify initial trends, which show how Bulgaria compares with other countries in relation to the research questions posed.
Media Capture and Corruption in Bulgarian Journalism 2016–2022
This section will present the most notable changes that have occurred in Bulgarian journalism between WJS2 and WJS3, demonstrating trends of enhanced media capture (RQ1). This period marked the last 5–6 years of Borisov being prime minister (with some interruptions in between for snap elections and provisional governments). The results show three notable changes: 1. Journalism has become a much more precarious profession in Bulgaria. 2. Journalists report a two-fold increase in corruption practices (RQ2). 3. Journalists much more readily acknowledge their role in processes of media capture (RQ3).
In terms of precarity and an increasingly toxic working environment, a key change is the significant reduction in the number of journalists. According to the National Statistical Institute (Personal communication 2016, 2021), the overall population of journalists has declined from 5,800 in 2016 to 3,800 in 2020. This is the most current figure as the National Statistical Institute no longer collects data on the number of journalists. The comparison between WJS2 and WJS3 shows the population of journalists is aging in Bulgaria, where mean age has increased from 41.74 in 2016/2017 to 49.81 in 2021/2022. Comparison of the WJS3 Bulgarian and global data (Figure 1) shows that journalists in Bulgaria are poorly paid (33/37, similar to Spain), very old (39/40 by birth year, similar to Scandinavia), relatively highly female (7/40, similar to Lithuania), and moderately full time (24/40, similar to Slovakia).
Bar plots of preliminary global WJS Wave 3 survey results for Bulgaria and similarly ranked countries for income, year of birth, percent female, and full-time equivalent. The four closest ranked countries to Bulgaria are shown in each plot, and the overall ranking for each country is shown in brackets after its name. Vertical dashed lines show the minimum and maximum country-level mean values globally. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Moreover, the percentage of journalists working as freelancers has doubled from 10.3 percent in 2016/2017 to 20.7 percent in 2021/2022, while the proportion of journalists working full time has decreased from 84 percent to 69.6 percent. The pandemic appears to have contributed to this negative trend because 15.7 percent said their working situation had changed because of Covid. Of those, 47.5 percent have lost their full-time permanent contract with the majority now being freelancers/self-employed. In their qualitative responses, journalists mentioned they felt the pandemic was used as an excuse to perpetuate or amplify the already existing negative trends such as the increasing need for journalists to hold a second job. The percentage of journalists who reported they held a second job increased from 34.2 percent to 39.1 percent. Only 60.9 percent of journalists in 2021–2023 reported they received 100 percent of their income from journalism. The others relied on a second income such as PR or corporate communication (38.1%), advertising (33.3%), education (27.4%), and local or national government agencies (14%). When asked what changes they would like to see, working conditions came up as a key theme. Journalists talked about often finding themselves in a conflict of interests due to holding a second job:
Badly paid and unregulated profession, which forces you to seek a second job to make ends meet. Often you experience a conflict of interests, leading to self-censorship. Colleagues desperately run away from journalism and save themselves in other spheres. The low pay and dependencies drive away the competent people from the profession. I would like to work as a journalist only without the need to work a second job to make a living.
Another notable difference showing clear indications of media capture is the twofold increase in the percentage of journalists who said that according to their own observations, there are corruption practices in Bulgarian media—from 37.2 percent in 2016/2017 to 73.7 percent in 2021/2022. The thematic analysis of the main types of corruption practices mentioned, revealed five overlapping categories: 1. “Media comfort tax” through the misuse of public funds, including EU funds. 2. Paid-for journalism—black-and-white public relations. 3. Marketing censorship. 4. Bribes, monetary incentives and presents, including trips abroad for “favorites” in exchange for favorable coverage of top politicians and/or the financial interests of “big players.” 5. Pressure, blackmail, and coercion under the threat of dismissal or the opposite—the appointment of “convenient,” servile journalists or in some cases, even fictitious owners.
There were two key differences from the second to the third wave of the study. First, the most dominant practice in 2021/2022—namely, the misuse of public and European funds—did not feature so prominently in responses in 2016/2017. In fact, there was no mention of the misuse of European Union (EU) funds back then, but most other corruption practices reported in 2021/2022 also existed in 2016/2017: advertorial content—promotional materials passed on as journalism; black-and-white PR; the deliberate omitting of topics seen as potentially detrimental for advertisers, media owners, and other people with “special protection”; bribes, presents, and “free” trips abroad; blackmail and coercion into writing stories under the threat of being dismissed from their jobs or loss of advertising. Second, journalists were much more willing to provide specific examples of corruption practices and to acknowledge their role in the process in the third wave. The examples used are from the third wave as they reveal the current state of play.
Media Comfort Tax
The first category was media organizations signing contracts for information/promotional campaigns of EU, central, and local government-funded projects. Journalists referred to this practice as “media comfort tax,” namely corrupt distribution of public funds, including EU funds for information, advertising, and PR campaigns. One journalist explained the practice included “the signing of an information service contract between a media organisation and an institution in exchange for positive favourable information—a comfort tax.” While the funding was ostensibly to promote the aims of the project, journalists felt they were expected to give favorable coverage of government departments, politicians, municipalities, town council leaders, etc. As one journalist put it, “Many media organisations sign contracts with companies, predominantly state holdings, for the ‘popularisation of their activity’ and write favourably about them in exchange for payments. It is a mass practice for ‘media contracts’ to be signed with state institutions, which is a way for these institutions to buy their media comfort.” The word “comfort” was frequently used to explain what those in power received. Another journalist claimed in the period January 2017 to April 2021, the government has granted 10,542,000 leva (approximately €5.4 M) from European programs directly to TV and radio stations. This was a marked difference from 2016/2017 when no mention of the misuse of European funding was made. The media comfort taxes were a perfect form of media capture because as these quotes explain, for many organizations, they were the only means of survival:
The information service contracts, which in practice most media sign with different institutions, politicians, big economic organisations, are a form of corruption. They place barriers in front of journalists’ freedom of speech, preventing them from covering objectively events to do with the organizations with which these contracts have been signed. These information tax contracts are a ubiquitous practice, especially among regional media, because they would not be able to financially survive without them. Information contracts with institutions, companies and people buying them media comfort; the receipt of purposeful funding from European programmes for editorial policies in a certain direction; schemes for the distribution of financial resources only for “obedient” people: tenders with a predetermined outcome. . . The concentration of funds for the popularisation of European programmes in certain media; a lack of transparency of the selection criteria or the setting of criteria which only a specific media organisation would be able to meet Companies, state and municipal structures use the financial dependency of media on their contracts to exert control over them for the publication of materials or to dictate to them who to work with. The serving of interests of the previous government was 100% corruption practice. There is a three-letter site, which was serving the interests of the previous PM and for this activity received ca. 400,000 leva a month. The fact that big media owe the defunct Corporate Commercial Bank tens of millions, and they have not paid even stotinka (a penny) until now is quite indicative.
Paid-for Journalism
The corruption practice of paid-for journalism took the form of hidden advertorials and black-and-white PR campaigns. А journalist said, “In the region where I live we knew the tariff of a Sofia journalist for black PR of the local mayor.” Another one explained black PR was about media being paid to “attack somebody.” A journalist gave an example from the health beat of an owner of an online publication who had a contract with one of the most reputable hospitals. According to the contract, the website received 50,000 leva over a few years to provide favorable coverage for the hospital and its governing body. When leadership changed, the website started publishing “discrediting and untrue publications about the new governing body as well as about the situation in the hospital and more specifically about a doctor who complained about wrongdoings in the governing of the hospital before the hospital director and the Board were changed.” Journalists provided numerous examples of this nature often with names specified. The list included:
Paid-for articles aimed at discrediting opponents masked as investigations or even fake stories
Central media journalists parachuted to regions at time of elections to smear candidates
Publication of paid-for articles ordered with “the aim of discrediting a person or a business or with political aims”
A behind-the-scenes owner of three electronic media ordering journalists “to publish articles that smear and tarnish the reputation of certain people, predominantly politicians or businessmen”.
A few journalists claimed there were websites—national and regional ones—created with the purpose of “hiding, manipulating and disseminating untruths in relation to important public causes.” A journalist has “personally witnessed how the PR agency she worked for paid a journalist to write articles about one of their clients.” One journalist summed up the practice: “Political content is designated as editorial policy (the so-called advertorial). Since there is a financial interest involved (the one ordering the material pays for it), this is a corruption practice. The worst thing about it is that it undermines public trust in the media.” While for most these could clearly be labeled as corruption practices, one journalist felt this was “not pure corruption, but it is more a case of creating dependencies through funding and advertising, which is then reflected in the choice of sources and opinion and attitude formation.”
Marketing Censorship
Journalists labeled the third most common corruption practice as “marketing censorship.” This involved signing advertising contracts with private companies or politicians and political parties, which led to self-censorship and created taboo topics, people, and companies. A few journalists said they had lists of firms, usually connected to the owner of their media, whose interests should not be infringed upon. Journalists explained they could not “write anything bad about their donors and advertisers.” The same rules applied for certain political parties and politicians especially during elections. There were reports of stories taken down by the owners because of their own business and political interests. Some journalists found it particularly tricky when their owners were politicians. “This is enough in itself,” as one participant put it. Regional journalists also provided examples of being denied access to press conferences by the mayor due to not being part of their “inner circle” of loyal media, while national journalists talked about “restricted access for media, which do not cover the government or particular companies in a favourable light.” As one journalist summarized, there were “advertising contracts that certain legal entities or people sign with certain media to buy influence over the editorial policy and thus become untouchable.” Another participant explained, “This is mostly done through the advertisements. You pay for a lovely advertisement. . . somebody else signs the contract. . . and the journalist has to shut up.”
Bribes, Presents, and Trips
The fourth most common corruption practice was bribes, monetary incentives, and presents, including trips abroad for “favorites” in exchange for favorable coverage of top politicians and/or the financial interests of “big players.” Аs one journalist put it in reference to a national media owner, “You cannot have a person who for six months has the state paying his (editorial offices) rent to then claim that he is ‘invisible’ and that he was not connected to those in power. The truth is those in power bought themselves media.” A few journalists admitted to having been offered bribes, although not all specified whether they had accepted them. One journalist recalled being offered a bribe when working for a “state medium”: “I didn’t accept the bribe, of course, but I didn’t forget it because it was clear they have been successful elsewhere. Years later, I worked for a private medium and could sense it was still happening.” А few journalists mentioned they had either evidenced or heard about political parties offering payments in envelopes. One journalist explained he knew of media owners who had received direct payments from political parties without any form of contract. The words “direct payment” or “direct financial incentives” were commonly used. Here are a few further examples, illustrating the scale of this practice:
А journalist might receive a financial or other type of benefit to present a certain person or scenario in a favourable light. Other “colleagues” receive honoraria from NGOs in exchange for the use of their experts, thus prioritizing their points of view by presenting them as influential and authoritative. With regards to business, they accept trips and presents to write or broadcast positive materials about a given company trying to win important public procurement orders. Direct financial resources (bribes) from known figures—money is given in exchange for media behaviour. The most banal form (of bribing) was direct in-hand payments. А bribe from a former government minister who was an MP candidate paid to journalists who were correspondents for national media not to publish any information about gaffes in his campaign Receiving of unregulated payments under the table for the publication of a certain text; receiving promotional presents; mixing up of commercial and editorial content Generous gifts and trips in exchange for not covering problems in a given sector, company/factory and CEO Placing advertisements in the “correct” media, free trips abroad for journalists, presents.
Pressure, Blackmail, and Coercion
The final form of corruption was pressure, blackmail, and coercion under the threat of dismissal or the opposite—the appointment of “convenient,” servile journalists or even fictitious owners. One journalist called these practices “more refined forms of corruption than direct bribes.” From the perspective of journalists who have experienced them, the most common one was “the fear of losing one’s job, unless you conform to certain expectations or yield to certain pressures.” Financing via EU’s operative programmes led to a difference in pay for journalists at the same rank or position, as well as generated unaccounted-for cash. Journalists claimed “corruption works through sponsors” whose interests, politics and businesses media should mind carefully. Reporters and editors got involved on the insistence of their editors-in-chief. They were offered money to write something favorable. Their regular pay was purposefully low, and salaries were often delayed by months. “Such a person can be bought easily,” one respondent said. “Journalists are not elves! They have families/children who would not care about your principles and ethics.” As one journalist summed up, “They throw crumbs at us, and some colleagues are picking them up in order to survive. This is extortion rather than corruption”.
Examples were also provided of “convenient” appointments:
Hiring convenient journalists who carry on political orders without challenging them Hiring journalists with questionable qualifications for the respective position Appointing trusted people for editors-in-chief, particularly in local media where the top-down control is much more direct Appointing journalists to leading positions in media funded by institutions led by political party representatives.
Overall, the fact most journalists reported having witnessed corruption practices and the consistent examples they gave of such practices show the media have indeed been captured and journalists have been an active part of the process. They increasingly recognized their role but felt unable to elicit change. A key explanatory factor is the dominating perception that those inflicting damage on journalism will not face any consequences. Two-thirds (67.1%) were worried those who harm journalists in their country go unpunished. As one journalist summarized, “corruption practices in Bulgarian media are fully legalised through the funding stream of publicity for projects. My colleagues with websites receive substantial amounts of money for meaningless activities on such projects in exchange for the purchase of their silence in relation to local authorities or other institutions’ policies and activities. I too was offered to cover such a project for the humble amount of 35,000 leva 1 but I refused as it contradicts my principles. For national TV journalists, this additional income is disproportionately higher than their salaries.”
Journalistic Agency in the Process of Media Capture
This section focuses on the role of journalistic agency in the process of media capture (RQ3) through exploring first, the role journalists saw themselves as playing when discussing the corruption practices observed, second, their perceptions of changes in their autonomy and influences over their work over time, and finally, any notable relationships between these variables as well as Bulgaria’s global standing in comparison with the other WJS countries.
All five main corruption practices described by journalists were a prime example of media capture as they involved a very close intertwining of business and political interests. Overall, journalists were caught in a web of interdependencies, which they did not feel they could overcome as they were beyond their power. If they wanted their news organization to continue operating and for them to still have jobs, they were left with no choice but to work within the confines set by their advertisers and sponsors (hidden or manifest). Journalists explained it was almost impossible for their media organizations to rely entirely on advertisements, so they had to resort to information and marketing contracts. Regional journalists were even more entrapped than national journalists. As one journalist summarized, “Companies, state and municipal structures use the financial dependency of media on their contracts to exert control over them for the publication of materials or to dictate to them who to work with.” Funding for publicity of European and state/municipal projects has indeed become a more substantial form of income than conventional advertising. This even prompted one journalist to conclude that “when power is your biggest advertiser, journalism is dead.” It is indisputable that for the majority of Bulgarian journalists working in this toxic environment and contributing to these corruption and media capture processes has become the norm. They felt under increased pressure from their owners, editors, and the business managers of their news organizations to conform or they risked losing their jobs if they did not. While they recognized their own role, they seemed entrapped and unable or unwilling to resist the pressures.
The quantitative analysis of the perceived influences’ questions across time and in comparison with the other WJS2 and WJS3 countries adds further explanatory power to these trends. Across time, Bulgarian journalists felt under increased pressure from within their own news organizations: editorial supervisors/higher editors, managers of the news organization and editorial policy (Table 1). This finding concurs with the thematic analysis of corruption practices, which similarly shows how all the external pressures and corruption practices journalists talked about were then transferred into internal practices.
Bulgarian Journalists’ Perceptions of Influences on Their Work: Worlds of Journalism Study Waves 2 and 3.
Journalists in Bulgaria reported greater influence from ethics, personal values, information access, and media regulation than the rest of the world, but this has reduced between Waves 2 and 3 for Bulgaria while remaining steady globally (Figure 2). Conversely, Bulgaria showed less influence from editors, managers, and owners than the rest of the world, but this has increased between waves. Perhaps surprisingly then, autonomy in Bulgaria was even greater both in Bulgaria itself and when compared to the rest of the world in Wave 3 than it was in Wave 2. One potential explanation might be that in the long period of time of populist rule during which media capture had intensified, journalists have internalized so well the constraints imposed from both external and internal influences that these constraints have become the norm.
Survey scores for questions on influence and autonomy. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Preliminary global comparison of relationships between survey scores shows that correlations between different influences and forms of autonomy in Bulgaria tended to be stronger than for the rest of the world (Figure 3). In particular, editorial, managerial, and ownership influences were more positively correlated with each other in Bulgaria, but they were also more negatively correlated with autonomy. The difference with the rest of the world has increased between Waves 2 and 3, indicating tighter coordination among editors, managers, and owners in Bulgaria in recent years, with a stronger negative impact on journalistic autonomy, even though Figure 2 shows journalists in Bulgaria perceive themselves to have greater autonomy.
Correlations between journalists’ perceptions of influences on their work and their perceived autonomy: heatmap of pairwise Pearson’s coefficients for Bulgaria compared with equivalent plots for all other countries in WJS Waves 2 and 3, as labeled.
Additional analysis (Figure 4) shows that in comparison with the rest of the world, Bulgarian journalists were highly influenced by media owners (5/40, similar to United Arab Emirates), by government censorship (6/40, similar to Slovakia), and by their personal values and beliefs (2/40, behind only Qatar). Results for Bulgaria are typically comparable to other Global North countries, particularly not only Eastern European ones but also Global South countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Central America.
Bar plots of preliminary global WJS Wave 3 survey results for Bulgaria and similarly ranked countries for influence from media owners, influence from government censorship and personal values and beliefs influence. The four closest ranked countries to Bulgaria are shown in each plot, and the overall ranking for each country is shown in brackets after its name. Vertical dashed lines show the minimum and maximum country-level mean values globally. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Conclusion
This article shows clear trends of increased media capture over journalism in a country that has experienced over a decade-long populist rule. Overall, results point to an environment characterized by a significant depletion in the number of journalists with some of the poorest paid and oldest journalists globally (RQ1). There has also been a decrease in the number of journalists working in full-time employment and a trend toward more part-time employment and holding second jobs. These trends have been exacerbated by the pandemic with 15 percent of journalists having experienced a change in their contracts in the postpandemic period. Nonetheless, Bulgarian journalists remain among the largest proportion of journalists in full-time employment globally. The survey also showed a very strong level of influence of internal factors on journalists’ work such as owners, managers, and editors. While internal influences have increased and are negatively correlated with editorial autonomy, editorial autonomy itself has increased and is one of the highest globally. On the other hand, the importance of ethics and personal values and beliefs has diminished over time.
A key manifestation of the media capture process is the more than twofold increase in the number of journalists claiming they have evidenced corruption practices in the media (RQ2). Corruption appears to have become a main mechanism for survival of Bulgarian media, which as a process involves a complex intertwining between political and business interests with journalists caught in the middle. The extent to which corruption has entrapped Bulgarian journalism is disturbing because it undermines the very epistemology of journalism and its role as a social institution. Establishing pervasive graft as an important feature of the media environment is consistent with the literature that positions Bulgaria as a country that rapidly transitioned from the Soviet model of the press until 1989 to the politicized model in the late 1990s and at present (Dobek-Ostrowska 2015; Karadjov et al. 2025). It shows how media capture through corruption can damage journalism in a new democracy with a strong populist rule, but it also demonstrates the potential for media capture in democratic countries perceptive to populist leaders and their agendas, which are growing in number and significance globally.
Establishing the importance of journalistic agency in that process has proven to be a challenging task (RQ3). While in their answers to the open-ended question about corruption practices journalists described cases in which they had personally resisted attempts to be bribed, they also mentioned many other cases in which their work has been compromised or restricted because of the deals and contracts struck between their media organization and public authorities, the government or private companies. Self-censorship was rife. The quantitative results also showed a clear trend of increased influences by their editors, managers, and owners as well as increased government censorship. Overall, the one finding that needs further unpicking and analysis is that despite all these increased pressures, journalists also reported an increase in their editorial autonomy over time, thus being among the most highly autonomous journalists in the world. This finding adds further weight to the need to measure journalistic agency in a more holistic way than focusing on autonomy alone as it clearly does not provide us with a well-rounded understanding of the scope and scale of journalistic agency and its relation to opportunities structures within the field of journalism. It also points to a wider issue that needs unpicking, namely, the way autonomy is narrowly conceptualized to two aspects: “selecting stories they deem newsworthy and in emphasizing certain aspects in their stories” (Hamada et al. 2019: 133). This definition does not really account for the process of normalizing and internalizing restrictive practices of topic and angle selection that become inhabited in journalism practice to the extent that they create a false sense of autonomy—a task for future work.
All in all, the Bulgarian case study shows the multifaceted damaging impact on journalism as a social institution of over a decade-long populist rule in a fragile new democracy. Given the global democratic decline and the rise of populism around the world, it demonstrates how important it is to study and monitor the changes that journalism as an industry and as a social institution is undergoing and how the relationship between journalists and power evolves over time. Media capture is a structural process, but it involves a complex interplay of structure and agency. The normalization and internalization of corruption practices by journalists themselves should not be assumed but studied and investigated. Our definitions of external and internal autonomy should also evolve based on journalists’ interpretations and applications of these terms. Similarly, the academic preoccupation with the rich democracies of the global North sometimes prevents us from noticing important trends in the global South and contexts such as Central and Eastern Europe, which are much more global in nature and have important implications for the future of journalism. The rise of populism globally goes hand in hand with the rise of a new global business model in journalism in which the survival of the profession becomes increasingly reliant on corruption and problematic dependencies and interrelations among businesses/advertisers, politicians/political parties, government, local, regional and national authorities, and media companies/journalists—a trend observed in many contexts and worthy of further study. These are disturbing processes because they do indeed lead to democratic decline as the case of Bulgaria demonstrates.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612251319939 – Supplemental material for Media Capture, Survival of the Corruptest and Journalistic Agency: The Case of Bulgaria
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612251319939 for Media Capture, Survival of the Corruptest and Journalistic Agency: The Case of Bulgaria by Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, Mark Pogson and Christopher Karadjov in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Footnotes
Data Availability Statement
The fully anonymized dataset is available upon request.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study in Bulgaria was funded by the Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation, Bulgaria.
Ethical Considerations
The project received ethical approval from the University of Chester, UK (wave 2) and the University of Liverpool (wave 3). All participants signed informed consent forms prior to taking part in the study and could withdraw at any time prior to the anonymization of the data.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
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References
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