Council for Electronic Media: PM Denkov's suggestions are unacceptable

The Council for Electronic Media (CEM) finds unacceptable the assessments and suggestions made by the Prime Minister to the regulator. This is stated in a position paper on the comments of acad. Nikolai Denkov.

"What was expressed during the bimonthly report in the form of an interview shows ignorance of the authority's powers as defined in the Broadcasting Act; ignorance regarding the activities of which entities the CEM is competent; misunderstanding that the professional standards for journalistic activity, set out in the Code of Ethics of the Bulgarian Media, are observed by the Ethics Committee (a self-regulatory body) of the National Council for Journalistic Ethics," CEM said on August 8.

CEM recommends that the representatives of the executive power, and the legislative power as well, take into account the findings and recommendations in each of the reports of the European Commission on the Rule of Law by correcting their own behaviour regarding the independence of the media regulator and of all media in the country.

CEM notes that in the past year it has carried out over 24 000 hours of monitoring of television and radio programmes. Within its remit, it has also carried out eight focused observations on the war in Ukraine, which include and analyse the problem of disinformation.

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Speaking on Facebook yesterday, August 7, to answer questions from the public to mark his government’s second month in office, PM Denkov said that broadcast media regulator, the Council for Electronic Media, was not doing its job.

Journalists who disseminate false facts cannot go unsanctioned. Journalistic ethics require you checking through several sources, and if your interlocutor tells you something false, to immediately refute it," he said.