Galery

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Curious are the results of three answers to the following questions: Do you think that the media in your country are free to criticize the government? In Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the media are the most free as a self-assessment of the population. In Russia, Kosovo, Italy, Bulgaria and Lithuania they are the most dependent. The good news here is that Bulgarians are at least aware of the lack of freedom in the information environment.

The situation is similar in terms of the second question: Do the media provide voters with objective information, allowing them to take the right decisions about their politicians? Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Finland have the highest rate, and Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Kosovo the lowest.

To the third question, "Do you think it is important that the media be free to criticize the government?" Albania and Bulgaria have the highest percentage of positive responses. Where the media environment is independent to the largest extent, people think that this is the most important thing. In Bulgaria, at least there is an increased sensitivity towards media freedom. The problem is that Bulgarians do not know how to solve this problem.

The conclusions from the complete study are the following: the consumption of media by Bulgarians coincides with that by the poor, sick, unhappy, politically inactive citizen of the European Union. The level of television consumption is painfully high. This indicates a passive process of seeking and consuming information. Unlike the Dutch, for example, Bulgarians wait to be given 15-20 minutes of assimilated information. There is a lack of willingness to seek alternative sources and low ability to identify and separate the information of poor quality and the associated low-level critical thinking.

Due to those factors, in Bulgaria there is a significant opportunity to quickly change and manipulate public opinion. The high consumption of information from a single platform, namely television, simplifies the task of manipulating the population. This is the reason for the attempted monopolization of the free distribution of TV in Bulgaria and for the legal proceedings against the country on this occasion, which we mentioned at the beginning of this article.