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Fwd: RFE/RL: Minority media and national integration in Bulgaria


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Subject: Fwd: RFE/RL: Minority media and national integration in Bulgaria


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Fwd: RFE/RL: Minority media and national integration in
Bulgaria



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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 215, Part II, 6 November 2000
 
MINORITY MEDIA AND NATIONAL INTEGRATION
 
By Paul Goble
 
A recent survey of the national minority press in Bulgaria highlights
the ways that such media can help mobilize ethnic communities and the
contribution they can make to the integration of these groups into the
broader society.

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, together with a Bulgarian survey
agency, last week published the results of a survey of the ethnic
press in Bulgaria. That survey included 19 ethnic publications - seven
Romany, three Armenian, two Wallachian and Romanian, two Jewish, two
Russian, two Turkish, and one Macedonian - for the period from May
1999 to May 2000.

Only one, "Evrena," the newspaper of the Armenian community, was
self-supporting. And one large minority, the Turkish community,
generally relied on publications from abroad rather than generating
its own output.

The authors of the survey reached three general conclusions, each of
which appears to be applicable to the ethnic minority press in other
countries as well.

First, the authors found that the publications of those groups that
are the most integrated into Bulgarian society had the largest
printruns per capita. Publications directed at the Jewish community,
for example, generally produce one issue a month for every two Jews
among the population, whereas there is only one issue of a Romany
newspaper for every 10 Romany citizens each month.

This "circulation paradox," the authors of the survey suggest,
reflects cultural differences among the groups and also the important
role that the ethnic press can and does play in helping integrate
communities into the broader society.

Some members of the dominant community view the ethnic press as a
threat to national unity, but the survey suggests that it plays the
opposite role. As the authors of the study note, the prevailing
opinion among ethnic groups in Bulgaria is that the ethnic
publications directed at them should be issued in both Bulgarian and
those groups' native tongues, an arrangement that would appear to
promote national consolidation.

Second, the survey's authors concluded that the newspapers of such
minorities will need subsidies from either community groups or the
government in order to continue. Because those groups are small, the
publications seldom are able to attract the necessary advertising or
subscription income. Even the one self-supporting newspaper in the
survey was able to cover only 80 percent of its costs through
advertising and newspaper sales.

Consequently, the national government and other institutions of the
majority national community may have a compelling interest in
providing subsidies to ensure that the newspapers of ethnic minority
communities will not only continue to appear but even gain in
influence.

And third, the authors of the survey pointed out that those
communities that do not have a strong domestically produced ethnic
press are more likely than others to turn to publications from their
co-ethnics abroad. They cited the case of Bulgaria's 800,000 Turks,
the ethnic minority that in the past has presented some of the biggest
challenges to Sofia.

The Turkish-language paper with the largest circulation has a printrun
of only 7,000, "too small," the authors of the survey argue, for the
large community it serves. As a result, ethnic Turks in Bulgaria turn
to "Yumit" and "Zaman," subsidiaries of Turkish newspapers produced in
Turkey.

The survey's compilers noted that Bulgarian Turks accept these
newspapers from abroad "as ethnic publications," but precisely because
the focus of these newspapers is on Turkey, rather than on Bulgaria,
such media outlets may promote separatist or even irredentist feelings
rather than generate the kind of integrationist feelings that the
domestic ethnic press appears to do.

Bulgaria is far from the only country in Eastern Europe and in the
post-Soviet area that is wrestling with the problems of ethnic
minorities and the ethnic press. The conclusions of this survey
suggest that other governments, some of which have been openly hostile
to the non-majority press, may want to reconsider their views about
the role that minority media play.
 
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