A Bold Experiment in Journalism Seeks to bring Forth the Untold Story of Bulgaria
By Joanna Elmy
The phrase ‘reinventing journalism’ can evoke many reactions: enthusiasm, curiosity, hope (far more likely in the naive or young at heart); horror, reactance, but most likely boredom vis-à-vis what has become a cliché. The results are even more disastrous when the phrase is uttered from a place as ‘marginal’ and ‘small’ as the ‘backyard of Europe’, ‘the most corrupt country in the EU’, as Bulgaria is known in international headlines.
An unlikely contender for the story of democracy
Nobody expects a place like Bulgaria to have much to tell the world about democracy. After all, the country has struggled to conduct fair elections, free of interference and voter fraud, since the beginning of its democratic journey post the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.
Years before U.S. President Donald Trump and his strategists challenged election integrity, creating a playbook for leaders with shared ambitions elsewhere, Bulgaria’s electoral process was strategically and systematically eroded, most recently leading to record-low voter turnout.
One would think the story of an EU-member state and a strategic NATO partner where the very essence of the democratic process is compromised would make headlines beyond simplified reporting, especially since the country held seven parliamentary elections in the past three years. And yet, it remains largely untold.
Or take other key democratic issues: what about the Bulgarian story on matters like freedom of speech, or freedom of press? In 2020, the authorities crushed peaceful, pro-democratic protests. The country ranks among the lowest in the EU in press freedom in international rankings. In the last decade, media capture and soft censorship forced many top investigative and news reporters out of mainstream media and towards the platforms or independent outlets. For a while, one of the country’s most renowned journalists became a taxi driver to make ends meet and afford to practice her profession. A powerful, now Magnitstky-sanctioned politician acquired and controlled a large share of Bulgaria’s print distribution network while he passed media laws and was considered behind some of the country’s largest disinformation platforms.
Once again, long before the full global assault on journalistic integrity became a common headline, Bulgaria had lessons to share. Long before the tools of democracy and the state became weaponized, Bulgaria had ‘baseball bats’ institutions, as the civic society called the phenomenon. Yet these stories remained invisible.
The neglected East and West crossroads
Bulgaria doesn’t make headlines as frequently despite its democratic contradictions and strategic hedging. While Washington and Brussels debate abstract concepts of “de-risking” from China, Bulgaria hosts actual Chinese infrastructure investments in the Chinese Belt and Road projects alongside investments from the U.S.-backed Three Seas Initiative.The country is also welcoming expanded U.S. military presence: its recent $2.7 billion F-16 purchase is the largest military procurement since the fall of Communism, signaling alignment with the US and NATO. Yet Chinese firms eye Sofia’s thermal power plants and transportation networks.
Perhaps nowhere is Bulgaria’s role as a strategic laboratory more vital than in information warfare. According to recent research from American University in Bulgaria’s Center for Information, Democracy and Citizenship (CIDC), Bulgaria ranks among the top 10 targets of Russian disinformation networks. The systematic campaigns – complete with coordinated Telegram channels, localized content and narrative frameworks – exploit Bulgarian historical grievances and contemporary anxieties.
Russia’s goal is to undermine Bulgarian support for Ukraine, sow doubt about EU membership benefits (including the Eurozone), and promote false narratives about NATO. This makes Bulgaria an inadvertent early warning system for vulnerable democracies and an invaluable case study for understanding modern cognitive warfare. As far back as 2013, a group of Bulgarian researchers has been tracking the very antidemocratic narratives that today form the foundations of the global information (and culture) war.
But so it goes, and so it goes – untold. These stories would be merely interesting if Bulgaria were simply a passive arena for great power competition; what makes them consequential is how Bulgaria’s choices in navigating these pressures will shape broader outcomes. The question isn’t whether Bulgaria’s story is important. It is whether Western strategists will recognize this importance before it is too late.
Changing journalism, changing narratives
A small but ambitious initiative,the Bulgarian International Journalism Fellowship (BIJF) at CIDC, aims to break the silence. At its core is the conviction that reinventing journalism begins not in a luxurious conference room nor on TikTok, but with challenging coverage of ‘small’, ‘marginal’ places where the challenges of the 21st century often play out first.
Reinventing journalism also begins with confronting issues of agenda-setting, framing, and diversity within international journalism. Despite being a young democracy, Bulgaria has produced solid names in international journalism, such as pulitzer-prize winner Boryana Dzhambazova, Dimiter Kenarov, Christo Grozev, and Maria Cheresheva. Yet many voices, including of the new generation, remain unheard, unread, and unseen while Bulgaria is covered in largely the same frames – as corrupt, oriental, marginal, insignificant.
This is, of course, due to a plethora of complex challenges both within and outside the profession: after all, foreign reporting is in crisis worldwide. The BIJF levels a nuanced understanding of these dynamics while aiming to bring Bulgaria’s stories to a global audience and support strong, resilient journalism.
The lessons of the past and the crises of the present
And Bulgaria’s democratic transition is a good story, because it has it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The past, the present, the future.
Poland, another former prisoner behind the Iron Curtain, recently surpassed Japan in GDP per capita; Estonia is lauded as a post-Communism miracle. What are the reasons behind such vast differences between these countries and Hungary, now poorest in the European Union? Or Bulgaria, which until recently held this title?
The so-called ‘democratic transition’ – the period between 1989 and today – allows Eastern Europe to give its Western counterparts some perspective as they watch their democracies undergo various degrees of backsliding and erosion. Could ‘Balkanization’ be left behind, to a world of centuries-old orientalist interpretations, or could we perhaps invert this meaning, seeing universal lessons from those the West perceives as ‘less like us’? It is impossible to know without quality, internationally-geared in-depth journalism coming from the country, and the region as a whole.
For this purpose the BIJF deploys independent journalists – myself being one of them – to produce news, features, and investigative articles in English for major international publications. At a time of waning support for journalism and democracy, this is a bold experiment and much-needed support for voices aiming to break the glass ceiling and reshape narratives coming from the ‘periphery’.
No ‘peripheries’ in a globalized world
The very notion of periphery is problematic in a global world, even more so in light of an increased push for EU strategic autonomy. Bulgaria is a key energy corridor and crucial hub for grain shipments and naval security.The country has a potential role in critical mineral supply chains, important for both green transition and tech manufacturing. These salient points transform local stories of captured resources, corruption, and institutional complacency into issues of international importance.
But Bulgaria has plenty of success stories, too. Despite pressures, the country has the most robust civic sector in its recent history, applying democratic mechanisms to achieve important changes across the board, from education to the business sector. One such recent development is the country’s ‘digital nomad’ visa, a joint advocacy effort by the Bulgarian Startup Association (BESCO) and the New Balkans Law Office (NBLO). The visa is expected to promote growth and attract foreign investment, while stimulating an already robust technology and innovation sector. With a flat tax rate of 10%, the lowest in the European Union, the story of Bulgaria as a European innovation hub and an attractive country for business and investment is also largely untold beyond the corruption which keeps it from flourishing.
The beating cultural heart of contemporary Europe
A recent New York Times article listed the 52 best places to go this year, and Bulgaria ranked 50th. The publication presented the country with a nondescript image of a street evoking oriental, exotic charm, and a few of the tried-and-tired tourist destinations. Untold stories have consequences good journalism of every genre cannot afford.
Home to a bustling food and wine scene, an entire generation of young Bulgarians – often returning from abroad – invest in sustainable tourism and a new, modern take on the national experience. Of course, Bulgaria isn’t a stranger to the ‘culture wars’ of what this national experience should look like. Just ask the authors of a ‘Cards Against Humanity’-inspired game dedicated to Bulgaria, who found out they had broken the law by ‘hurting national dignity’. And yet it moves, and moves forward – and the stories are there to prove it.
On May 23rd 2023, the eve of Bulgaria’s national holiday honoring slavonic languages and the cyrillic alphabet, the entire country had their eyes pinned to the screen with a fervor usually reserved for soccer games. May 24th is a one-of-a-kind national holiday, celebrating not war victory nor a revolution, but language and literature.
But that night, Bulgarians weren’t watching soccer: they were anxiously following the International Booker Prize ceremony. Georgi Gospodinov had become the first-ever Bulgarian to be nominated, and the first to win: Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, ‘put Bulgaria on the literary map of the world’, in the author’s own words. ‘Happy miracle of language’, or “Честито чудо на езика”, he told the audience, in Bulgarian.
Along with Kapka Kassabova, who explores the specificities of Southeast Europe’s border regions in her award-winning trilogy, Gospodinov is one of the most recognized names in contemporary world literature. His international fame is a crest of a still-growing wave: a literary renaissance in the region, with authors like Nobel-prize winner Olga Tokarczhuck claiming that the long-neglected ‘other Europe’ is currently the beating cultural heart of the continent. And unsurprisingly so, for a country –and a region –with so many untold stories.
Last year, Bulgaria’s Venice Art Biennale contribution, ‘The Neighbors’, made international headlines and was declared among the best projects to participate. ‘The Neighbors’ also tackled the untold, silent, and long-ignored by engaging with survivors from communist-era concentration camps – a dark, little-known chapter in European history, ever-more relevant in times where various ideologies and -isms might seem alluring in the midst of social crisis.
The art world should be as good of a weathervane as any. It is time for journalism to catch up.
The time is now
Bulgaria is a chessboard for the conflicts, crises, and opportunities of the 21st century: a land of crossroads where superpowers vie for influence, where truth and propaganda come face to face, where democracy proves both its resilience and fragility. The BIJF aims to provide answers to the central question: will Bulgaria become the bridge between the competing empires – geopolitical, cultural, informational – or will it be a battleground?
Each story the BIJF fellows produce and publish will explore this tension. From the democratic emancipation of the Bulgarian Roma community to the rise of multiple Unicorn companies, all the stories outlined here are not just Bulgarian, but European, world stories. And they can help correct the analytical blind spot that leaves Western policymakers and audiences unprepared for regional consequential choices. The BIJF can also offer a model for how smaller countries can claim their strategic due on the international stage.
Georgi Gospodinov has a story of his own he likes to tell. He shared it in front of the audience at the Leipzig international bookfair, where Bulgaria returned for the first time in many years a few springs ago.
A ‘foreign’ woman approached Gospodinov about his first book, Natural Novel, now translated in over 20 languages across the world. “I didn’t expect this of a Bulgarian novel”, she told him. The novel tells the story of a painful divorce, of a mad naturalist who fears the end of the world, of the apocalypse, of Eastern Europe, and of the toilet, all in astonishing prose.
“I was younger then, more arrogant”, Gospodinov admits. “So I told her: ‘Next time I’ll make sure to make it more exotic.’” Wherever he goes, Gospodinov talks about universal stories, human stories, world stories. Bulgaria is full of just such stories, he believes, as does the Bulgarian International Journalism Fellowship.
We are here to tell these stories, hoping that the time has come to listen. And after all, isn’t this the very purpose of journalism? No need to reinvent the wheel.