Institutionalizing The Politically Independent Media Systems

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INSTITUTIONALIZING THE POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT MEDIA SYSTEMS IN in Eastern Europe


1. Introduction

The present research is an attempt to work out a model for comparing the institutional independence of media in Eastern Europe in the context of their national political systems.

The attempt at an international comparative analysis from an Eastern - in this case, Bulgarian - point of view is not an easy task. In modern Western societies, the stage of democratic development is tested and assessed by the degree of publicity's detachment and autonomy from all institution. And by the extent of this autonomy - initially from politics, and subsequently from the economy (at this stage some additional problematics might ensue - a judgment can be passed on democracy in general (1).

On the intermediary level (2) publicity not only emerges as a go-between for politics and society (working in both directions), but also plays an independent role - with its own dynamics, with border areas, with its effect on other spheres (3). There is a general agreement that at the stage of the industrial society at least, the mass media is part of the publicity system, and this is exactly the part that is most essential and crucial for democracy (4). Mass communication, at that, should not be grasped as the opposite to political communication, rather as inclusive of another, more generalized kind of political (meat-) communication. Its function is of a counterbalance sustaining democracy, both at the entrance, as well as at the exit of the media system - a counterbalance to the partial party communication and public opinion building (5). There are critical voices that point at the underdeveloped media research as a political science, at the impotence of researchers to come up with generalizations - especially on macro-level - and to reach beyond simple descriptions in their reports on each separate country (6).

All this relates to an even higher ...