site.btaUPDATED World Meeting of Bulgarian Media 1st Panel Focuses on Media and Human Salvation

Journalistic narrative is historical, becoming a history of the present, thus allowing the selfsame narrative to intervene into events, said Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov, head of BTA's Knowledge and Culture LIK Directorate. Lozanov was moderating Wednesday’s first panel discussion on "Media and Human Salvation (the eternal values in the media)" of the 17th World Meeting of Bulgarian Media, organized by the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).

Participating in the first panel were Metropolitan Anthony of Western and Central Europe, Maxim Delchev, Chairman of the Central Israelite Religious Council, former Bulgarian foreign minister and UN Special Envoy for the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov, who is currently director general of the Anwar Garhash Diplomatic Academy (United Arab Emirates), Svetla Kyosseva, chief editor of the Bulgarian-Hungarian Hemus magazine, and BulgariCA chief editor Evgeni Vesselinov.

The power of cultural media is in creating communities of people who know each other and know how to judge the source of information, and this also applies to church communities, said Svetla Kyosseva. According to her, small communities are a very important cell from which our appreciation and understanding of the world can develop. Thus people can be protected from the anonymity of the news, she said.

According to the California-based online BulgariCA chief editor Evgeni Vesselinov, the main question that media abroad have to answer is whether they are a mission or a business. In his words, the task of the media coincides with that of the state - to regain their credibility. He proposed to the participants in the forum that the next World Meeting of Bulgarian Media be held in Los Angeles. BulgariCA's editor also suggested that a film festival be organized on the sidelines of the event.

The Lord has outlined the moral way we should follow with His Ten Commandments, the Metropolitan of Western and Central Europe Anthony said. Whether one keeps them or not determines the degree of our humanity. "The questions of salvation also fall in the context of the information we receive from social media, from Bulgarian media and this information, about which the Lord Jesus Himself tells us to be careful not to lead astray the youngest." The presentation of this information - distorted untruth - or made in such a way as to be in the service of one untruth or another, makes people really lose themselves," Metropolitan Anthony said. The responsibility of the media and of those who have a hold on the masses, according to the Church, is enormous, for a single word could save or destroy a human soul, he added.

"It is very nice when we tell the story of the Bulgarian Jews. For my grandparents it is more of a love story than a tragic one. They met thanks to the Holocaust. They were peasants, they suffered from the then existing Act on the Protection of the Nation, from terrible legislation," the Chairman of the Central Israelite Religious Council Maxim Delchev said. Recalling that 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, Delchev said his request was to attempt to say "that this event happened in defiance of these laws and the entire state apparatus, which had people who wanted Jews to be sent to death camps".

UN Special Envoy for the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov, who participated in the discussion online, said the role of Bulgarian media across the world is to uphold freedom of speech and defend the idea that one can have an opinion other than what other media, social networks and environment impose.