site.btaTV Journalism Awards Presented in Sveti Vlas Resort

Maria Tsantsarova has won the 2022 Sveti Vlas Grand Prix for TV Journalism. The bTV journalist received the distinction from veteran colleague Ivan Garelov at a ceremony in the Black Sea resort of Sveti Vlas on Saturday. Garelov chairs the association which administrates the TV Journalism Awards. 

The Special Award for TV Journalism went to Svetlana Gancheva of the Varna Regional TV Centre of Bulgarian National Television (BNT). She was honoured for her documentaries about the war in Ukraine. Another special award was conferred on Marina Tsekova of Nova TV.

This was the 12th edition of the annual awards. The winners were named by a five-member jury chaired by Prof. Ivailo Znepolski.

The ceremony was hosted by BNT journalist Boiko Vassilev. Everyone present observed a minute of silence for journalist Neri Terzieva, who died earlier this week at the age of 70. Terzieva won the 2016 Sveti Vlas Special Award for TV Journalism.

Vassilev said that 20 or 50 years from now people will probably look back on our present day and say that the years from 2020 to 2022, marked by the COVID-19 crisis, a political crisis in Bulgaria and the war in Ukraine, were a time when Bulgarian journalism showed what it was capable of.

Discussion on Ukraine

Earlier on Saturday, leading journalists and media experts who had gathered in Sveti Vlas took part in a discussion on "How We're Covering Ukraine War".

Svetlana Gancheva, the BNT staffer who would receive one of the special awards later in the day, noted that in the case of the Ukraine war it is difficult to make sure that a fact is confirmed 100%. If, however, a fact is confirmed by reliable sources and if the Kremlin holds the opposite view on it, it should be discussed in interviews and the audience should be left to draw their own conclusions.

Journalist Toma Ignatov said he was surprised to see that 30 years after the beginning of the democratic changes journalists were revisiting the dilemma of whether a report should cover all viewpoints or not.

Media expert Georgi Lozanov, who chairs the LIK Directorate at the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), said that the Bulgarian media are covering not just the Ukraine war but also a parallel war. "A hot hybrid war is going on in Bulgaria about our leaving NATO and installing a government loyal to Putin. Right now, every journalist is a soldier, because journalists participate in every war," Lozanov said.