The conference opened with a speech by Christoph Plate, Director of KAS Media Programme South East Europe, who outlined the main problems facing media today. “A lot of things are being called journalism nowadays that are not journalism”, he pointed out. Plate underlined the fundamental changes currently happening in the media landscape, with old business models dying out and new ones emerging. He discussed how journalistic integrity is being threatened by these processes and stressed everyone’s individual responsibility in preserving it.
Then, our new scholars from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and Serbia were introduced via Zoom. They shared their diverse interests in the field of media and expressed their excitement to be working with our foundation.
Three panels took place on matters of great relevance to contemporary Bulgarian media. Nikolay Staykov, one of the most renowned investigative journalists in the country, told the intriguing story of how he and his team uncovered several instances of high-level corruption and abuse of power. Prof. Nelly Ognyanova, one of the leading experts on media law in Bulgaria and Head of the Ethical Commission of Bulgarian Journalists, discussed an important question for our democracies today – how to find a balance between upholding freedom of speech and combating misinformation. Ruslan Stefanov from the Center for the Study of Democracy showed how malicious Russian influence can undermine media freedom in Bulgaria and Europe. All three lectures were followed by lively debates, in which scholars and lecturers exchanged ideas freely.
The scholars also visited the editorial room of Nula32, a print Plovdiv magazine on art and culture. Its editor-in-chief Panayot Stefanov talked about the numerous difficulties facing local media. He shared his insights about the narrow niche of print magazines and recounted his experience of building the publication from the ground up.
The KAS scholars also participated in a game that showed just how much of a challenge AI can be in media work nowadays. They were given the task to recognize whether a set of images is authentic or if it has been generated by AI, which proved to be more difficult than they expected. They were also given the opportunity to personally generate images with an AI tool. Many scholars were excited by the opportunity to learn how this software works and to be more cautious of the danger it poses.
As a whole, the conference was a fruitful experience for everyone involved. KAS scholars enriched their knowledge, voiced their opinions and asked important questions.