54305 | 20 Dec. 2025 | 09:16

If such an active, reactive and aggressive community jumps to the defense of a journalist, then that journalist is probably important to them because he/she has successfully presented the community's activity, reactivity and aggressiveness to a sign

 Ivan Stambolov - Sula

 For many, it may sound paradoxical, but I don't watch TV, so I can't say anything about Maria Tzantsarova. I think I was once interviewed with her on bTV with my colleague from the University and old friend Asen Grigorov (God rest his soul!), but I still couldn't form any impressions of this journalist, although the format must have been biased. She didn't argue with me, and even if she tried, I didn't notice.
 

 That's why it can be said that in the current uproar surrounding the rumor of her removal from bTV, I am completely neutral.

 I am not like Veselin Zhelev, for example (also my friend), who wrote this morning:

 "Maria Tzantsarova does not need my defense. Maria is already "protected" by the spontaneous solidarity of the audience and her professional colleagues. Today is Maria's biggest day. They want to remove her, which means she is important. They don't remove the indifferent and untalented ones. Maria matters. And she owes it to her hard work and talent. That's why Maria deserves our solidarity. The one who needs help is our democratically insensitive society. And our journalistic community. It doesn't yet have a worthy professional organization that respects self-righteous political cartoons."

 I have always admired Vesko for his bright and thunderous style. But I think that if a whole political community, such as... what should we call it?... "the democratic community"?... "the liberals"?... "the intellectual beauties"?... If such an active, reactive, and aggressive community jumps to defend a journalist, then this journalist is probably important to them, because they have actively, reactively, and aggressively promoted the same community to a significant audience.

 In other words - this journalist was not so much a journalist as an agitator and propagandist.

 It is generally accepted that journalists in national media should not be biased. If they want to be biased, well - they have blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and various other forms of personal expression. As far as I know, this is the fate that Mirolyuba Benatova and her colleagues have chosen. And I haven't heard them complaining. I say: I haven't heard. They may complain.

 I know it's immodest to give myself as an example, but I have also been offered national airtime, but I have always refused because I am biased and I do not want to conform to editorial policies, even if I agree with them. I have written and continue to write in newspapers and magazines under the condition that I am not given topics and my texts are not edited. But I am not a journalist. I am nothing.

  The bare-breasted defenders of Tsentarova, before they publicly start plucking their hair out, should remember that bTV is a private organization and as such has the unassailable right to its own personnel policy. It's not anyone's job, not even my respected friend Vesko Zhelev, to tell her who to appoint and who to dismiss.

 This applies to all other media outlets, including BNT, although the situation there is more specific because it is a public (practically state) media. I'm sure something similar is stated in the employment contracts of all journalists and they have accepted it without complaint when they joined.

 Don't be afraid, children, of tomorrow!

 Even if they remove Tsentsarova from bTV air, she, being such a bright and great journalist, with plenty to say, will find a way to say it. She will set up her own studio, one of her personal sponsors will help her equip it and her words will be heard from there, and you will absorb them through your computers, mobile phones and tablets.

 Don't be afraid, children, of tomorrow!