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- 2014-01-30 15:59:56
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“Conspiracies cannot exist. There are interferences, use and misuse of media,” Boyko Vassilev, the host of Panorama talk show on BNT, said towards the end of his lecture on the topic “Are we being misguided? Media and global conspiracy in the Balkans.” The event took place on Tuesday, Jan. 28, in the BAC Auditorium.
Vassilev pointed out that the problem of journalists around the world, and especially in Bulgaria, is that they do not talk about their mistakes. He shared that the first mistake is that a person can be manipulated by himself. Using shots from a segment that was shot in 1998 during the war between Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo, Vassilev showed how a person can be misled through their own eyes. During bombings of a cafe in Kosovo, a girl had been killed. He explained that at that time he and his fellow journalists (all from different countries) did not know the exact age of the girl and thought she was 13-15 years old. Only later on did they find out that she was actually 18. Their eyes had misled them.
He concluded his lecture by explaining that today many people believe that media is being controlled and manipulated all the time. In such cases, journalists are the ones that have to damask and to ask rational questions. “In other way, to do what we do without pictures, to put rationality to it, and to ask,” he said and pointed out that technology is not the answer to that because technology has given a way for people who are not professional journalists to think of themselves as such.
“We are in a much bigger world, now everybody can play a journalist,” Vassilev said.
Journalist have been devalued by the great variety that exists out there. The lecturer said that those who can change that are young people who are aspiring journalists, not some bloggers that consider themselves such. “You can be the ones that can go and say 'I am a journalist because I do not even trust myself,'” Vassilev said to the people in the audience, explaining that one of the most valuable characteristics of a journalist should be his/hers self-doubt.
Vassilev pointed out that the problem of journalists around the world, and especially in Bulgaria, is that they do not talk about their mistakes. He shared that the first mistake is that a person can be manipulated by himself. Using shots from a segment that was shot in 1998 during the war between Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo, Vassilev showed how a person can be misled through their own eyes. During bombings of a cafe in Kosovo, a girl had been killed. He explained that at that time he and his fellow journalists (all from different countries) did not know the exact age of the girl and thought she was 13-15 years old. Only later on did they find out that she was actually 18. Their eyes had misled them.
“The television picture is the most dangerous thing in the world,” Vassilev said. “the most dangerous thing in journalism because the viewer cannot analyze it.”In his view, pictures can be manipulated by journalists because “they simply cannot resist the picture” but they can also be used as propaganda, especially in wartime depending on the side that presents the image. “The picture is the most subjective thing,” the lecturer said and added that sometimes opinions can be more objective than photos and one can “counterbalance the subjectivity of pictures with objectivity of opinions if there are many.” The best thing that a person can rely on in such situations is the journalist’s doubt that drives him into investigating and trying to give more substance to a certain picture and to reveal the truth.
“I do not believe the task of a reporter is to say the ultimate truth,” Vassilev said. “His task is to go after the truth, to explore it, to find it.”Thus, Vassilev added that he does not like people who say that they have always done the right thing while they were reporting and investigating a conflict because there can be multiple truths depending on the side. To show that the truth can have two faces, he played a video of two mothers, an Albanian and a Serbian one, who cry on the graves of their children killed in the war.
He concluded his lecture by explaining that today many people believe that media is being controlled and manipulated all the time. In such cases, journalists are the ones that have to damask and to ask rational questions. “In other way, to do what we do without pictures, to put rationality to it, and to ask,” he said and pointed out that technology is not the answer to that because technology has given a way for people who are not professional journalists to think of themselves as such.
“We are in a much bigger world, now everybody can play a journalist,” Vassilev said.
Journalist have been devalued by the great variety that exists out there. The lecturer said that those who can change that are young people who are aspiring journalists, not some bloggers that consider themselves such. “You can be the ones that can go and say 'I am a journalist because I do not even trust myself,'” Vassilev said to the people in the audience, explaining that one of the most valuable characteristics of a journalist should be his/hers self-doubt.