The Bulgarian National Radio and the Bulgarian News Agency teach a lesson in cooperation and unity

Exactly a month after the Bulgarian National Radio solemnly celebrated its 90th anniversary, history continues its dialogue with us, its authors. With a special event on February 25, the exhibition "90 Years of the Bulgarian National Radio - The Radio of Generations of Bulgarians" was opened in the Marble Lobby of the public radio. The February issue of LIK magazine dedicated to BNR's anniversary was also officially presented.

The exhibition "collects" the life of Bulgaria's public service radio in large panels, composed of photographs and documents from the funds of the Archives State Agency, the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) and the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).

BNR at 90 - a story of pride and no prejudice!

"With these two events, we look back at history, we are obliged to do so on such a serious anniversary," said the Director General of the Bulgarian National Radio Milen Mitev to the attendees.

"The times in which media outlets are working today are not easy at all - from budget pressure to the fight against disinformation, we face many challenges. It is at this moment that we need friends more than ever and I am glad that together with our friends we are able to take this look back in history. Times change, and the national radio has changed too. What has not changed is that from its very first steps it has been filled with people who have worked with desire and love, and have paid attention primarily to their audience in an effort to be as useful as possible", Milen Mitev stated.

"Looking at the photographs from this exhibition, we can see documents that evoke surprise, pride, bewilderment, even anger. We see good moments and achievements from the history of radio, but also things that leave us with very conflicting feelings, for example lists of names of people who owned radios and their credibility. But even these things that may arouse some anger in us are good to remember, because if we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it. I believe that these 90 years behind us are just the beginning and that they are not our strongest years. Our strongest years are ahead of us!" believes BNR director Milen Mitev.

This anniversary of the Bulgarian National Radio is a celebration of both the Bulgarian archives and the entire society, because the Radio's activity over the past century reflects the history of Bulgaria through three entire eras, noted the Chairman of the Archives State Agency, Assoc. Prof. Mihail Gruev.

The public radio has been, and continues to be, a model for the work of generations of journalists, including the Director General of BTA Kiril Valchev, who began his professional career at 4 Dragan Tsankov Blvd.

"Today, the Bulgarian National Radio and the Bulgarian News Agency are giving an example of cooperation between media outlets in Bulgaria, because the public interest puts cooperation before competition between us. An example of unity in our actions. I would like to draw attention to two more practical things where more unity is needed, and precisely in these times. One is about mutual respect between the media", continues Kiril Valchev.

"The second, which is especially important precisely in the week of the adoption of the state budget - we should unanimously try to influence politicians so that the financing of the Bulgarian media in general, not only public but also private, is done in such a way that a mechanism is found for journalists to be treated like teachers. If our society correctly believes that teachers should receive remuneration that is higher than the average for the country, 125% of the average salary, it seems to me that journalists should be equated with teachers and receive a sign for this through the state budget. Because before artificial intelligence, we should take care of natural intelligence in the media first," Kiril Valchev expressed his firm position.

The February issue of LIK magazine, a publication of the Bulgarian News Agency, is entitled "BNR 90 years later", and Valchev defines it as a declaration of love for the radio.

Both the exhibition and the magazine recall the beginning, the first steps of Radio Sofia and the radio stations in the country, the first directors, speakers and radio teams, the development of the Bulgarian national radio in the different decades of the twentieth century.

The exhibition will travel and will be exhibited in the building of the State Archives in Sofia, and then in all cities of the country where there are regional radio stations of the BNR, and then in the Bulgarian cultural centers abroad.

"Fantastic radio sets used to be produced in Bulgaria that worked flawlessly. This was in the 1930s and the 1940s. There's even a picture of such a device in the exhibition, a superb design," Ivelina Velinova, the artistic designer of the exhibition, tells Radio Bulgaria.

Only thirteen months after the decree of Tsar Boris III of January 25, 1935 stipulating the foundation of the Bulgarian public radio, in February 1936, the start was given to the foreign-language broadcasts of the Bulgarian public radio which are today known as "Radio Bulgaria". It first started with broadcasts in Esperanto, and from the following year with regular broadcasts in French, German, English and Italian.

Happy 89th, Radio Bulgaria!

Close to the radio's director Sirak Skitnik at that time was Bulgarian intellectual Petar Uvaliev, who hosted the broadcast in Italian, who recalls this period in a recording from 1995, preserved in the Golden Fund of the Bulgarian National Radio:

"This radio seemed something completely incredible at the time... The borders were disappearing, because our voices took off. We were young boys, maybe not quite mature yet, but we were talking to someone beyond. While the world 60 years ago was stubbornly divided into enemies, the radio waves crossed the trenches of hatred. Radio taught us not to hate."‎

"Through the stories in these media, people build their own foundation and ideas about the world," says media expert and editor-in-chief of LIK magazine, Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov.

"LIK magazine and its editorial policy is a territory of cultural memory and the Bulgarian National Radio is one of the important phenomena of Bulgarian culture, and hence of Bulgarian cultural memory. The radio is a very modern, huge community center, among other things. And this issue must reflect all these faces of the Bulgarian National Radio - this is not an easy task! We have worked with two large archives - that of the Bulgarian National Radio itself and that of the BTA. Through this issue, we are writing the history of the BNR, but in a way that it can be heard and experienced by the modern reader", points out Assoc. Prof. Lozanov and explains:

"Traditional media, including radio, provide continuity between generations, between different circles in society, unlike new media – social networks, in which everyone is in their own generational, thematic and any other bubble. In this respect, radio is perhaps the most stable culturally integral institution created over the years in Bulgaria".

And today, fast, spectacular, easily digestible and forgettable journalism is held in high esteem. Today, we forget our past and repeat its mistakes, but bigger and more terrible. And if in songs we ask ourselves "Where is love?", then in journalism the question is - "Where is memory?":

"Memory is identity", explains Assoc. Prof. Lozanov. "We are our own memory, what motivates us, connects us with others in a historical, human and any other way. So to give up memory means to give up ourselves. But it is difficult, because there is something called neophilia - the modern world is subject to the hunger for something new, because modern man is a bored man. He constantly needs new and new images, themes, ideas to hold his attention, and for a short time, until the next one appears. And memory is in a sense a resistance against this view of the world. However, it seems to me that the world is starting to get tired of this neophilia. Moreover, it is starting to give quite worrying political results on a global scale, so I personally have the feeling that "that future generations will have a great need for a return to memory and a magazine like this one dedicated to the Bulgarian National Radio."

Read also: