Blurring the boundaries between journalism and activism: A transparency agenda-building case study from Bulgaria

Introduction

Recent scholarship suggests a trend towards blurring the lines between journalists, media activists, and civil actors (Russell, 2013). Media scholars recognize the integration of journalists’ work with social movements as an emerging norm in the profession (Shoemaker and Reese, 2014), while the literature reflects the drive of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to adopt the ‘media logic’ (Fenton, 2010). Journalist-NGO relations have become more complex and heterogonous, involving a range of actors and different styles of interactions (Powers, 2014; Waisbord, 2011). This perspective raises new questions regarding the degree to which NGOs can shape the public agenda through the media and jointly with news media. Therefore, it is not clear whether the professional boundaries between NGOs and journalists emphasized in the literature adequately reflect the current nature of agenda-building interactions between these two social institutions.

This article explores the relationship between journalists and NGOs in promoting the Freedom of Information (FOI) right on the policy agenda in Bulgaria, a relatively new democracy in Eastern Europe. Drawing upon agenda-building scholarship (Lang and Lang, 1983) and boundary journalism literature (Bourdieu, 2005), it explores the following questions: (1) What are the strategies employed by the FOI advocacy group Access to Information Programme (AIP) in Bulgaria in their agenda-building efforts? (2) How do this NGO and journalists perceive their partnerships in building the agenda for FOI? and (3) How effective was the NGO-media partnership for FOI agenda building in Bulgaria?

The aim of this study is to examine how the relationship between journalists and NGOs is negotiated in cases when they both serve a common public good, and the effects of this cooperation on the agenda-building process. This study conceptualizes NGOs as independent non-profit organizations composed of civil actors whose goal is to uphold moral values and universal principles (Fenton, 2009) locally, nationally, or transnationally. The NGO sector is a contentious sphere marked by ideologically diverse activist networks (Bob, 2012); therefore, the values they embrace are less consistent than those guiding professional journalists. Relevant to this article are NGOs who, similar to journalists’ professional logic, are guided by the principle of the ‘public good’ and embrace values and issues within the sphere of political consensus (such as human rights or environmental protection). Such NGOs are prone to take advantage of public consensus to build media partnerships in advancing policy agendas within the public domain (Powers, 2015).

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. It provides a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between journalists and other social actors during the agenda-building process, while engaging in the debate about the effects of these interactions on journalism and public discourse. The merging of the professional logics between news media and NGOs has raised concerns about the effects this could have on journalistic independence (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Fenton, 2010), while others claim that these interactions expand news sources and points of view.

Second, this case study provides an insight into the factors that lead to civic participation and social change (Waisbord, 2011). Scholars have criticized the ‘NGO-ization’ of civil society, claiming that their professionalization and adoption of strategic communication tactics leads to the exclusion of the wider public sphere (Lang, 2013). The degree to which an NGO engages multiple constituents in the public sphere provides a measure of its democratic function in civil society. Yet, most research has assessed the role of the NGO sector by measuring its policy influence or media presence alone (Lang, 2013).

The case study

This case study explores the collaboration between the Bulgarian NGO, Access to Information Programme (AIP), and local news media in lobbying for FOI in Bulgaria. The AIP was officially launched in 1996 as a not-for-profit organization. The AIP’s activities concentrate on the following areas: (1) advocacy for FOI legislation, (2) monitoring FOI practices, (3) legal assistance in FOI litigations, (4) public campaigns for FOI, and (5) civic education and training. In this sense, the AIP fits within the class of ‘democracy promotion’ NGOs that engage in both campaign and service activities (Price, 2015). Similar to campaign NGOs, it is committed to an overarching idea (access to information right) that has become an international norm and engages in mobilization via communication strategies that help build local constituencies organized to pursue their goal. Moreover, much like service NGOs, it also offers services not available via local institutions, such as legal help and financial support for FOIa law use and monitoring.

Bulgaria adopted the Access to Public Information Act (APIA) in 2000. It represents a unique case in which civil society actors and journalists have built and maintained a long-term, mutually beneficial cooperation to enhance the access to information right. While similar partnerships have contributed to the adoption of FOI laws in other countries, the Bulgarian case is unique in that the long-lasting coalition between the AIP and news media has been instrumental for the implementation of the APIA law in this country (Puddephatt, 2009). The literature implies that most successful stories of FOI law implementation require an ‘organized’ public demand for access to information (Darch and Underwood, 2010; Neuman and Calland, 2007), in which civil society groups, journalists, business, and the wider public are engaged in demand for transparency. This case study explores factors that contribute to the effectiveness of civil society and the media to jointly advance the right to information.

This analysis relies on in-depth semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of journalists who have collaborated during the last decade with the AIP and its representatives. Interview participants included 20 journalists working for national and regional media in Bulgaria. In addition, four AIP officials ¹ and six journalists who act as the AIP’s local coordinators in the provinces were interviewed. Most interviews with study participants were conducted during June of 2015 in face-to-face settings in the native language of the participants. Interviews with five respondents, who were not available for face-to-face meetings, were conducted with the aid of Skype communication technology. The content of the interviews, which lasted between 45 and 120 minutes, was transcribed and translated into English by a professional.

The interview data reported in this article focus on the communication tools, strategies, and values of AIP representatives and journalists working on FOI campaigns in Bulgaria. The analysis explored specific ways participants describe their work within the access to information campaigns and their understanding of the public good as embedded in that work. The interview data are supplemented by the AIP archival data (annual reports, press releases, and monitoring and research reports), local media reports, and secondary literature from independent organizations, which provide a wider perspective on the work of this NGO and their effectiveness in the agenda-building process of the issues of the right to access to information.

The partnership between the AIP and journalists is channeled through three types of activities: the AIP Network of Regional Coordinators, legal assistance related to APIA, and awards and grants encouraging best practices in APIA use. The data analysis that follows will discuss how each of the lobbying and service activities the AIP provides impact the relationship between these two social actors and their effectiveness in building a policy agenda for transparency in Bulgaria. Before that, the article discusses the theoretical framework in which the data are embedded.

Agenda-building theory

Drawing on theories of political economy, agenda-building theory explores how policy issues emerge in the public domain and manage to command the attention of policy-makers, as well as which institutions participate in this process (Cobb and Elder, 1971). This article focuses on the ‘outside initiative model’ of agenda building (Cobb et al., 1976), according to which issues are initiated by NGOs and are then expanded first to the public agenda and, finally, to the policy agenda. Agenda building reflects ‘the process by which demands of various groups in the population are translated into items vying for the serious attention of public officials’ (Cobb et al., 1976: 126).

This theory explains structural interdependencies among different social institutions and mass media as a collective process (Lang and Lang, 1983; Wanta and Kalyango, 2007). Most NGOs face the need to legitimize issues of their interest and their own status as important players in the public sphere. Such legitimization is most efficiently done via means of mass communication. News sources are important agents in the initial phase of news reporting, while subsequent media coverage influences public concerns and generates additional reactions in a cycle of debate that ultimately produces change. Therefore, agenda building is understood as a three-stage process: media agenda building – the ongoing negotiations between journalists and their sources of information; public agenda building – which explores how issues are translated from media and other institutions to the public domain; and policy agenda building – referring to the forces that affect policy-makers’ attention to the issues of public concern (Denham, 2010).

Advocacy NGOs and media agenda building

The literature primarily examines informational politics employed by advocacy NGOs to generate media coverage (Fenton, 2010; Waisbord, 2011) and the effects of these strategies on news media (Lewis et al., 2006; Thrall et al. 2014; Van Leuven and Joye, 2014). Most of this research explores the possibility that, in addition to political elites and institutions, non-state and nonmarket forces can affect news output. It draws very clear distinctions between news media and other social institutions (Shoemaker and Reese, 2014), based on the conventional assumption that NGOs and news media have different professional logics and organizational missions.

NGOs have at stake not only the promotion of specific social issues within the notion of ‘public good’ but also the reputation and survival of their organizations (Lang, 2013). Therefore, they prefer to rely on public relations (PR) strategies to reach their goal rather than via public engagement, and they focus on policy-making through institutional negotiations among experts often at the expense of the public involvement (Lang, 2013: 87). As such, NGOs encompass a wide field of ideologically diverse social activists that range from progressive to conservative ideologies (Bob, 2012). While media as commercial institutions have at stake economical goals, journalists are bound by professionalism encompassed in ‘journalism logic’ (see Waisbord (2013) for a review of this concept). They are unified by their commitment to newsmaking, which is guided by distinct values (e.g. newsworthiness) and ethical principles (e.g. objectivity, fairness, public interest, and social responsibility). The ethics of public service guiding the journalism profession transcend the narrow particular motivations of NGOs.

However, as Shoemaker and Reese (2014) point out, ‘From an institutional perspective, these entities … traditionally have been compartmentalized separately in our theorizing, but boundaries between them now seem more arbitrary. The relationships are less tidy than before’ (p. 98). The integration of journalistic work with social movements has become more common, as journalists working for traditional and new media link to and participate in conversations within broader institutional contexts (Papacharissi and Oliveira, 2012).

Journalism has long been seen as a profession with somewhat flexible boundaries. There are significant differences in how journalists conceptualize their professional roles, ranging from neutral to advocacy players (Donsbach and Patterson, 2004). Outside Western media systems, the boundaries between journalism and political and social institutions are even more muddled (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). Journalists in non-Western transitional societies are more likely to endorse an active role in promoting particular values, ideas, groups, and social change (Weaver and Willnat, 2013). From a global perspective, Waisbord (2013) questions the applicability of the conventional model of professional journalism worldwide. Instead, he emphasizes the diversity of philosophical models that ‘suggest the absence of consensus about one single ethical framework that guides newsroom practices’.

Such practices reflect the need to move the conception of journalism beyond its conventional professional boundaries, and examine a wider networked fourth estate (Benkler, 2011) that represents a more collaborative and less hierarchical interaction between different forms of journalism and other social actors. The current study embraces this approach while expanding on recent research that examines partnerships between NGOs and the media in their aim to put issues of social good on the public and policy agenda (Conrad, 2015; Coward, 2010; Waisbord, 2011).

Agenda building beyond journalism boundaries

A handful of empirical case studies suggest the overlap between the values guiding journalists and advocacy NGOs within the sphere of environmental activism (Lück et al., 2015; Olloin, 2010; Powers, 2016; Reese, 2015; Russell, 2013). Additional studies have documented specific partnerships between journalists and NGOs who, in addition to advocacy, also provide services in their effort to build social agendas. Coward (2010) documents his close relationship with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) during a sponsored trip to cover an endangered species of the Iberian lynx. Conrad (2015) reaffirms the collaboration between NGOs and freelance journalists in producing shared stories of a global crisis during a reporting project in West Africa sponsored by Pulitzer Center. NGOs have assisted the media in transitional societies aiming to contribute to their democratization (Price et al., 2002), while other NGO projects have more instrumental goals like promoting ‘peace journalism’ with the aim to promote reconciliation in post-conflict societies (Terzis, 2008).

Similar overlaps between journalism and activism have been documented in the sphere of transparency and access to information. Several studies document deliberate media campaigns that promoted the right to access to information in the United States (Martin and Benko, 2012), Mexico (Gill and Hughes, 2005; Pinto, 2009), and Latin America (Bellver et al., 2008; Bertoni, 2012; Michener, 2009). News media have been powerful agenda-setters in advancing strong FOI laws by ‘transmit[ting] positive and negative publicity to rally the support of politicians and they monitor legislative efforts, calling out delay, or attempts at weakening and sabotage’ (Michener, 2011: 8).

In some cases, the press has been at the forefront of FOI activism. For example, the Sunshine in Government Initiative (SGI) – comprising the Associated Press, Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists – has lobbied the United States Congress for FOI reform (cited in Bertoni, 2012). In other cases, NGOs sought the cooperation of individual journalists or the news media as institutions (Michener, 2009). For example, Mexico’s Grupo Oaxaca, a broad civil society coalition, aligned with representatives of 77 independent newspapers and two press associations, which marked the first time the Mexican press joined a coalition to advocate for a new law (Bertoni, 2012; Gill and Hughes, 2005; Pinto, 2009).

This article builds upon this line of research, by examining how the cooperation between civil society and journalists can promote the FOI in emerging democracies. Unlike previous research that explored this relationship during the adoption of FOI laws, this article focuses on joint activities between civil society actors and journalists to promote the successful implementation of an FOI law after its enactment. In addition to providing valuable insight into the nature of this collaboration, this study also explores the values that drive it and the consequences that derive from this collaboration. Further supplementing the above literature, this article provides an analysis of an NGO that encompasses both advocacy and service categories in pursuing its strategic goal. The rest of the article provides the data analysis.

Media agenda building via advocacy activities

Journalists have been very active constituents of the AIP from its beginning, when two prominent journalists, Emmy Baruh and Nikolay Ninov, became its founding members. From its first days as a non-profit, the AIP started working on a structured information campaign aimed to raise public awareness for access to information right in Bulgaria. The first step to mobilize journalists and the wider public was the dissemination of the AIP manifesto in the media across country as part of the 1997 public campaign. In the manifesto, the AIP explained its mission and urged journalists to send them cases when publicly funded institutions denied access to information. Twenty-five journalists from across the country responded to this initial mobilization lending to the establishment of the Network of Local Coordinators (The Network, from here on) composed of journalists working for local and regional media.

In their proactive strategy to build a partnership with the media, the AIP contacted individual journalists rather than building partnerships with media institutions. Given the transitional nature of the political and media system during the last two decades in Bulgaria, media institutions have often been instrumentalized by political elites and lacked independency. In the following passage, Gergana Jouleva, the director of AIP, and Nikolay Ninov, the coordinator of the AIP’s Network, discuss their approach:

Under Bulgarian law we don’t have the Information Commission, we don’t have an oversight body … Somehow, it has happened that during these 19 years we have become the grassroots information commission in Bulgaria. It is because our work is not connected with specific political parties. (Interview with Gergana Jouleva, AIP director)

Because the media are institutions, they hold a position in social and political life. AIP wants to remain distanced from these positions. (Interview with Nikolay Ninov, the coordinator of AIP’s Network)

AIP members pride themselves on the independence from political institutions. In its service capacity, the AIP provides assistance not available from local institutions in an impartial way. Consequently, the ideals of neutrality and working for a public guided the AIP’s position in building its partnership with individual journalists:

At that time it was not enough money for this work, but it was a kind of a preacher’s work. So based on friendship we had (with journalists) and explanation of our work, they had to embrace an idea and start working. It was a difficult time in terms of salaries. It was a bit difficult to convince somebody to work voluntarily, that’s why we had to decide who was ready to work for an idea, because not everybody is always ready to work for a cause. (Interview with Nikolay Ninov)

During this initial campaign to recruit journalists, Ninov, a former journalist who was in charge to establish the Network, targeted local and regional journalists who had good reputations and were respected by their colleagues and the major institutional leaders. Recruited journalists were to act as AIP regional representatives, signing their names as AIP coordinators in their local publications and interacting with local officials in that capacity, rather than as journalists. As Ninov claims, ‘the work of the coordinators was not secret, they were the representatives of AIP in the region. Everybody accepted that’.

Jouleva explains the AIP’s need to reach out to journalists as follows:

When we produced the first research in 1995 (on FOI), somehow among the group we had a discussion that it was an interesting research but that we needed the media not only to disseminate the results of the research, but also it was obvious that we needed journalists to have greater results in the dissemination of the knowledge of this right. You know that our country was coming from a secret political system where it was not even thinkable that you would have the right to information or you had the right to participate in the public discussion, making decisions, etc. (Gergana Jouleva, AIP director)

The Network, which currently consists of 27 journalists working for printed, electronic, and online media, initially served mainly to promote the AIP’s activities, helping them build a reputation in the country as well as to popularize the idea of the right to information across Bulgaria. This informational campaign strategy has resulted in hundreds of publications in printed and broadcasting media. During the first 10 years (1997–2007), the AIP’s team and regional coordinators have produced 1250 publications in news media and participated in 1100 radio and television broadcasting programs (Jouleva, 2007). The current number of media articles and news reports featuring the AIP’s work varies from 200 to 400 articles per year. A great deal of news coverage is event driven by AIP public awareness campaigns, national and regional conferences, meetings and public speeches, and the annual celebration of the ‘International Right To Know’ day where the AIP announces its awards for the best and worst practices in FOI use. In addition, they generate news coverage with the publication of their annual monitoring reports on the state of FOI in Bulgaria, commenting on FOI legislation and publicizing FOI litigations that they handle.

The coordinators’ duties have expanded over time. Their primary role still involves promoting AIP activities and campaigns via publications in local press, writing materials for the AIP’s monthly newsletter, and organizing workshops and public discussions at a local level. In addition, they also serve as independent advocates by consulting with colleague-journalists and citizens on how to exercise their rights under APIA, by using FOI in their own reporting, and identifying specific cases of public interest that create a clear picture of the practices of information seeking in the country.

Journalists working as AIP regional coordinators were asked to describe their primary responsibilities in this role, in order to gauge their perceptions about their work as FOI advocates:

I’m constantly in touch with people who want to use FOIA, trying to help them, if I can. I give them advice on how FOIA could be useful, how to draft their requests, etc. If I can’t help them, I refer them to the AIP office in Sofia … I also track how many FOIA requests have been submitted annually in the region: what kind of requests, to which institutions. (J15)

I try to encourage other journalists to use FOIA. But because they need to wait for 14 days, this doesn’t always fit their schedules. Sometimes they need an answer right away. I try to force the city authorities of Veliko Tarnovo to be more transparent by bombarding them with FOIA requests. If some people need help with their FOIA requests and I can’t help them, I refer them to the AIP office in Sofia. (J20)

My responsibilities include representing the AIP in the region and helping fellow journalists and citizens to have a better understanding of the law, to use the law and to understand how it could be useful to them. Initially, I got interested because I thought this could be useful for me as a journalist. But little by little, we started organizing trainings both for journalists and the local administration. So I believe, as a result now we have much better cooperation with the authorities. (J10)

As evident from the above accounts, all interviewed journalists emphasized their role as helping people get the information they need to make efficient use of FOI law in Bulgaria. This suggests that the journalists cooperating with the AIP perceive their role in FOI advocacy within their professional boundaries of providing citizens with information they need to be self-governing and monitoring government activities in their watchdog role (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2007).

Media agenda building via service activities

The outcomes of the AIP’s strategies for agenda building

It is hard to evaluate the precise impact of the AIP’s partnership with journalists in bringing FOI law on the public and policy agenda, particularly with a case study approach. However, arguably, one such indirect measure is the degree to which the APIA law is used by its constituents to test its limits and expand its applicability. Data from a national representative poll suggest that 45 percent of Bulgarian citizens know about the existence of the APIA (Market Links, 2010). According to governmental reports, citizens are the biggest group of APIA law users in Bulgaria. The number of requests filed during the 12 years of the APIA implementation place Bulgaria among the first in a list of 90 states with effective laws. This number ranges between 34,668 at the beginning (2004) to 6343 APIA requests submitted in 2014.

Additionally, journalists in Bulgaria constitute the second major group of APIA requestors in public institutions. During 2014 alone, journalists submitted 1851 APIA requests to different branches of government and public institutions. The percentage of individual journalists who use APIA on regular basis in Bulgaria contains a couple dozen people. A representative opinion poll suggests that about 94 percent of journalists working in major cities in Bulgaria are aware of the right to information, whereas only about 34 percent of them make use of the APIA law (Market Links, 2008). However, these journalists have become experts due to their regular cooperation with the AIP and often serve as reference points, training their colleagues who are interested in using the law for their reporting.

Journalists are motivated to use the APIA law in order to confirm information that journalists already have, to clear out procedures of decision-making, to hold officials accountable, to add value to the publications, and to explore new information the media doesn’t have or doesn’t know about. Sometimes journalists use APIA to provoke institutions, especially security institutions that are non-transparent and non-accommodating to journalists’ requests:

It’s very helpful. I’m getting information and I’m educating the institutions to give access to information, which should be public anyway. To some degree it’s empowering. (J9)

Indeed, the overall number of APIA requests has drastically fallen in recent years, from more than 40,000 total requests submitted to governmental bodies in 2004 to 11,462 APIA requests reported in 2014. This decrease is attributed to governments’ increased efforts to publish information proactively online, as a consequence of strong demand for information and increased awareness of FOI rights in the country. Recent monitoring reports by the AIP suggest a substantial increase in proactive disclosure of information pertaining to the structure, functions, and responsibilities of governing authorities, especially within institutions of central government. In addition, they have observed an increase in responses to electronic APIA requests from 59 percent of responses provided in 2010 to about 74 percent in 2014 (Jouleva, 2014).

Discussion and conclusion

There are several theoretical and practical implications from the results of this study. First, within the context of agenda-building theory, this study emphasizes the importance of civil society members as influential actors in the agenda-building process and presents a new approach to conceptualize the journalist–NGO relationship from a cooperative, rather than power-distance, perspective. Even though agenda building and social change have different academic histories and do not necessarily always go hand in hand, both processes involve nuanced interactions between journalists, civil activists, NGOs, and decision-makers. These relationships are hardly unified and can vary from close alliances to conflicting relations. Therefore, ‘setting up clear-cut divisions and irreconcilable oppositions falls into flat-footed reductionism’ (Waisbord, 2011: 160).

In the context of this study, the AIP and individual journalists in Bulgaria built a mutually beneficial alliance in order to promote FOI as a common public good. In the process, the professional boundaries that separate journalism from NGO work were clearly blurred, as a handful of journalists became AIP activists. Journalists engaged with the AIP were serving the public good through two somewhat contradictory methods: (1) through their commitment to newsmaking that provides people with the information they need to be self-governing while monitoring and challenging authority; and (2) serving at the forefront of FOI advocacy as part of the AIP. On the other hand, the AIP earned journalists’ trust and commitment to the FOI cause by adopting the journalistic norm of impartiality and objectivity and including them as active participants in the public discourse surrounding FOI rights. The clear terms of interactions between their gatekeeping and advocacy roles and their consensus around the value they advocate (i.e. FOI) assured a long-term, fruitful cooperation between them.

Second, the results of this study dispute fears that the blurring boundaries between journalism and advocacy work can lead to losses in journalistic autonomy and NGOs’ ability to provide an inclusive public sphere. Within this case study, the AIP’s strategies to partner with journalists in their effort to promote the FOI rights in Bulgaria had a positive impact on the quality of journalism and strengthened media’s democratic role. Using the APIA, journalists act in the public interest, strengthen their position as watchdogs, and involve citizens in public debates. These practices have helped journalists develop tactics for obtaining information from different sources and avoid potential libel and defamation suits.

Unlike other campaign NGOs that ‘have taken on the function of news media, establishing their own mechanisms for gathering and diffusing information’ (Price, 2015: 178), the AIP has partnered with local journalists including them as active participants in the public discourse. By providing concrete services to all journalists, the AIP positions itself as a neutral actor building constituent loyalties that help achieve its strategic goals. As Price (2015) claims, ‘From the persuasion perspective, service NGOs sometimes have it slightly easier, as they may be seen not as countering or critiquing existing political arrangements – even what they seek to accomplish exposes regime deficiencies – but rather as solving a problem’ (p. 179). By involving journalists (as one of the major constituents of FOI law) in substantive discourse rather than using strategic communication tools to address them as constituents (Lang, 2013), the AIP has been able to generate substantial change in the acceptance of the right to access to information in Bulgaria. In practical terms, this case study provides a strategic model of fruitful cooperation between civil society actors and the media as equal partners in advocating for public good.

Of course, as is the case with similar case studies, this method has limitations. Therefore, it is hard to generalize the findings of this study beyond similar contexts in which NGOs fit into the campaign and service categories while advocating for issues within a global consensus. Future work should explore different ways NGOs and journalists interact based on the size, scope, aims, and fields of activity of both actors. In particular, future studies should explore how this cooperation is negotiated when the media engage with social groups championing less consensual values. As documented by this study, future research should avoid the overreliance on content analysis of PR activities when seeking to establish the agenda-building influence of NGOs.