The People’s Advocate: Exploring Journalistic Roles in Socialist Bulgaria

Based on eighteen open-ended interviews with Bulgarian journalists who worked during socialism, this article places the history of Bulgarian media in conversation with contemporary journalism scholarship. More specifically, the article draws on journalistic roles research to advance a description of the extinct journalistic practice of people’s advocacy in post-Stalinist Eastern Europe. During this period, criticism of socialism was still dangerous, but audiences complained to the media more readily about a variety of everyday problems. In turn, journalists had the duty to investigate these issues, contact state officials, and monitor their resolution. My argument is that despite the limits set by the state, people’s advocacy journalism contained monitorial and investigative features and it was not completely distinct from Western notions of watchdog journalism. But in contrast to Western concepts of watchdog journalism, media professionals did not aim to shame the government, but to help it identify and resolve pressing social issues. The paper also examines how the history of people’s advocacy contributes to contemporary journalistic roles scholarship. I argue that the unique political-economic context of socialist Eastern Europe offers an incentive to rethink the role of the state and the market in contemporary journalism.