Attempt to Shutter Bulgaria's TV7 Exposes Darker Side of State and Society

What just happened in a nutshell:

A bailiff entered on Wednesday the private national channel TV7 to seize equipment, including the station's server. It later turned out that she had been instructed to take away the server, to make sure the TV channels (News7 and TV7) were switched off. Interfering in broadcasts, disrupting anything that was on air at the moment, more than a hundred police officers were dispatched to make sure that the bailiff would be able to carry out her duties.

Those who made their way into TV7's headquarters explained their own activities with "a case of litigation": assignees of collapsed Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank or KTB), appointed by the Bulgarian Deposits Insurance Fund (DIF) after a court declared Corpbank insolvent, later said the aim had been "to encash KTB's assets". Even Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who ordered the multitude of police officers to leave TV7, warned journalists and institutions against meddling in a "trade dispute".

But TV7 journalists say their media outlet, which is by no means the biggest debtor of Corpbank, actually wanted to pay back, and KTB did not allow that.

"I don't think it is about trade relations. A media outlet is not simply an enterprise" Georgi Lozanov, who chairs the Council for Electronic Media (CEM), a national regulator of broadcast media, opined.

A number of politicians, not just from the opposition but also to government allies of the main ruling conservative GERB party of PM Borisov, followed suit, condemning the development as an infringement on freedom of speech committed (as an MEP put it) by a handful of men "in tracksuits". Many (including authors on Novinite's Bulgarian-language version) voiced their indignation at the developments,...