Jerusalem, Oct 2 (BTA/GNA) – “We, the media, are the intermediary that is supposed to spread knowledge about the enduring values, beyond petty human concerns,” Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev said on Wednesday, welcoming the participants in the 17th World Meeting of Bulgarian Media which is taking place in Israel from November 1 to 3.
“We must suppress sin and must parade the virtues: chastity, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility… We must keep out of our domain aerial toll-houses like idle talk, falsehood, defamation, denigration, hatred, spite and callousness,” Valchev said in his speech.
He pointed out that the meeting in the Holy Land should help Bulgarian media spread three important pieces of knowledge. The first piece is about the salvation of Bulgarian Jews from the Holocaust 80 years ago and about mourning and remembering those Jews in the rest of the world who were not saved. “The second piece is about the age-long presence of the Bulgarians’ spirit in this City of God, which has been drawing pilgrims from the Bulgarian lands since as long ago as the Ottoman domination, eager to attain the most sublime expression of being an Eastern Orthodox Christian. We, the Bulgarian media, can help the Bulgarian Orthodox Church together with the Bulgarian State re-establish our presence here,” the BTA Director General pointed out.
World Meeting of Bulgarian Media 1st Panel Focused on Media and Human Salvation.
“It is very nice when we tell the story of the Bulgarian Jews. For my grandparents it is more of a love story than a tragic one. They met thanks to the Holocaust. They were peasants, they suffered from the then existing Act on the Protection of the Nation, from terrible legislation,” the Chairman of the Central Israelite Religious Council Maxim Delchev said.
Recalling that 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, Delchev said his request was to attempt to say “that this event happened in defiance of these laws and the entire state apparatus, which had people who wanted Jews to be sent to death camps”.
UN Special Envoy for the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov, who participated in the discussion online, said the role of Bulgarian media across the world is to uphold freedom of speech and defend the idea that one can have an opinion other than what other media, social networks and environment impose.
BTA/GNA