European Parliament moves to bolster media freedom

STRASBOURG - The European Parliament has approved proposals for an EU media freedom law aimed at protecting reporters from political interference, allowing them to keep sources secret and ensuring media pluralism across the bloc. At the same time, obstacles to media freedom are becoming increasingly apparent across the continent.
The European Parliament has backed a law designed to defend the pluralism and independence of the media and the confidentiality of sources. The so-called Media Freedom Act, among other things, should ensure greater transparency in the ownership of media companies. The media will also have to disclose how much money they receive from state advertising.

“Many thought this was mission impossible. But we have it: a proposal to protect media freedom in the European Union“, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, said in Strasbourg.

Sabine Verheyen, the German MEP in charge of the law in Parliament, said that “we cannot close our eyes to the fact that media freedom is under serious threat in several EU Member States”. According to a parliamentary statement, MEPs want to “ban any interference in the editorial decisions of media companies.”

Slovenian MEP Irena Joveva warned that “non-transparent takeovers of media companies for vested interests are taking place, and the public media, a pillar of credible information for the people, are in many places subject to attempts at subjugation, to say the least.“

Opposition to the act came from parties such as Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party. Austrian MEP Harald Vilimsky is fundamentally opposed to the Media Freedom Act and sees it as a threat to press freedom. He also says the EU is overstepping its competences: “These issues have been sufficiently regulated by law in the member states for a long time, there is no reason for a central office in Brussels to get involved here now.”

The German Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) and the Media Association of the Free Press (MVFP) see improvements in the Parliament’s position, but essential problems remain. For example, the agreed text stopped short of pushing for a blanket ban on governments spying on reporters.
The European Commission presented its European law on media freedom in September 2022 in response to the deteriorating situation in EU countries such as Poland and Hungary. In addition, obstacles have also been identified in other countries, including Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia, prompting the need to step up the protection of journalists in Europe.

In September, eight European and international media organisations called on the Greek government to combat impunity for crimes against journalists and uphold press freedom. Although the Greek authorities claim press freedom is respected and Athens supports EU positions on open journalism, the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has “done little to remedy the problems”, the coalition said.

In Romania, journalists face threats to their physical security, intrusion into their private lives and editorial pressure, said Liana Ganea, president of ActiveWatch, an organisation that promotes freedom of expression. Moreover, there is a lack of transparency of ownership and financing of media institutions by political parties and public authorities, a lack of labelling of political advertising.

Politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina often attack journalists and influence public media or regulatory bodies. Journalists generally work in an environment without censorship, but many factors encourage self-censorship. While the country is trying to join the European Union, authorities in Republika Srpska (RS) are passing laws that contradict European standards. The law criminalising defamation, for example, came into force in the RS in August, despite comments and protests from the journalist community, NGOs and international organisations.

In the 2023 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), North Macedonia ranks 38th out of 180 countries, up 19 places from its 2022 ranking. RSF said that journalists in North Macedonia do not work in a hostile environment. Yet, widespread misinformation and a lack of professionalism contribute to society’s declining trust in the media. That exposes independent outlets to threats and attacks.

According to a 2018 analysis by the Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia (IRL), Hungarians with ties to the country’s pro-government media have begun a mass takeover of Macedonian news outlets, in a concerted push into the Balkans by media companies loyal to Viktor Orbán. Two former executives of Hungarian public broadcaster Magyar Televízió (MTV), Peter Schatz and Agnes Adamik, have set up companies in North Macedonia that have acquired controlling stakes in pro-opposition media outlets in the country.

The delegation visiting Greece in September found that “Greek journalism is under sustained threat from the impact of the surveillance scandal” that broke in 2022. The Pegasus spyware scandal involved the wiretapping of opposition politicians. Amongst them were the leader of the social democratic party PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, as well as journalists, business leaders, members of the government and close associates of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This scandal, combined with the unsolved murder of a veteran journalist in Athens in 2021, abusive legal procedures and economic and political pressure, have threatened media freedom, the report says.

Spyware has long been a hot topic in the European Parliament, which has dedicated a special committee to the use of programmes such as Pegasus and its successors. They played a part in the spying scandals that have hit the Spanish, Hungarian and Greek governments and are also investigative tools for the revelations that led to the explosion of the Qatargate corruption scandal.

Media activists have criticised EU states, notably France, for pushing to expand loopholes allowing authorities to spy on journalists in the name of “national security”. The Parliament’s position limits the use of spyware as a “last resort” when journalists were involved in serious crimes such as terrorism or human trafficking. Also, a judge must give clearance.

The decision not to approve a total ban has provoked criticism, including from Italy’s Five Star Movement MEP Sabrina Pignedoli, who denounces how “thanks to this amendment, the judicial authorities will be able to implant and hide malware on journalists’ mobile phones or computers, in order to detect and even steal personal information“.

The issue has come to the fore in France following an uproar over the two-day detention of Ariane Lavrilleux last month. The French journalist, who works for the investigative website Disclose, was held in police custody for 39 hours on 19 and 20 September and had her home searched as part of a judicial inquiry into the compromise of national defence secrets. This came about after she had published articles about French arms sales abroad and a French intelligence mission in Egypt that the country allegedly misused to target and kill opponents.

Another important part of the law concerns content moderation by very large platforms. To prevent them from too easily removing articles or reports or restricting access to them, it says that media should, for example, demonstrate transparency about their ownership structure. Media should be editorially independent, monitored by a national regulator or should respect self-regulatory standards. AI-produced content should not be published without first undergoing human scrutiny.

If an online platform considers that content published by a medium meeting these conditions nevertheless violates its terms of use and that the relevant content should be removed, the medium should be notified in advance and given 24 hours to respond. To avoid handing too much power to the internet giants, the law envisions setting tougher conditions for removing or restricting reports by media outlets, the so-called “media exemption”.

“On the one hand, we really wanted to allow media that meet international standards of good journalism to get out of content moderation. But on the other hand we have to make sure that there are no loopholes for those media that do not comply and disseminate disinformation to European citizens,” MEP Sabine Verheyen said. “To be blunt: the content you see in your newspaper or on your television will not depend on Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg,” she added.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) welcomed the improvements made to the text by MEPs, in particular to protect verified media from censorship by platforms. However, the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA), a US organisation whose members include Facebook, Google and Twitter, lashed out against the measure, arguing that “the media exemption will empower rogue actors, creating new loopholes to spread fake news rather than fixing anything”.

The MEPs’ vote stakes out the Parliament’s position on the draft law ahead of negotiations with the EU’s 27 Member States.  The provisions of the law designed to protect the confidentiality of sources and journalistic work promise difficult discussions with the EU countries, which adopted their position on the text in June.

This article was produced by Tanjug in collaboration with European news agencies as part of the European Newsroom (ENR) project