In a letter sent today, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) call on Azerbaijan President, Ilham Aliyev, to release all seven journalists who are currently behind bars. In recent years Azerbaijan has developed a reputation as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists. In the past 12 months numerous journalists and human rights activists have fallen victim of what appears to be a deliberate campaign to silence critical voices in the build up to the first ever European Olympics to take place in Azerbaijan in June 2015. The imprisoned journalists include: Nijat Aliyev,…

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ ) have welcomed the steadfast commitment of Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE) Thorbjørn Jagland to protect journalism and the safety of journalists in the 47 member states of the CoE with the launch of an online platform to monitor media violations. Prior to the press conference on the CoE platform to strengthen the protection of journalism and journalists’ safety on Tuesday 19 May, Jagland participated in a meeting at the headquarters of the IFJ and the EFJ in Brussels with the other partners (Reporter Without Borders…

The media landscape in Eastern Europe remains challenging for journalists. How to ensure the legal, regulatory and policy environment is favourable for the development of independent media? What are the factors impacting on the development of professional media in the countries of the EaP region? These will be the questions explored by EU policy makers, media experts, journalists and civil society representatives ahead of the Eastern Partnership Summitt held by the Latvian Presidency of the European Council to evaluate EU relations with partners countries. European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) represented by its president, Mogens Blicher Bjerregård, will attend the first…

A delegation of the European Federation of Journalists (composed of EFJ Steering Committee member Urs Thalmann, EFJ Director Renate Schroeder and EFJ Trainee Hélène Brédart) met with Francine Cunningham, Executive Director of the European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA) to discuss issues of relevance to both organisations as well as follow-up of an EFJ resolution on social dialogue in Switzerland. The EFJ representatives outlined the difficult situation for journalists in Switzerland as the publishers continue to refuse to negotiate a collective agreement in the German and Italian speaking parts of the country. Both the EFJ and ENPA agree that the struggle for the…

Journalists working for the British broadcaster, ITV, staged a 24-hour strike on 14 May calling for fair pay. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ), a member of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) in the UK led the industrial action together with the technicians’ union (BECTU) to demonstrate outside ITV studios across the countries. The dispute is in response to a 2% pay offer from the company. ITV journalists were not satisfied with the rise when the company has recorded a rise in profit of 39% after tax in 2014. Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, “The company’s success is down…

Top 10 tips on recruitment and serving membership Membership makes unions stronger. How do unions reach out and engage youth while developing services that cater for the needs of a wide range of membership? This was the theme of the EFJ workshop on “Let’s organise, invest in youth and services” attended by 30 union leaders and recruitment officers from the EFJ affiliates on 10 – 11 May in Copenhagen, Denmark. Participants raised the need to adapt recruitment strategies and services to respond to the changing landscape and labour market in journalism and media. Here are the top 10 tips and…

In a meeting with Petra Kammerevert (MEP and SPD coordinator for media and cultural issues), Renate Schroeder (EFJ Director) and Michael Klehm (DJV senior advisor) discussed issues around media policy and media freedom, authors’ rights, spectrum policy, support for “entrepreneurial journalism”, TTIP, net neutrality and the revision of the audiovisual media framework. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) warned that unfair contracts, sometimes called “buy-out contracts”, destroy journalists’ authors’ rights. The EFJ delegation argued that the European Parliament’s “Reda report” on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society is harming the continental authors’ rights framework, in particular when…

Günter Oettinger, EU Commissioner in charge of Digital Economy and Society, met delegates from the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) on Thursday (30/04/2015) about the plan for a reform of the EU copyright/authors’ rights legislation taking into account new technological developments.  Mogens Blicher Bjerregård (Danemark, EFJ President) took the floor to stress that “staff journalists, freelancers, press photographers, cartoonists, graphical editors and other media workers should clearly be considered as authors contributing contents for the online, audiovisual or print media industry. The EU creative industry is a big market with an annual turnover of 500 billion euros. In Denmark alone, between 4 and 5 million euros are collected…

The IFJ – EFJ has published a special edition newsletter on Turkey. The newsletter highlights key trends, tips and best practices about journalists in Turkey and the latest news about the international campaign on Set Journalism Free in Turkey. See the special edition HERE More information is available on our campaign page : http://europeanjournalists.org/campaigns/turkey-set-journalists-free/

A new documentary called Persona non grata*, directed by Tuluhan Tekelioğu and supported by the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), puts the lights on the poor working conditions of journalists in Turkey. From the basic court reporter to the star columnists of mainstream newspapers, all journalists in the country are currently struggling between legal harassments, political pressures, increasing self-censorship, pressures to quit jobs for covering sensitive issues or pressures to avoid affiliation to a professional trade union movement. In this 41 minute documentary officially presented in Istanbul at the Swedish Consulate for World Press Freedom Day, Mustafa Kuleli (General Secretary of the…

“There can be no press freedom if journalists exist in conditions of corruption, poverty or fear”… The motto of the IFJ must be recalled on this Labour Day. A recent Swiss study proved that the deteriorating working conditions of journalists have a negative impact on press freedom and quality of journalism. The results suggest that economic pressure from advertisers and the media owners are jeopardising the editorial freedom of media. Press freedom is declining in Europe, as clearly indicated in the annual report of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, in the annual activity report of the Council of…

Today (29/04/2015), police forces in Bulgaria entered to the building of private television channel TV7 in order to impound the television’s property and get off the TV equipment preventing it from broadcasting. Bulgarian citizens were alerted by the increasing number of police forces out of the building. According to the EFJ affiliate in Bulgaria, SBJ or the Union of Bulgarian Journalists, TV staff and journalists are resisting and refused to allow the police to enter the TV headquarter without seeing any judicial order. They have also requested to talk with Kristina Dimitrova, the head of the Bulgarian police called Bailiff. According to the SBJ, this police action is a blatant violation of press…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) today condemned the Luxembourg authorities for accusing the French journalist, Édouard Perrin, of disclosing confidential information of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) about custom made tax deals for multinational corporations known as LuxLeaks. According to the indictment issued by the investigating judge, on 23 April, Perrin was charged for being a “co-author, if not an accomplice, in infractions committed by one of PwC’s former employees”. Ricardo Gutierrez, the EFJ General Secretary said, “It is shameful that the Luxembourg authorities are going after a journalist who has acted entirely in the public interest to publish the information. The authorities…

Vienna: After the first bargaining round for a collective agreement in the daily and weekly newspaper sector, its supplements and editorial digital services for employed journalists, technical workers and freelances, there has not been any consensus with the Austrian Publishers Association (VÖZ). The chairman of the GPA-djp Franz C. Bauer said: There is a shadow over the positive agreement we negotiated last year with the employers. We had agreed that for the next bargaining round we would focus on freelances – our demand for a adequate rise of the fee per line was however refused by the employers.“ The next…

To mark this year’s World Book and Copyright Day on 23 April, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) call on public authorities across the globe to put legislation in place that secure fair, minimum contractual conditions for journalists and ensure they are equitably remunerated for the use of their works. Journalists are the authors of the works they produce. They own economic rights and in most countries have moral rights. This means that they must be remunerated for the use of their works and can protect the integrity of their journalism against any form…

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of journalists (EFJ) have strongly condemn the death threat against a Macedonian TV presenter, Borjan Jovanovski, and call on the Macedonian authorities to prosecute the perpetrators. Borjan Jovanovski, a prominent journalist, editor and founder of Novatv.mk, received on 21 April at his home in Skopje, Macedonia (FYROM), a death threat in the form of a funeral wreath with the words ”last goodbye” written on it. The wreath was brought by an unknown man in the name of Todor Aleksandrov, a controversial figure celebrated by the ruling party, VMRO DPMNE. Jovanovski…