New report sets guidelines for EU effort to tackle disinformation

Access Now, Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) and European Digital Rights (EDRi) just issued a joint report evaluating the work done by the EU institutions to tackle online disinformation. They found out a lack of evidence-based solution to address the problem and therefore  established a series of recommendations to be followed prior and after the adoption of the forthcoming EU Action Plan on the topic. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) supports these organisations in asking the EU and Member States to refrain from undue interference and censorship while addressing the issue of disinformation. “We urge the European Commission…

Report calls on EU states to collaborate with journalists’ unions for gender equality

A report on “Gender Equality in the Media Sector in the EU”, passed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during the plenary session in Strasbourg on 17 April 2018, calls on Member States and the European Commission to collaborate with journalists’ trade unions and media organisations to promote co-regulation in the media sector through codes of conduct. In order to safeguard and ensure gender equality, media companies are urged to draw up codes of conduct and self-regulation systems together with representatives from journalists’ trade unions. This aims to allow preventive action and impose sanctions regarding gender-based discrimination in media productions. The…

How is gender equality represented in the media in EU?

The Committee for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) organised on Monday (26/06/2017) a hearing on gender equality in the media in the European Union. The main goal was to provide information for the upcoming own-initiative report, which will be written later on in the year. The rapporteur is Czech MEP Michaela Šojdrová. Lenka Vochocová from Media Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Prague, Donatella Martini, the director of DonneinQuota and Martine Simonis, General Secretary at the Belgian Association of Journalists (AJP) talked about the current situation of women at different positions in the media sector and analysed…

How media can help to build democracy? Three initiatives for social change

The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) EU Office organised yesterday (26/04/2017) a meeting about media and its role for democracy in Europe. The international experts presented new initiatives for social change and talked about how media can help to build democracy and how to deal with hate speech, racism and lack of diversity in European newsrooms. “The misconception that news should be free is a great danger to democracy. News and journalists who write the news must be paid,” stressed Birgit Sippel, German member of the European Parliament. “If the media only relies on the advertiser’s funds,…

Corruption in the media is killing ethical journalism, says EJN

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has today (16/03/2015) attended at the Press Club Brussels the presentation of a new report called Untold Stories – How Corruption and Conflicts of Interests Stalk the Newsroom published by the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN), a global coalition of 50 journalism and media support groups, including the EFJ. The EJN published report is gathering data and stories from distinguished journalists from 18 countries representative of different regions (Western Balkans, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey, UK and Ukraine) that exposes how media managers are doing “deals” with advertisers to carry paid-for material disguised as news, how…