Russian authorities said Tuesday they had launched a criminal case against a popular journalist for alleging that the Russian army deliberately shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Alexander Nevzorov is the first prominent reporter to be probed for spreading alleged “false” information about the Russian army under new Russian legislation. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) condemns this judicial action and the state censorship that prevents journalists from doing their work in Russia. Alexander Nevzorov, 63, is a veteran Russian journalist and a former member of the Russian parliament, as an independent deputy. “Nevzorov published deliberately false information about the…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joined civil society, media and journalist organisations committed to the EU’s efforts to champion the rule of law in Europe to provide advice for strengthening the 2022 rule of law reporting cycle with a civil society statement. This followed other efforts to strengthen the process. As the reporting cycle has entered its third edition, we welcome progressive improvements such as the inclusion of country-specific recommendations. These recommendations are key to ensuring follow-up actions to the reports, thereby strengthening their impact and accountability on national-level and EU-wide reforms on the rule of law. To this…

The Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) has launched a new report entitled “Shutting out criticism: How SLAPPs threaten European democracy”   based on data collected about 570 abusive lawsuits in 29 countries over the last 10 years. The first-ever comprehensive study aims to identify the scale, nature, and impact of SLAPPs in Europe. Initiated by wealthy and powerful litigants, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) is an abusive legal system attempting to intimidate and silence public watchdogs through lengthy and expensive litigation that drains a target’s resources and chills critical voices. This form of legal harassment is one of the…

Gender equality and diversity in the media are far from the reality, highlighted in a two-day conference organized by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) in cooperation with its affiliate, the Andalusian Journalists Union (SPA) and the Federation of Journalists Unions (FeSP), in Malaga on 14 and 15 March. The conference is a part of a two-year project on “Trust in media” funded by the European Commission.  The conference also called for actions from media companies to step up their efforts and responsibility to make a culture change in the newsrooms. If the media wants to maintain trust from the…

Over 150 journalists, representatives of journalists’ organisations and press councils, as well as academics, politicians, and civil society activists gathered on 17-18 March at the Solidarność Centre in Gdansk, Poland, for the second edition of the Free European Media conference. Participants, including Vera Jourova, European Commission Vice-President, Patrick Penninckx, Head of Information Society Department of the Council of Europe, presented new recommendations to support the development of free media. Thursday evening’s event on the war in Ukraine brought together Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and Moldovan journalists, including Andrei Bastunets, President of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and Mykola Semena, delegate…

Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske has revealed today that one of its journalists, Victoria Roshchina, has been missing since 15 March 2022. The media fears that she is “a prisoner of the Russian occupiers”. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) calls for her immediate release. According to Hromadske, Victoria Roshchina had planned to go last week to Mariupol, a city that has been shelled by Russian troops for more than two weeks. On 12 March, her colleagues were unable to make contact. She was probably detained a few days later, on 15 March, by Russian forces in an unknown location. “For…