Employees of Newsquest, one of the UK’s largest regional newspaper publishers with more than 200 papers and owned by the US company Garnett, are on strike over major reorganization, compulsory redundancies and salaries, as some of them are not paid the London living wage. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) today joined their affiliate in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), and supported a 12-day strike starting today in south London by the Newsquest Media Group’s workers. After failure of negotiations with the management that took place until…

UPDATE (06/08/2015) : Three people who allegedly physically attacked Croatian investigative journalist Zeljko Peratovic in May will be investigated for attempted murder. — The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) in cooperation with the Croatian Journalists’ Association of Journalists (CJA/ HND) sent several letters to Croatian high level representatives from Parliament, government, police and justice  including Kolinda Grabar Kitarović, President of the Republic of Croatia and Zoran Milanović, Prime minister, in order to to express its great concern for the safety of  freelance journalist Željko Peratović and ask for official intervention for his protection. Željko Peratović, the winner of the CJA Award for…

To bring some action to its usually serious – and sometimes dull – documents, the Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (CDMSI) of the Council of Europe (CoE) also met this week, in Strasbourg, with the six winners of a Spanish school comics competition on human rights and Internet. It is not sure that the kids would indeed “make sure to be safe online for the rest of their life”, as one of the children told the meeting, but the contribution of young Internet users definitely brought a fresh tone to the meeting. Good news: Online platform working On…

This month, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has welcomed its new member from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the the Bosnia-Herzegovina Journalists’ Association (BHJA). In this feature article, the EFJ has interviewed Borka Rudic, General Secretary of the association to tell us the challenges facing journalists and the union. About the BHJA The BHJA was founded in 2004 as an umbrella association of journalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina with activities covering the entire territory of the country. It has 750 members from all sectors of the media and all types of journalists and media workers (including freelance journalists, journalism students, photograhers, proofreaders, cameramen).…

The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee has today adopted in a majority vote an own initiative report on authors’ rights that including provisions to strengthen authors’ contractual position while opening up some exceptions. The controversial report initiated by the European Greens MEP Reda  is a response to current work led by the European Commission to reform copyright/authors’ rights legislation (on the implementation of the “Infosoc directive” 2001/29) in the EU . It has led to heated debates inside the European Parliament and political groups over the possibility to relax current legislation to enable users to access protected works more extensively in the…

Following today’s vote on the Trade Secrets Directive in the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) and the European Magazine Media Association (EMMA) reiterate their call for a clear and strong protection of the right to media freedom and information. The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) today introduced provisions to counter potential restrictions on journalists’ capacity to report on and investigate business activities that are in the public interest. The text voted today rightly specifies that the Directive shall not affect…