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…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and Index on Censorship are delighted to announce that Index project to map media freedom in Europe has received funding from the European Commission – one of just two projects selected. Mapping Media Freedom (#ecpmf)– launched as a pilot project in 2014 by Index on Censorship – records threats to media freedom throughout the European Union and EU candidate countries. In the last 12 months, more than 750 violations have been reported, including threats of violence, harassment, intimidation and legal penalties. The map includes threats faced by journalists and media groups at local as well…

Regarding press freedom “we are certainly embarking in a new era in Slovenia. When the criminal police was asking me questions back in 2013, my case was the first where the Slovenian State decided to prosecute a journalist for publishing allegedly classified information. Today, there are three more cases in pre-trial procedures where four colleagues are now facing similar charges referring to the articles in the criminal code which prohibits the publication of classified information”, explains Anuška Delić (investigative & data journalist at the daily Delo) in an exclusive interview in Brussels with Ricardo Gutiérrez (EFJ General Secretary). In 2011, Anuška Delić wrote…

Update (21.08.2015) – The Azerbaijani state prosecutor is asking today nine-year jail term for investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, on trial in Baku. The European Federation of Journalists firmly condemns this outrageous request. She should be immediately released. The trial is due to continue on August 26. The verdict could come on that day. ——————— The international support to free Khadija Ismayilova, a jailed female Azerbaijani investigative journalist, is growing around Europe and is expected to be a top embarrassing issue for the EU and Azerbaijani authorities during the first European Games to be held in Baku (Azerbaijan) from 12 to 28 June 2015.…

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…