The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) strongly condemns the attack perpetrated against Elvi Fundo, director of Citynews.al online portal and Radio Best, on Wednesday 8 March 2017 in Tirana, Albania. According to media reports, Elvi Fundo was beaten up by unidentified assailants near the train station. He was later sent to the hospital. He declared to Balkan Insight, the news portal of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: “Two individuals attacked me near my office at 10.30 am, causing injuries (…) I don’t believe it’s a political attack but the work of criminals financed by corrupt media clans tied to drug-trafficking.” Albanian…

“Any human being, who is involved in a natural language generation (NLG) process, such as programmers or linguists, must take into account the ethical dimensions governing journalism” concluded Laurence Dierickx, a specialist in Computational Journalism, who was invited to the EFJ Digital Expert Group meeting, that took place on March 8 in Brussels. She explained that the computer scientists and start-up companies, who are heavily involved in the NLG, are not hold under the same ethical standards as journalists. Also in cases with automatically generated content, there is not always a mention that the article is written by a computer, which…

A multidisciplinary European consortium comprising the Universities of Newcastle (UK), Padova (Italy) and Gothenburg (Sweden), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the Permanent Conference of the Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators (COPEAM) has just been awarded a grant by the European Commission’s Directorate –General for Justice and Consumers to develop an action project to advance gender equality in media industries. The project will bring journalism, media and communication students together with media professionals so as to foster a gender equality perspective within both journalism and media education and professional journalism practice, and bridge the transition between education and employment. The project…

MEP Michal Boni (EPP, Poland) together with The Guardian Media Group launched a discussion ”News: fact or fake?” on March 7 in the European Parliament. During the meeting experts, moderated by a senior editor from the Guardian – Dan Roberts, discussed how the new technologies change the business model of news reporting and how the fake news and filter bubbles do impact  democracy. Michal Boni stated at the beginning of the meeting that it is important to understand how to react to fake news. He explained: “We don’t need censorship tools, instead we need to promote the better understanding of fake…

Türkçe Following an international press freedom mission to Turkey on 7 February to 2 March 2017, the undersigned participants, representing six international free expression watchdog organisations, express severe concern about media freedom and respect for human rights and warn that the country’s democracy is under threat. The mission came in response to an ongoing purge by Turkey’s government in the wake of a failed 15 July 2016 coup attempt that traumatized the country. Hundreds of thousands have been dismissed from jobs or detained under wide-ranging emergency powers granted after the coup attempt. This includes some 155 journalists and media workers…

The National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine revoked license of the Ukrainian broadcasting company “Radio Vesti” in Kharkiv city. The council also refused to extend the radio’s license in the capital, Kyiv. Radio Vesti, the largest national professional radio channel in the country, insists they sent the required documents on time in order to renew the licenses, which expired in February. Despite this, the National Council decided to revoke the licenses out of concerns that the ultimate beneficiary of the station was the former Minister of Revenue and Fees, Oleksandr Klymenko. Reports said that as a result,…