The Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA) urges journalists and all other persons in charge in public and private media to be careful and professional when reporting about refugees entering Croatia. The CJA urges journalists to avoid hate speech and not to publish unverified information. The CJA also calls on editors of internet portals not to publish readers’ comments that might provoke intolerance, xenophobia and hate speech. We urge media to reveal any attempt of political actors, who want to use refugees for political and pre-election aspirations, and to explain and analyse the reasons of refugees for leaving their home countries and…

“We must support our female colleagues, defend them and make their voices heard. Harassment and abuses targeting at female journalists shall not be tolerated,” said Mogens Blicher Bjerregård, the EFJ President after the OSCE meeting on online abuses of female journalists on 17 November in Vienna. The conference has gathered international experts in the field to help increase understanding and gravity of the issue  involved best practices and possible solutions to tackle the mounting number of online threats targeting female journalists. During the meeting, experts and journalists spoke about the gravity of the issue and called for urgent action to…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has denounced the latest attack and arrest of journalists who were reporting the refugee crisis on the border between Hungary and Serbia today. Six journalists were reportedly beaten  on Wednesday by Hungarian border police. According to local media reports, Warren Richardson, an Australian photographer, and Jacek Tacik, a Polish reporter together with a Slovakian journalist were accused of crossing the border between Hungary and Serbia illegally. They were beaten before they were arrested by the border police. The journalists had been working in the Serbian village of Horgoš and followed a group of refugees who entered…

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) today strongly condemned the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s decision to ban at least 38 international journalists and bloggers from the country for one year. The President’s decree, which was signed yesterday and published on the presidential website, names 388 people representing an “actual or potential threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” The IFJ and the EFJ call on the Ukrainian government to remove the journalists’ names from this list. Poroshenko said the list targeted people involved in Russia’s 2014 annexation of…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Journalists Union of Turkey (TGS) and the Journalists Association of Turkey (TGC) will be jointly hosting the conference ‘Turkey: Fighting for journalists’ rights and freedoms in a politically polarized country’ in Istanbul 17/18 September 2015. This international conference is the culmination of five years campaigning on journalists’ rights, freedoms, working conditions and capacity building for the journalist trade union organisation whose strength is fundamental to the future protection and promotion of Turkish journalism. The political context in which the conference will be taking place could not be…

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), today joined Ukraine’s journalists in commemorating the 15th Anniversary of the murder of Ukraine investigative journalist Georgy Gongadze. On 16 September 2000, Georgy Gongadze’s body was left beheaded in the forest outside Kiev. He was killed as punishment for his exposures of government corruption and the case sparked worldwide condemnation and a global campaign for the prosecution of his killers. After years of investigations, four former officers of the SBU were eventually convicted of Gongadze’s murder, but the people responsible for ordering it remain free. “Today we…