Europe, through the eyes of a young Iraqi woman

I was awarded the Kamel Shiaa Prize for Journalism in 2011. This implied living in Brussels for three months. 

When I arrived at the end of September 2011, I was amazed to see how strategic the capital of Belgium is, since it is also the centre of the EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament and the Council of the European Union). Journalists from all over the world come to Brussels to cover European affairs and report on the EU and NATO, to attend conferences, summits and meetings. 

It was difficult for me at first to understand how the European Union works. At the University where I had studied in Iraq we did not cover the European Union!

But I was mostly interested to see how people in Europe work and live and to observe the different way of living and study the role of religion in society.

Discussing with journalists at the European Journalism Centre

Freedom of expression

I noticed that foreigners living in Brussels enjoy a democratic and stable treatment by the law, equal for all. I saw people from Egypt demonstrating peacefully in the centre of the city to support their country, asking for more freedom in their country and trying to make themselves heard. I also saw Syrian people demanding freedom of speech for their people in Syria.

I was impressed to see how strikers are treated. I saw two national strikes of workers in the transport sector in the three months I spent in Brussels. And I observed that the police didn’t bother them or arrest them. They just demonstrated for their rights to work and to be paid better.

This is one of the main objectives of Europe: to guarantee equal rights to its citizens, defend their right to work, but also their right to demonstrate when they want to express their dissatisfaction.

Demonstration outside the Brussels Stock Exchange to show solidarity with protesters in Egypt, photo: Andrew Basterfield (some rights reserved)

Waste management and protection of the environment

I was most impressed by the role that Europe plays in protecting the environment. While many people around the world are busy destroying the environment, EU is making laws to protect the environment.

Once I was at the European Parliament and I saw green boxes distributed all round. I was with an Italian journalist and I saw her put something in one of these boxes. I asked her why she was doing this and she answered: “I knew I would come to the Parliament today so I brought all my old batteries to put them here.”

“Why couldn’t she throw thee batteries away in her house with the rest of the rubbish? Why does she have to bring them to he Parliament?” I thought at the time.

Then I spoke with people from a company dealing with the re-cycling of waste. One of them told me that the EU has legislation that applies to the whole of Europe and said that “everybody should deal with waste in this way, to protect the environment.”

He added that recycling has also a good impact for the economy as a whole and explained to me that batteries are separated in different ways, so that the materials they contain can be re-used.  I had not realised before that how important it is to recycle waste!

This short exchange made me think about the important role Europe plays in the protection of the lives of its citizens: smoking is prohibited inside the buildings, and even at traffic lights nobody can cross unless the light is green!

German MEP Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP) demands better e-waste management,
photo: European Parliament (some rights reserved)

At the people’s service

A lot of journalists from all over the world attend the midday briefing at the EU Commission where the spokespeople treat different subjects every day and answer all (or almost all!) the questions of the journalists. At the briefing journalists receive the documents of the day and can also work in the press room.

Press rooms are also available for journalists in the building of the Council of Ministers and at the Parliament. Many journalists attend their meetings and summits.

I also visited the Press Club in Brussels where journalists can meet and get support and information and where debates and conferences are held. Another sign to me that people are free to express their opinions.

Midday briefing at the European Commission, photo: Peragro (some rights reserved)

My impression is that EU institutions are busy working for the benefit of the people, from agriculture to fisheries, from industrial policy to economic issues.

During my stay in Belgium I did not hear much about corruption. During an informal conversationI with Struan Stevenson, the chairman of the Iraqi committee at the European Parliament, I asked him what he thought about this topic and he replied that he had visited Iraq and was worried about where all the money that had been given to Iraq had gone. “But I still believe in Iraq and in the youth in Iraq,” he told me.

This made me think of Kamel Shiaa, who loved Brussels. He had become a Belgian but he always had Baghdad in his heart. This is where he wanted to return. To the magic of Brussels, to the beauty of the old city and Belgium he preferred his native country where he wanted to return to help preserve its beauty, culture and help his people. His memory will always be with us in Iraq (and in Belgium too).

The centre of Brussels reminds me of an old city, with its castles and statues. There are parts of Brussels which look as if life has never changed. It is still as it was in the past.

No more war

I lived in my period in Brussels with two other young women: one from Bulgaria and the other one from France. We came from three different cultures but we lived together in peace and I realised how interesting it is to live with people who different from us. We shared the same flat, we spent time discussing about religion, politics economics but we never quarrelled because we respected each other even if we had different cultural backgrounds.

Celebrating Secret Santa at the European Journalism Centre

I liked using the underground and the buses in Brussels: they helped me to discover many things; in particular how cosmopolitan Brussels is with people speaking so many languages. I was amazed to see so many different countries and cultures represented in one train! Once I was in the metro and lost my way. I was eating “frites” (French fries) and I asked a man to help me. He showed me the way and then he asked me: “Where do you come from?” I answered: “Iraq.” He smiled and said: ” You have become a Belgian because you are eating frites!” and he added: ” I was born here but my family is from Pakistan.”

I started to realise the important role that the European Union has played in pacifying Europe. European countries had been fighting wars for so long in the past.  In particular during the Second World War, when millions and millions of Europeans were killed. At the end of the war people said: “No more.”

A meeting with a friend of the late Kamel Shiaa

Being in Brussels I realised that this is the real meaning of the EU. Countries that had been involved in a terrible war for years decided to put their resources in common, especially the most precious resources of the time, coal and steel, and manage them together. This was the beginning of the European Union and the merit of politicians such as Robert Schuman and others whom we now recognise as the “founding fathers of Europe.”

When I arrived in Brussels I did not know all this. I had no idea. And when I first passed the Schuman roundabout, I did not know who Schuman was and I asked myself why the roundabout near the European institutions buildings was named after him!

Schuman roundabout in Brussels, photo: Cedric Michaux (some rights reserved)

Europe and the Arab world

Now the EU includes 27 countries. There are three main institutions: the European Commission (which has the right of initiating legislation), the Council and the Parliament which have the power to approve legislation. Once approved every law applies to the whole of Europe.

The European Union also works with many countries outside of the EU such as Iraq. I attended a debate at the European Parliament about the Ashraf camp. The chairman of the Iraqi committee Struan Stevenson and two representatives from the Iraqi embassy spoke at the meeting. One of the Iraqi officials was the assistant counsellor to the ambassador for the European Union Jwan Hasan. The Ashraf camp includes people from Iran who are frighting against the Iranian regime and who have lived in Iraq since1980. Iraq decided that they should leave an the end of 2011.

I also attended a meeting on how to improve education in universities in the Middle East. One of the conferences, held at the Parliament, was attended by experts such as Dr Kenneth Wilson, Dr Husam Sultan, director of scientific research in the UAE and Prof. Sehamuddin Galadari, professor of biochemistry and molecular cell biology.

I was interested to see how many subjects interest the European Union and in particular the European Parliament, from the Arab spring to the situation in Africa, from environment to science.

I spent three very interesting months in Brussels, three months that unfortunately passed too fast.

Back home in Baghdad, Iraq

I cannot describe here everything I did but one thing was clear to me: I understood why Kamel Shiaa wanted to go back to Brussels again to create a link between Baghdad and Brussels, the cities he loved, to help people from these cities understand and love each other. 

Death did not give him a chance. I hope his dream will become reality and I hope my visit could help add a little stone to the wonderful construction he had in mind.

By Maryam Jaafar
Winner of the Kamel Shiaa Prize 2011

The Iraqi journalist Maryam Mohammed Jaafar won the Kamel Shiaa Prize 2011 for Iraqi press freedom. Maryam spent three months in Brussels under the auspices of the EJC.

Posted on March 6, 2012 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, personal.

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A review by Nicolas Kayser-Bril of the first in a series of EJC/OKF data journalism workshops on EU spending.

As Friedrich Lindenberg was writing this abstruse code on his MacBook plugged on the beamer at the workshop on EU spending on 9 September, 20 journalists listened attentively as data started to speak before their eyes. In a conference room in Utrecht University’s 15th-century Faculty Club, the group from across Europe watched as Lindenberg compared a list of lobbying firms with the list of accredited experts at the European Commission: Any overlap would clearly suggest a conflict of interest.

More than watching, the audience actually followed in Lindenberg’s steps on Google Refine, an Excel-like tool, and was taming the data on their own laptops. At this point in time, more journalists were engaging in data-mining in Utrecht than in any other newsroom. This practical exercise was the climax of two days of learning to investigate the mountains of data produced by European institutions. Besides Lindenberg, the coder behind Open Spending, EU datajournalist Caelainn Barr, OpenCorporates founder Chris Taggart and Erik Wesselius of Corporate Europe shared expertise with participants.

The EU budget has the advantage of being massive (EUR 120 billion) and fairly open, compared to what a journalist can get from most national governments. It was the perfect topic for the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation to bring together open data and data journalism. It was also a perfect topic for participants, whose ideas, depicted on the mind-map above, rushed in the first brainstorming session from health issues to real-time data to the always-fascinating lobbyists and regional grants.

Good reporting needed

Journalists reporting on the EU budget face an uphill struggle. Knowledge of the budget among Europeans is abysmally poor. One in three Europeans has never heard of an EU budget and less than one in four of those who have knows that most of the budget is spent on agriculture. More interestingly, the graph shows that the level of ignorance remained fairly constant for the past 10 years with the solidly-anchored belief that administrative costs represent the lion’s share of the EU budget (the actual figure is 6 percent).

 

A lack of access to clear and clean data might be one of the reasons why representations of the EU budget are so far off the mark. Ron Korver, press officer at the EU Parliament, opened the workshop by explaining that EU institutions are sometimes reluctant to giving a clear picture of their finances. He himself had to dig through pdfs published by the Commission to find a comprehensive view of the 2009 expenditures by country. Worse still: as of writing, the brochure ‘Budget 2011: Beyond the crisis, towards new goals’ still redirects to a “page not found” 404 error.

The workshop provided a large overview of the available resources to mine EU-related data, listed on this wiki. Participants were thrilled to see that expenditures could be tracked at the project level, sometimes involving only a few thousand euros (that’s on the Cohesion policy website). Most had no idea that a public register of lobbyists existed (the transparency register).

Data was analysed using Google Refine, powerful spreadsheet software that can be linked to online services. Taggart demonstrated how a journalist could seamlessly extract data from international directory Open Corporates directly in Google Refine using its reconciliation service. The rationale behind these efforts was that proficiency with such tools will help journalists save time and investigate more efficiently.

The main question in the audience was how to make a story out of data. While databases are interesting in themselves, enticing readers into digging into them is no easy task. Barr explained that her eight-month tracking of EUR 347 billion in Structural funds led to several ‘traditional’ investigations in print and broadcast. She helped uncover how a desalination plant was lying idle after receiving EUR 300 million in subsidies or how cigarette manufacturers were awarded millions to develop their factories.

Getting the data in a structured format using scrapers or character recognition software is only the first step. Next, Barr explained, journalists can look for elements that contradict the rules (e.g. subsidies given to arms or tobacco companies) or around companies known for their mafia or crime connections. Another approach is hypothesis-based. Strange voting patterns around a local legislation might be linked to conflicts of interest, for instance.

The EU expenditures database can be mashed-up with other sources, such as national registers, where additional information can be pulled. Slovak website Znasichdani, for instance, monitors companies that were awarded public tenders. Switzerland’s Infocube released an application that shows the companies national MPs have a stake in. Each of these initiatives provide material for civic-minded and highly compelling journalism.

Databases, which are often not visible in Google’s index, offer factual bits of information that can prove crucial in some investigations. Knowing that a company folded months after it received government funding, for instance, clearly hints at misdemeanor. Relying on hard data in addition to the usual unnamed quotes is the basis for precision journalism (what Wikileaks’ Julian Assange referred to as scientific journalism), a way of working that provides for more robust results than traditional methods.

The juice is at the national level

Despite these efforts to dig stories, the EU budget is likely among the cleanest in Europe. The Santer Commission, for instance, resigned in 1999 over a fraud scandal where the key charge was a dubious hire by Commissioner Edith Cresson. She took in a close friend and had him paid for two year at the tune of EUR 50,000 a year to produce a 24-page report. Outrageous, certainly. But the sum represents less than a minute’s worth of government corruption in Italy, which reaches up to EUR 60 billion a year (no one resigned).

Focusing too much on EU money should not lead European journalists to neglect national and local affairs. The openness of EU institutions (relative to most others in continental Europe) should not work against it but should be used by journalists as a launching pad to investigate bigger organisations. After all, the EU budget represents only about 2 percent of global government expenditures in Europe.

Participants engaged on this path. Brussels-based investigative journalist Mehmet Koksal, for instance, set out during the workshop to scraping the public journal of the Belgian state to mine the relations between public officials and their private-sector activities.

But such initiatives will be hard to implement without more robust coding skills. The workshop showed that there was a profound need for all kind of skills, from data scraping to statistical analysis to data visualisation. Training will be needed in these areas for journalists to become really proficient with data.

What’s more, the question of the value of data-driven reporting is still pushed under the carpet. Barr’s investigation on Structural funds took eight months. A gross approximation would put the price tag of such an enterprise above EUR 50,000. Not many newsrooms can be convinced in putting that kind of amount on the table and fewer journalists still would be able to commit it on their own. Once the value of a data-based investigation is understood, getting funding will be easier. Assessing the profitability of a data-driven approach must be the next step for the #ddj community.

Resources from the workshop:

  * Links to tools and EU spending databases on this public pad.
  * Pictures from the workshop on Flickr.
  * Videos of talks - coming up.

By Nicolas Kayser-Bril, data journalist.

Source: Data Driven Journalism website

 

Posted on September 19, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, events, projects, seminars.

J@YS 10th anniversary debate: “Will journalism survive?”

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Journalists at Your Service (J@YS), “a help centre and information hub for journalists covering Brussels and the EU., on 22 June 2011 held a debate entitled “The way forward for journalism in Europe” at the International Press Centre in Brussels .

Taking part in the debate were Beth Costa, General Secretary of International Federation of Journalists, Christopher Berg, a reporter for the newly launched European Daily paper, Gareth Harding, Brussels programme director of the Missouri School of Journalism, and freelance journalist Rafael Porto-Carrero. J@YS President Maria Laura Franciosi moderated the discussion, which gathered an audience of about 25 guests.

Educating journalists about EU topics

Franciosi opened the debated by raising the importance of educating journalists about EU topics and institutions. “That is the way to increase and encourage accurate reporting of EU affairs,” she said.

“And that’s what J@YS stands for,” she added.

J@YS recently launched a newly designed website and published the latest edition of “Reporting Brussels” (pdf), a pocket book containing information sources and tools to help journalists write EU related stories.

New opportunities

Panel and audience members alike seemed to share an optimistic outlook on the future of journalism.

Beth Costa cautioned that that there would be no easy path to overcome the present difficulties, but was hopeful for the future: “New media are offering new possibilities, and journalists will have their place in the new world.”

Rafael Porto Carrero, a freelance journalist working for various news organisations in Brussels agreed with Costa: “There will be lots of opportunities for young generations who are digitally natives and multi-media savvy.”

J@YS President Maria Laura Franciosi moderated the debate

The future of European journalism

The discussion continued by addressing the future of European journalism with a presentation of a new European media initiative, the European Daily.

Christopher Berg, a reporter for the European Daily, introduced the paper as “the first daily newspaper aiming for European readers.”

On 15 June 2011, the European Daily published 40,000 copies of its first printed edition.

Berg explained that there are at least 15 to 20 million Europeans who travel all around Europe and who need to be informed on a daily basis about European news from a European perspective.

Gareth Harding, Brussels programme director for the Missouri School of Journalism, praised the paper’s “ambitious” mission. “With the expansion of the EU and the widespread usage of English and internet which helps to break down borders, there is definitely a market for European media outlets,” he said.

Harding pointed out however that primary loyalties of European citizens’ might still lie with national and local viewpoints, making it hard for European media to find a mass audience. “I hope the European Daily succeeds,” he said.

About 25 people took part in J@YS 10th anniversary debate. Despite the relatively small number of participants the discussion was lively and insightful

How to connect European citizens to EU issues?

According to Harding, European media have to overcome important challenges. Their primal task would be to “explain to their readers and viewers why events in other European countries matter to them and can affect their life.” He illustrated his point with the examples of the Greek Euro crisis and the recent E. Coli outbreak.

Ole Aabenhus, a Denmark journalist who was sitting in the audience, commented that rather than media efforts covering all 27 EU countries, “the public needs a platform that bridges a few European countries together.”
Naturally, it is easier to point out issues and make suggestion than to engage in real reform.

If it were so simple to create a new journalism model, there would not be any need for this type of debate.

“If you ask me if I have a solution, I would answer no,” said Costa. “There is not one solution and we are facing a big challenge. But we should see this as a big opportunity for the future,” she added.

The question we need to answer now is: Who will grab this opportunity and find the path to save journalism?

Text and photographs by Taein Park, EJC intern

 

Posted on July 12, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, blogging, events, work.

Challenges facing the accurate news coverage of minorities and immigrants

The media is powerful. Influential politicians are hungry for media attention because they know that the media can help them create a positive public image. But what about minority groups and immigrants?

To answer this question, The European Policy Centre (EPC) held a Policy Dialogue on 31 May 2011 at the International Press Centre in Brussels on the way media can affect the public understanding of minorities and immigrants.

More than 40 participants including journalists from Pakistan, Japan, South Korea and the United States attended the event.

Moderated by Yves Pascouau, EPC senior Policy analyst, the discussion gathered three panel members: Oliver Money-Kyrle, assistant general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Alexandra Moe, Washington D.C Director of New America Media, and Italian journalist Raymon Dassi, who engaged in a lively two-hour discussion about the media coverage of minorities and immigrants.

(from left to right) Alexandra Moe, Oliver Money-Kyrle, Yves Pascouau, Raymon Dassi

Media Structure

Oliver Money-Kyrle, Assistant General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, pointed out to a couple of structural limitations in the media itself. The journalists who are currently covering the topic are dominantly white and middle class. As a result, he said, the newsroom inherently fails to represent minorities.

In addition, Money-Kyrle noted, even when a journalist produces a good article on immigrants or minorities, the headline sometimes distorts the original intention of the article due to “selling issues”.

The article and the headline are written by two different journalists, and most of times, Money-Kyrle said, the person in charge of the headline is under pressure to sensationalise the wording in order to catch the reader’s attention.

Moreover, as a consequence of the financial woes affecting news companies, journalists are being forced to work on several stories at the same time. They are forced to work as freelancers or with short-term contracts. Money-Kyrle suggested that these working conditions have an impact on the quality of journalism in the long run.

Choice of wording
The panel members and most of the journalists in the audience agreed to say that the media coverage of minorities and immigrants has improved in the last decades. In their view, journalists are more conscious today compared to 15-20 years ago in their choice of wording when describing minorities.

The panel also discussed at length the recent rising of right wing parties in Europe and the strong and powerful negative narrative of immigrants that has surfaced in politics and even in the media.

“Politics and journalism are two areas that are closely related and in Italy, the perception of immigrants and minorities in the media is increasingly faulty,” said Italian journalist Raymon Dassi, who is also a member of the Italian Intercultural Journalists Association.

Money-Kyrle indicated that right-wing politicians try to manipulate the image of immigrants and portray them as being a great threat to their own countries. “This narrative is very powerful,” he said.

Cautious optimism

The panel members were generally optimistic about the role of the media in covering minority and immigrant communities. Money-Kyrle suggested however that without government intervention and support, the current financial situation of the media does not guarantee a better news coverage of these groups in the future.

“Journalism is a public good, and governments have to intervene to create new market conditions so that migration issues are properly covered,” Money-Kyrle said. He suggested that the role of media is not to protect immigrants and minorities but to seek the truth. ”That is why the accurate coverage of these groups is of paramount importance,” he said.

Alexandra Moe, the Washington D.C director of New America Media, also mentioned the rising of ethnic media, which now reaches about 60 million adults on a daily basis in the United States. ”Immigrants and minorities are able to inject their voices to the society which they are part of,” she said.

Dassi predicted that the political participation of immigrants will change their image in the media: “Thanks to the internet and social participation, the immigrant’s consciousness is becoming substantial,” he said.
Overall, the concluding message of the discussion was that the media coverage of minorities and immigrants has improved but still has a long way to go.

Text and photographs by Taein Park, EJC intern

 

 

Posted on June 21, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, blogging, events, work.

Media freedom in Europe: “The whole system of checks and balances is falling apart”

“Media and technology are tools. It takes a concerted effort of a people to decide how to use them. There are a few problems today, manifest in the Maghreb, but also discernible in Europe, whereby governments are building regulating frameworks and using them to weaken the media and prevent it from speaking freely, as in Hungary and Italy, for instance.”

These words, spoken by Leon Willems of Press Now, summarise succinctly the debate on Media Freedom in Europe that took place on 8 May at the TransEuropa Festival in Amsterdam.

Other participants in the debate organised by the civil society organisation European Alternatives were Thomas Bruning of the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ), Eric Karstens of the European Journalism Centre, Judith Sargentini, MEP for the Dutch green party GroenLinks, and Marietje Schaake , MEP for the Dutch social-liberal party D66.

(from left to right) Lorenzo Marsili (Director of European Alternatives), Leon Willems (Press Now), Judith Sargentini (MEP GroenLinks), Thomas Bruning (NVJ), Marietje Schaake MEP D66) and Eric Karstens (European Journalism Centre) (photo credit: European Alternatives)

Should the EU intervene?

The discussion addressed media freedom concerns in EU countries and raised the question of whether or not EU institutions should intervene to redress the situation.

Notwithstanding their different backgrounds, the panellists seemed to share Willems’ pessimistic view of the current state of media freedom in the European Union.

Italy and Hungary are the most obvious targets of criticism and Willems went as far as to assert that “by media ownership standards, Italy cannot even be considered as a European country anymore.”

But while Italy’s system of media ownership tells a tale of power and money, Hungary’s outlook is much darker, because the shift it reveals in the political system represents a much clearer and more immediate threat to democracy, Sargentini explained.

“The ruling party in Hungary holds two thirds of Parliament. This means that it can change the constitution, which it did. The media law, passed recently, is constructed out of two elements. First, the constitution of a political board to oversee the media, made up of nine members close to the government. Secondly, the imposition of balanced and ethical broadcasting practises. But what is balanced? As far as the Hungarian government is concerned, if a media organisation uses a harsh tone against the ruling party, or questions family values, its reporting is deemed unbalanced.”

The situation in Italy and Hungary raises criticism and is even the subject of ridicule in the rest of Europe, but the threat to media freedom hardly ends here.
As Willems pointed out, other countries are establishing regulatory frameworks that are curtailing the independence and pluralism of the media, such as the decision taken by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to make the nomination of the public media regulation board a prerogative of the head of state.

Same rules for all?

Moderating the debate, European Alternatives director Lorenzo Marsili said that considering the values promoted by the European Union, one could have been hoped that it would play a more active role in enforcing the protection of human rights and media freedom in Europe.

In the case of the Hungarian media law however, this hope was ultimately deceived.  The Commission criticised the Hungarian move, but it was also quick to withdraw its reservations after only a small number of changes were introduced, even though the media law still poses a serious threat to media freedom in the country.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised that Hungary’s media law would be amended if it proves incompatible with EU legislation (photo credit: European Parliament)

“Candidates to club membership need to abide by the club’s rules, whereas existing members simply adjust the rules according to their wishes or flatly ignore them. Member states are not willing to criticise one another because they are afraid that it might turn against them and to find themselves in the focus of criticism. So the whole system of checks and balances is falling apart”, said Sargentini.

The Media Pluralism Monitor is a good illustration of this situation, whereby member states mutually protect one another from unfavourable judgment.

According to Karstens, this monitoring tool looked very promising because it took into account many aspects of the European media landscape and highlighted its pluralism and diversity of content. The European Parliament initiated the project and formally asked the Commission to adopt it. “But the Commission has yet to make use of it. For the time being, it doesn’t dare to do so, since its outcome would strongly tarnish Italy’s image.”

Political alliances also seem to deter the European Commission from acting. “Vivian Reding, the former Commissioner for Information Society and Media, belongs to the Christian Democrat parliamentarian group, which links her to [the French President Nicolas] Sarkozy and [the Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi. Years ago, the parliament instructed her to come up with a law against centralised media, such as Berlusconi’s empire, but she never complied. She simply would not go against political allies”, said Sargentini.

This situation leads to paralysed European politics, and in Schaake’s opinion, Europeans should not merely accept this. “People should act. Citizens of the Netherlands, for instance, should call the [Dutch Christian Democratic party] CDA and tell its members: we love your family values, but we don’t like your alliance with Berlusconi’s party and the fact that you are shielding it from criticism”.

The role of the media

For Bruning, a strong, independent media is the best tool to redress these political failings. “I think that one of the most important and most influential elements in the Arab spring is the presence of Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya in North Africa and the Middle East. Ten years ago, there was no independent media whatsoever in these countries. More than social media, it is the existence of these news networks that has brought change. Without a strong media, you cannot say much about what’s going wrong in your country,” he concluded.

It is precisely at this point that the vicious circle is being closed.

The ICT revolution is posing a serious challenge to news organisations and forcing them to adopt creative measures in order to remain financially viable and strong. State authorities could help them in defining and implementing such measures but today’s political attitude towards media freedom in Europe generally shows disregard to best practices.

The risk is also that state economic intervention might endanger the independence of the media and lead to state interference in matters of content,” Schaake noted, and thereby effectively jeopardise media freedom in Europe.

Closing of the debate, Marsili pointed out that Turkey – a candidate for European membership – is holding 60 journalists in prison for political reasons. Europe used to be a beacon of hope for countries with democratic aspirations and to take advantage of this position to pressure governments into liberalising their political, judicial and media systems.

By allowing its own member states to adopt anti-libertarian measures, the European Union is losing its high moral grounds.

As Karstens put it, “As long as we don’t have the capacity to make member states comply with best practices, we have much less opportunity to influence other countries.”

Posted on May 25, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, events.