Media News - Wednesday, September 08, 2010

EU should be communicated better, say MEPs

Better communication by governments, parties, educational institutions and public service broadcasters is vital to overcome the perception of many citizens that “Europe” is too distant and can do little to solve their real problems, say MEPs in a resolution approved Tuesday. Declining voter turnout highlights “the need to continue efforts to overcome the distance between the EU and European citizens”, and this should primarily be done through better communication aimed at creating a “European public sphere”, say MEPs. While “Member States should ensure the independence of public service broadcasters”, the latter “have a responsibility to cover the EU” and need to set ambitious targets in this field, stress MEPs. Finding the recent decrease in the number of accredited journalists in Brussels “extremely worrying”, MEPs call for measures “supporting those currently in Brussels”. Meanwhile, the EU “should foster the establishment of trans-national media [...], while tightening up the rules intended to safeguard pluralism and combat concentration of media ownership”, say MEPs, who also suggest increasing the number of Euronews broadcast languages to cover all the EU Member States and beyond. Although “social media have immense potential for reaching young people”, MEPs point out that “their reliability as sources cannot always be sufficiently guaranteed”, that they “cannot be considered to be professional media” and may even “give rise to serious breaches of journalistic ethics”, and therefore “caution is required when taking up these new tools”. MEPs also emphasise “the importance of drawing up a code of ethics applicable to new media”. MEPs believe that the EP internet television channel EuroparlTV “should be made more effective”, while ensuring its editorial independence, and advocate “making its content as widely available as possible for TV channels and online media who wish to use it”. (European Parliament via Media Network)

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