EU Study Finds Journalists Growing Targets for Harassment, Violence

While journalism is considered especially dangerous business in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific, the situation can be just as dire in the European Union, as the killings of investigative reporters Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta and Jan Kuciak in Slovakia showed.

A study by the Council of Europe now highlights the intimidation, harassment and violence that journalists reporting on sensitive issues face.

A Mission to Inform: Journalists at Risk Speak Out, was conducted by Marilyn Clark and William Horsley, two of the council's experts on media freedom, their report based on interviews with 20 journalists in 18 countries.

That included Galizia, who was killed days later while she – like Kuciak – was probing corruption at the highest levels of government and organized crime.

The authors also spoke to Jessikka Aro, a Finnish journalist working for her country's public service broadcaster who investigated pro-Russian Internet trolls, and Can Dundar, a Turkish journalist in exile in Germany, where he moved after an assassination attempt.

Both are award-winning journalists and Aro became even more well known when an International Women of Courage Award she was going to receive from the US State Department was rescinded over her tweets criticizing President Donald Trump.

In a report on the findings, Germany's state broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) said it was aimed at analyzing pressure on journalists in Europe designed to keep them from reporting freely as populist and authoritarian governments try to consolidate power.

The authors said that even in the EU, journalists face a “veritable minefield of obstacles and dangers" and a "dramatic intensification of political pressure (that) has increasingly hindered and obstructed journalists from performing their core watchdog function."

Patrick Penninckx, head of Information Society Department of the Council of Europe, told DW that journalists are increasingly working in an environment “not favorable to freedom of expression”, which is even worsened by governments’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The Council of Europe has repeatedly emphasized that the COVID-19 crisis should not be used by state or non-state actors as a pretext to limit media freedom in a way that would not be acceptable in regular circumstances," Penninckx added.

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The situation is further complicated by ongoing debates on how to counter “fake news”.

EU journalists, as others, are subject to "commercial pressures, pressures from their own editors, fear of frivolous legal claims against them, surveillance, the misuse of terrorism and other laws sanctioning them for reporting on certain issues, obstacles hindering access to information as well as direct threats of harm and injury directed against journalists or their close ones," Penninckx told DW.

The spread of misinformation also contributes to a hostile environment for journalists, the Council of Europe report showed, making them likely to be targets of police and the public, especially during protests.

With mainstream news outlets competing with untrained bloggers and social media, journalists are "more visible and easily reachable", making them "more vulnerable to denigrating comments", Penninckx said.

It's worse for female journalists, as Galizia wrote shortly before being killed. "If a woman is going to be less than perfect, she’s going to get trashed," she said in reference to online harassment.

Aro said that, “Being a female, I am subjected to horrible harassment concerning how I look, and how sexually wanted or not wanted I am. (Some trolls say they) want to rape me."

It goes beyond verbal threats. Elena Kostyuchenko, a reporter for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was assaulted several times, suffering a head trauma in attacks which weren't investigated.

Fearing reprisals or even for their lives, some journalists have taken to self-censoring to protect themselves, another chilling effect on media freedom.

"It is clear that different pressures faced by journalists push them to self-censor and that self-censoring happens even amongst the bravest and most reputable members of the profession," said Penninckx.

Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis who was prosecuted – and acquitted – twice for revealing the names of wealthy Greeks with secret accounts in a Swiss branch of HSBC bank, said the "the mainstream media have abdicated their watchdog role and become 'complicit' in their own decline," the report said.

The findings recommended that media outlets ensure the security of journalists’ sources as well and better protect their reporters, including from political interference.

The journalists interviewed deserve to be heard and "deserve to enter the conscience of everyone," the report concluded.