Press Groups Say EU Media Freedom Under Threat, Cite COVID-19

Fourteen international press freedom and journalist groups warned of a growing pattern of intimidation to silence reporters, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some EU governments using the crisis to consolidate power.

Daphne Caruana Galizia

That came with the launch the 2020 annual report of the Council of Europe Platform for the Protection of Journalists that said the risks could become the “new normal” for journalists, citing murders of reporters, including Malta’s Daphne Caruana Galizia, Jan Kuciak in Slovakia, Lyra McKee in Northern Ireland and Vadym Komarov in Ukraine.

Lyra McKee

“The COVID-19 crisis has strengthened officials’ tools to harass journalists, with dangerous new “fake news” laws in countries such as Hungary and Russia that threaten journalists with jail for contravening the official line,” they said.

The report analyzed alerts submitted in 2019 and showed accelerating attempts to muzzle the media and reporters, the pandemic creating a wave of “serious threats and attacks on press freedom” in several EU member states.

 Hungary’s Parliament gave Prime Minister Viktor Orban rule by decree with no time limit, which the EU said didn’t violate its rules despite withering criticism he was making the country an authoritarian state and going after journalists.

Jan Kuciak

In response to COVID-19, the report noted governments have detained journalists for critical reporting and passing laws to punish “fake news,” even if accurate.

“They decide themselves what is allowable and what is false without the oversight of appropriate independent bodies,” the report said.

They added the risks and assault on journalism could be a “tipping point,” in preserving a free media in Europe and recommended the council act to stop it “so that journalists and other media actors can report without fear.”

Only 60 percent of the council members took part in the report, which noted that Russia, Turkey – which jails more journalists than any country in the world – Azerbaijan and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to ignore all alerts.

Vadym Komarov

The Platform recorded 142 serious threats to media freedom, including 33 physical attacks against journalists, 17 cases of detention and imprisonment and 43 cases of harassment and intimidation.

By the end of 2019, the report found 105 journalists behind bars in the Council of Europe region, including 91 in Turkey, which has been trying since 2005 to join the EU and not faced serious sanctions.

There were attempts to silence journalists by suing them, using “spurious and politically motivated legal threats,” citing false drug charges brought against Russian journalist Ivan Golunov and imprisonment of journalists in Ukraine’s Russia-controlled Crimea. Also cited were growing surveillance measures against journalists, including in France, Poland and Switzerland, threatening the ability to protect whistleblowers and sources, and political influence to control media ownership, especially in Hungary.

“These threats, too, are exacerbated by the actions taken by several governments under the health crisis, which further include arbitrary limitations on independent reporting and on journalists’ access to official information about the pandemic,” it added.