23/10/2009 Culture, Science, Education and Media
Strasbourg, 23.10.2009 – Ways to protect journalists from electronic eavesdropping and government searches, the protection of sources and the growing number of threats facing investigative reporters across Europe are among topics to be discussed at a parliamentary hearing on media freedom in Luxembourg on Monday 26 October 2009.
Organised by the Sub-committee on the Media of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), at the invitation of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, the event will bring together journalists, leading NGOs such as Reporters sans frontières and parliamentarians. The President of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies Laurent Mosar will open the event.
“When journalists fear for their lives, democracy is at risk,” said the Chair of the Sub-committee Andrew McIntosh (United Kingdom, SOC), a former British Media Minister, who is preparing a PACE report on media freedom. A preliminary country-by-country analysis of the situation in the Council of Europe area will also be presented.
Hans-Martin Tillack, the Brussels correspondent of the German magazine Stern who in 2004 was detained by Belgian police and had papers confiscated after alleging irregularities at the EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF, will take part. He will also present a “European Charter on Freedom of the Press”, adopted in May by 48 editors-in-chief and leading journalists from 19 Council of Europe countries.
The hearing takes place from 9.30am to 12.30pm on Monday 26 October 2009 in Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies (23 rue du Marché-aux-Herbes, L-1728, Luxembourg). It is open to the press.
Contact:
Angus Macdonald, PACE Communication Unit, mobile +33 (0)6 30 49 68 20.