25/01/2011 Culture, Science, Education and Media
“More still needs to be done to secure full respect for freedom of the media, guarantee journalists' safety and protect their sources,” today said Arne König, President of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), speaking at an exchange of views on the state of media freedom in Europe organised by the Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Culture, Science and Education. “Many journalists are regularly the victims of harassment, threats and physical violence in the exercise of their profession,” he continued, “and they do not enjoy the same respect they once did”. He deplored the murder of six journalists in Europe in 2010 out of 94 worldwide.
The President of the EFJ also criticised the entry into force on 1 January of a new Hungarian media law. It reflected, he said, the emergence of a "totalitarian" approach to the media on the part of certain governments.
He referred to the report of Morgan Johansson (Sweden, SOC) on the protection of journalists’ sources and also advocated improvements to journalists' working methods to enable them to communicate in secret with their sources.
Another participant in the exchange of views, Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE representative on Freedom of the Media, spoke of the need to ensure that member states' legislation was designed to encourage media freedom, so that they could operate in a safe environment. Too often governments invoked the fight against terrorism and national security as grounds for restrictive legislation. Ms Mijatovic also encouraged member states to promote the decriminalisation of defamation – which only 11 of the 56 OSCE states had done – and to regulate the Internet.