Building that houses CTV, a division of  Bell Media. Bell Media’s parent company, BCE Inc., announced on Feb. 8, 2024, that it was making cuts. Shutterstock photo.

Trish Audette-Longo, Carleton University and Christianna Alexiou, London School of Economics and Political Science

It’s hard not to see the journalism industry as one in crisis.

In February, Bell Media announced it was ending multiple CTV newscasts, making other programming cuts and selling 45 radio stations. Its parent company, BCE Inc., also announced it is cutting 4,800 jobs “at all levels of the company,” saying fewer than 10 per cent are at Bell Media.

Weeks later, Vice Media said it would stop publishing on Vice.com and lay off hundreds.

These decisions followed CBC’s December 2023 announcement that it would cut 600 positions, and news last fall that some Canadian journalism schools had shut down or paused their programs.

Across the country, the outlook for the future of news is — at best — uncertain. Not talking about the state of the industry is not an option for journalism educators.

In journalism school, students learn their craft while engaging with critical questions about their roles and responsibilities. They are often taught by previous or current journalists, whose work experiences prepare them to help students tackle reporting challenges.

Crises ask journalism educators, students and practitioners to grapple with sharing stories about what the future could hold. What will journalists’ jobs look like in five years? Or 25 years?

No one in any industry would be able to answer such questions with certainty. But critical events in journalism demand we talk through uncertain futures. And this presents follow-up questions. What are the risks and rewards of talking openly about precarity? How do you start a conversation when the future is so uncertain?

Understanding journalism education

In 2015, with the shock of the 2008 economic crisis still working through newsrooms, journalism educators offered a wide-ranging map for reevaluating the goals of journalism schools, and whether they are solely meant to train future journalists.

Crises run into each other, overlapping and informing responses to change. COVID-19 and a reckoning with racism in journalism and other institutions have demanded new reflections on journalism education.

Pathways to the future

It’s time journalism educators shift conversations with students, to address their experiences, their worries and their understanding of what journalism is and what they want it to be.

In 2022, we asked journalism students at Carleton University — where we, respectively, teach and studied — how they felt about their training through COVID-19. We were curious about how students viewed online learning and transitioning into journalism jobs.

What we heard were concerns about burnout, precarity, work-life balance and the long-term outlook for a life in journalism.

“I just feel like almost every week or every few weeks, I go on Twitter and there’s a journalist who’s like in their 30s or 40s, like halfway through their career, who just quit,” one student said.

Students knew the risks of going into the industry, thanks to news of other cutbacks, guest speaker testimonies and their own experiences losing internship opportunities when the pandemic forced newsrooms online.

Anticipating challenges

We asked journalism students what they thought a day in the life of a journalist looked like. They talked about days that demanded endurance, dedication and working through different kinds of uncertainty.

“They’re just always on,” one student said. “I don’t think journalists have a normal day. As in, you know, get up, get to work, get home.”

Another student described “general burnout” as “a huge part” of the job.

It isn’t surprising that students anticipated challenges finding work and worried about long-term financial stability. In some ways, their responses align with a broader Gen-Z refusal to put their jobs at the centre of their lives or accept low pay.

“I don’t want to say, you know, the more money you make the more successful you are, but being able to just have that security is, I think, a huge thing,” one student said.

“Maybe it doesn’t quite align with ‘success’ in a ‘making a difference’ kind of way. But I think (financial security) gives you an ability to make a difference.”

Students also flagged the importance of mental health and well-being.

“There is an expectation that your entire life should revolve around chasing a story until you physically cannot anymore,” one student said, explaining that this kind of thinking turned them away from journalism.

Learning together

Today’s journalism students have likely been told their entire lives — by friends, family, pop culture and so many reports — that it’s a dying industry. Nonetheless, they’re driven to find out more.

Journalism in crisis, as others have argued, presents an opportunity to unpack traditions and reimagine practices.

It’s also an opportunity to reconsider how journalism schools and newsrooms respond to the concerns of emerging journalists. How can precarity and burnout be addressed collectively inside and outside journalism, not as individual matters?

One place this can begin is with classroom conversations, collectively taking on uncomfortable truths and fears alongside building new skills.

Navigating not having reassuring answers

One risk, for educators, is not having ready-made, reassuring answers to questions of insecurity.

Introducing worst-case scenarios also risks scaring away students. In our interviews, one student cautioned against presenting guest speakers’ negative portrayals of the industry too early, for example.

But recent news makes industry crises impossible not to talk about.

Talking through crises can allow for discussion of alternatives and solutions. However, care should be taken to not romanticize what has worked in the past, including precarious conditions like long hours, low pay or competing for fewer and fewer jobs.

Instead, it’s helpful to think of imagining different journalism futures as an in-progress collaboration for students, educators, journalists and news organization leaders. Such collaboration is a project of articulating not only crisis conditions, but drawing on shared experiences to figure out what it would take to make things better.

Looking back, we wonder what responses and creative solutions we would have heard if we asked students what they wanted their days to look like as journalists — not just what they thought the job looked like already.

Trish Audette-Longo, Assistant Professor of Journalism Studies, Carleton University and Christianna Alexiou, MSc in Regulation Student, London School of Economics and Political Science

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

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A man stands with a red poster “I am against corruption” during a 2018 protest in Moscow, Russia. Photo by Shutterstock

In October, a group of determined experts committed to combating corruption in Russia launched the “Transparency International – Russia in Exile”. It was the rebirth of Transparency International-Russia, a branch of the global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) that was forced to liquidate itself after being added to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office’s list of “undesirable” organisations.

Ilya Shumanov, Deputy Director of the relaunched organisation, is part of the team that was forced to leave the country in order to continue their work of “defending the principles of transparency, accountability, integrity and honesty”.

In an interview with Johanna Mack, Editor of the German European Journalism Observatory website, he talks about how Transparency Russia’s work, topics and strategies have changed since the start of the war in Ukraine and how the organisation continues to bring investigative research to the public.

Tell us about the work you did before you left the country.

“We were designated as a foreign agent in 2015. It was one of the first cases of a nonprofit organisation receiving this designation. So, even before the beginning of the war in 2022, we were not able to do a lot in the field of government advocacy. We weren’t allowed to join the government’s public councils or even invited to some official meetings. There was also an official restriction for Russian government representatives and public officials to avoid contact with us because we were a “foreign agent organisation”.

“So, instead, we focussed on using digital platforms that allowed people to participate in the public, non-governmental control of officials through declarations, such as the disclosure of their income. Our lawyers also supported people in court cases about corruption in the local authorities. And we did a lot in the field of education and enlightenment. We had several platforms and collaborations with stakeholders, such as students, civic activists, and local grassroots initiatives, representatives, and professionals, to help us spread the word about anti-corruption.

“A unique feature that not every Transparency International chapter has is investigative reporting. We were doing investigative journalism on complicated money laundering schemes, transnational corruption, illicit financial flows, etc.”

How did this change when the pressure on Transparency International Russia increased?

“We shifted our focus to working with communities and businesses. Businesses are more open to changes, especially those trying to avoid the sanctions by US authorities in 2021. Some were trying to distance themselves from the government to comply with global anti-corruption regulations and to take actions to avoid being blacklisted by the EU or US authorities.

“In the context of the war, of course, we had to change a lot. We had to step away from the government. We are no longer able to do any consultation or collaboration with them. We had to spend a lot of resources, time, and capacity trying not to be shut down. People are dying now, today. People were dying yesterday, and more will probably die tomorrow. So, it’s tougher to concentrate Russian society and any stakeholders on corruption during the war.”

How are you organising your work in exile?

“The relocation process is a big deal. If you are trying to relocate yourself in a personal capacity, it’s one thing. If you’re trying to relocate a team with family members, dogs, visas, children, etc., it’s a nightmare. There are a lot of housing problems, plus the everyday practicalities such as opening bank accounts. These activities take time that we should spend on anti-corruption. We also had to recruit staff members as some members of our team could not relocate, and we had to find a way to keep morale high.

“The next issue was the designation as an undesirable organisation this spring. This status means we had to shut down everything that we had built in Russia over the years to avoid legal consequences such as criminal accusations and fines.”

How are you able to continue your work with these challenges? 

“COVID-19 was a chance to learn how to work remotely. During lockdowns, we were able to find a way to communicate securely and support each other while working online. I suppose it would have been more challenging if we had not learned to work remotely.”

How do you access sources and information? Do you have to do all your data collection online now? Do you still have people on the ground?

“On the one hand, it’s impossible to continue the work without being on the ground. The big thing in our team is using public sources of information like open-source intelligence tools to collect data. For example, we have big data analytics in our team, programmers, and IT guys who can collect data through AI.

“And, of course, we still have some relevant people on the ground in different regions of Russia with different backgrounds who help us. In 2021, we started to build our community, and there were plenty of in-person events. Even during the war, in 2022, I did a number of trips through Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, visiting people on the ground to understand more about the atmosphere in the regions, the context they are facing, and also trying to do some events, to collect data and sources. To avoid risk, some of our projects continue in Russia but under different brands.”

Does losing the Transparency International branding on the ground hinder your work?

“It depends. It’s tougher to connect with journalists because we are now acting non-branded on the ground. On the other hand, it is easier to continue some groundwork with activists and grassroots initiatives when we are not designated as a foreign agent or an undesirable organisation. But safety and security continue to be the big challenge. Of course, we are thinking about this and cutting our ties with those who don’t want to take certain risks.”

Is there any way that Transparency International can support you in this situation?

“Yes, we have full support from the Transparency International movement. I think the organisation understands that these challenges will become more and more common in the future. Russia is not the only country in the hands of dictators. Maybe about half of the countries globally show signs of dictatorship or authoritarian regimes. That means we must be more flexible, working remotely, outside the country, if necessary, to try to find some remedy to these challenges.”

Currently, are you still able to reach audiences inside Russia? 

“We are still working for the people in Russia. Of course, it’s tougher to deliver some information. We know that some of them are not using VPNs, for example. We are trying to respond to this challenge by using social media, partnerships and marketing strategies. Just a few months ago, we did some anti-corruption campaigns in Russia without branding them as Transparency International. And, of course, we had worked on a communications strategy in 2021, and the digital platform was effective and transformational. 

How did the risks, restrictions, and remote and digital working affect your content? 

“We are refocusing our work on the sanctions – not to advocate for them but to try to explain how they work and how illicit flows of finance changed since the beginning of the war. We are also seeing the development of new topics like cryptocurrency and how Russian authorities, criminals, and kleptocrats are using crypto payment systems in Europe and the United Kingdom to avoid sanctions and transfer their dirty money outside of Russia to continue their criminal operations.

“We are still trying to answer some unanswered questions about the death of the oil and gas company’s top managers. We have published a new investigation in Novaya Gazeta Europa about the connection between the death of top managers of Gazprom and money laundering. Then, we are trying to investigate how Russian authorities nationalised some private companies. We will publish a report about the connection between war and corruption, how the war affected corruption and how corruption affected the war.”

How has your work contributed to global information channels?

“There is a huge demand for our expertise from Transparency International chapters all over the world. For example, from the UK, the Czech Republic, some African countries, Australia, and South Asia. There are plenty of chapters with whom we are in touch and with whom we are trying to do some joint work, like tracing assets or providing expertise. For example, I have a request from colleagues in the United Kingdom about Russian oligarchs who have property in the country.”

Being named a foreign agent and being associated with an undesirable organisation, are you safe working in exile?

“Look, I grew up in the 80s in Russia. It was not a very safe place and safe time. Some early challenges prepare you to be ready for any challenges. These designations are also a seizure because some Russians decided to distance themselves and their media, businesses, societies, and communities from me because of unknown risks. We don’t know how the government will react to any corporation, financial transfers or events.

“The main issue and the main question for me is how the other governments react to Russians with this status. I see plenty of approaches. From my personal point of view, one of the biggest challenges is that you are trying to promote democracy and fight for human rights in Russia, but you are not able to secure a visa to attend meetings in Brussels. It’s a nightmare for several Russians who are outside of Russia. Receiving money, legitimately and legally, is a nightmare for those who are still in Russia. We need support from European countries and governments, but also from civil society and businesses.”

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in: The new tool helping outlets measure the impact of investigative journalism

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New regulations are forcing big tech to pay news publishers for linking to their content.

Meta and Google made headlines around the globe when they threatened to drop Canadian news from their platforms after the Liberal Senate passed the C-18 bill, which will require the tech giants to pay for news distributed on Facebook, Instagram and Google. 

The bill has been controversial, with some publishers arguing that it only benefits large media houses at the expense of small digital-only outlets. That’s a story that has been told around the world, but the truth is more complicated. Indeed, the Canadian bill is modelled on Australia’s 2021 News Media Bargaining Code, which has injected more than USD 140 million annually into the country’s news media. And, as well as the Murdoch Press, small outlets have benefited.

The tech giants’ response to this new trend of regulations was to refuse to publish news from countries introducing or considering them. In Australia, Facebook temporarily blocked news before the Code was passed but backed down after being criticised for dropping local content during the Covid-19 pandemic and the bushfires. 

Furthermore, as interest in the Code spread, Google quietly threatened to drop local news in Canada, Italy, and other countries where there’ve been discussions about similar legislation. 

It’s a game of brinkmanship as the platforms try to flex their muscles in these markets, and the threat “backfired” in Australia, says Rod Sims, the former competition commission chair who designed the Australian Code.

As nations consider a strategic response to being dropped by big tech, there are lessons to be learnt from the experience of news outlets in Spain. 

In 2014, Spain’s main publishers’ association lobbied the government to introduce the so-called “Google tax”, modifying the existing Intellectual Property law to require news aggregators to pay news publishers for linking to their content. The money earned from licensing fees was to be paid to all publishers through a collective rights mechanism managed by a third entity. All the Spanish outlets, both large and small, would have received a share.

“This law was considered the best approach for a majority of European publishers,” says Luis Enríquez, current CEO at the media company, Vocento and the president of the publishers association when the law was passed. And he adds: “It became the worst communications problem Google ever faced.”

In response to the new law, Google decided to close Google News in Spain, which meant that links to all Spanish news were excluded from its news aggregator.

But the change to Spanish law sparked a division among the country’s publishers. Digital natives opposed the licensing fee, arguing that it would undermine their websites, as they relied on Google News for traffic.  

Today, however, large Spanish publishers say that being dropped from Google News didn’t greatly affect their business. Some of those we spoke to say the measure was revenue neutral. Others feel they benefited from having greater control over their relationships with their readers and advertisers. 

Google News was restored in Spain in 2022 after an eight-year hiatus, when, as part of the legislative process for implementing the EU Copyright Directive, the current Spanish government amended the 2014 clause to allow media outlets to negotiate directly with the tech giant.

Publishers are now signing up for $2m bilateral deals with Google for its Google News Showcase service. Those we spoke to say the current deals for the Showcase service are better than nothing, but many agree that Google should be paying them much more. Some still think that losing the Google tax has been disastrous for the news industry. 

José Antonio Sánchez, founder and CEO of El Confidencial, the largest digital native, says the lesson is to rely on direct traffic that is not filtered through search. “I only believe in frequent, loyal readers who visit our site directly, not via Google.” He definitely agrees that publishers need to unite against big tech. “The pioneering Spanish law of 2014 could have had a huge impact if the publishers had been united.”

Perhaps the best lesson from the Spanish example is that publishers need to unite and negotiate hard to get fair payments from the platforms that benefit from circulating their content. While bargaining codes are not perfectly designed, the case of Spain suggests that they are likely better to support quality journalism than the alternative.

Versions of this article were previously published by other sites and outlets. 

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in: Interview: Self censorship and untold stories in Uganda

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The rise of social media has forced news outlets in Europe to adapt the way they engage their audiences

It is no secret that the rise of social media has forced news outlets in Europe to adapt the way they engage their audiences.

Henning Eichler, a journalist, and lecturer at the Darmstadt and the Rhine-Main universities, has examined how this trend of platform-optimised journalism has particularly impacted public service media.

Eichler is the author of a study titled: Journalism in social networks. ARD and ZDF under the spell of algorithms?. His research includes interviews with various public broadcasters in Germany.

He spoke with EJO fellow Olivia Samnick about the difficulties they are facing and what solutions are available for Europe as a whole.

EJO: Public service outlets have a mandate to provide the public with a balanced supply of information, education, culture, and entertainment. How are digital platforms more effective in supporting this mandate than traditional media, such as television and print?

Henning Eichler

Digital channels, especially social media, offer great opportunities to engage and exchange ideas with audiences – for example, through community management or digital tools for surveys and quizzes. In this way, you can involve people in the discourse and get immediate feedback on content and ideas for new topics. Of course, this was also possible before the rise of social media –  newspapers have letters to the editor, and almost all radio stations have telephone hotlines. But this direct exchange is much more feasible on social networks and can enrich engagement.

EJO: But not everyone consumes journalism via social media.    

Henning Eichler

There is a clear generational divide. People in their mid-40s and older tend to use what they grew up with – the linear media, which operates on the basis of a programme schedule and simultaneous viewing or listening. But these formats hardly play a role in the way people under thirty engage with news. Instead, they receive journalistic information and daily news coverage via social media and, to a lesser extent, via non-linear, on-demand channels such as audio libraries.

Public service media must engage all demographics equally. The problem is that editorial teams must find a way to simultaneously work on digital and traditional mediums. Two types of journalism are needed: traditional, linear formats that follow traditional conventions and journalism for social networks. The latter is examined in more detail in my study.

EJO: The public broadcasters you interviewed use algorithms to extend their audience reach. What are some of the challenges they highlighted?

Henning Eichler

My interviews suggest that editorial offices depend on algorithms to distribute their content without having an in-depth understanding of how these algorithms work. If you want to be successful on a platform, you must follow its conventions. Editorial teams are therefore concerned with finding out how algorithms work – what content they prioritize. But, in doing so, they are always a step behind the latest development on the platform because the modes of operation are not disclosed, and developers only communicate changes after they have been implemented. This is a challenge that faces everyone – journalism as well as, for example, the cultural sector.

EJO: What did the public broadcasters in your study say about dealing with the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of social media?

Henning Eichler

In the interviews, editors described having to adapt extremely quickly to new algorithms. In extreme cases, if they fail to keep up with changes an entire news feed is jeopardised – because the algorithms do not prioritise the journalistic content, and this can severely affect the reach of articles. This shows the strong dependence on social media platforms.

The platforms, in turn, are reluctant to assume their social responsibility, although they now play a critical role in the forming of opinion and will. A compelling example of the power social platforms wield is the storming of the Capitol in the US – a historic incident that was probably made possible by social networks.

EJO: What are the solutions to these challenges?

Henning Eichler

We need more regulation. Politics has a duty here. Algorithms prioritise features such as superficiality, polarisation, emotionality, and humour. These characteristics often have little or nothing to do with journalistic quality. However, it has long been technically possible to make so-called public value content more visible through algorithms. But, of course, content, which is of value to the public, doesn‘t just have to come from public media; there are also private providers who do excellent journalism. So, what if the major social media platforms could be required at the European level to identify public value content and use algorithms to prioritise it so it reaches as many people as possible?

EJO: That would mean unified rules for everyone?

Henning Eichler

Yes, that is a big one. One option I see is the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) agreeing on standards and then trying to introduce these into European politics. The EBU has an important role to play because many public service media across Europe are members.

EJO: Almost every media house has an established style guide, so why is there a delay in creating ethical standards and guidelines for social media platform-optimised journalism?

Henning Eichler

In Germany, for example, I think it is because the public media were in a state of shock for a long time when they realised that they were struggling to reach the younger generation via traditional, linear programming. So, when they came up with journalism for social media and had great success, hardly any fundamentally strategic or ethical questions were asked, such as: ‘what dependencies are we creating, and how can we protect our core values in digital environments?’.

EJO: How would ethical standards benefit individual editors?

Henning Eichler

In the interviews, I found that some journalists are seeking guidance. While there is evidence of a  shared understanding of public service values, there is still a lot of ambiguity around how these should be applied in practice. This always leads to a dilemma, with journalists asking – do I build my contribution in such a way that it generates more reach and more interaction, or do I balance the content so that it reflects the diversity of opinion as objectively as possible? This does not always have to be a contradiction, but it often is. A digital press code that governs how public service media operate on commercial platforms could help.

EJO: What other questions should public service media ask themselves?

Henning Eichler

In general, it is also a question of management – how much platform optimisation can public service providers afford? How much does one orient oneself to the analytics data platforms make available? Is this data complete and reliable? How should offerings be adapted based on this data?

EJO: What options are currently available to individual public service media?

Henning Eichler

Reduce dependencies on commercial networks – for example, the German public broadcaster ARD has been adapting its platform strategy for about a year. Social media should be used for conversion, i.e., to direct users to a media outlet’s own pages and libraries via short teasers or trailers. For some years now, the BBC has also been trying to reduce its dependency on these networks by strengthening its own digital infrastructures. However, whether this strategy of reduced dependence on these social media platforms will be successful is still left to be seen.

Read the German EJO version of this article here.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in: Policy brief from UNESCO recommends urgent interventions to protect quality journalism

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A conversation with award-winning investigative journalist Amanda Gearing

Amanda Gearing’s book examines case studies such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists led Panama Papers.

Investigative journalism is under threat from various economic and political factors. The breakdown of the business model that was based on advertising makes it difficult for news organisations to fund investigative journalism. Furthermore, the increase in disinformation and misinformation, legal restrictions, threats, and attacks on journalists make it difficult for journalists to undertake this important practice.

Disrupting Investigative Journalism Moment of Death or Dramatic Rebirth? is part of Routledge’s new book series, Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism.  The text makes a case for using web-based communications and techniques to promote investigative journalism across the globe. Published in 2021, the book by Australian investigative journalist and academic Dr Amanda Gearing, brings together examples of journalists who have successfully found, verified, and published investigative stories using digital platforms.

Gearing explores the risks and benefits and draws on the findings of her PhD thesis, ‘Global investigative journalism in the Digital Age’. She argues that digital technologies and social media platforms enable the promotion of practices such as whistleblowing and facilitate collaboration, resulting in faster, more cost-effective investigations across the globe.

She provides examples of investigative journalism in Australia and other places such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where journalists used digital tools to hold power to account. Gearing includes case studies such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists led Panama and Paradise Papers done in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and the Luxemburg Leaks in 2014. She also looks at the Sydney Morning Herald’s Dinosaur Stampede in 2013, Newcastle Herald’s Shine the Light in 2012, and the 2017 Caldey Island abuse scandal.

Risks such as surveillance, leaking of stories, inaccurate source material posted on social media platforms, and threats to personal safety, among others, are also examined in the book. In an interview with the European Journalism Observatory, Gearing discusses how the book came about and the opportunities and challenges of using digital technologies in investigative journalism.

EJO: What were your motivations for writing the book?

Gearing: Disrupting investigative journalism is part of the Routledge series, and the term disruption is the theme of the whole series. Each book in the series is written by a journalism academic. They talk about how the digital disruption and digitisation have changed the way journalism is working, how it’s paid for, and what effect it has. I’m an investigative journalist, and that’s also my field of academic research.

Disruption is to do with the fact that it’s become very hard for the media to pay for investigative journalism the way they did in the past, and that means we have some quite serious risks to the way democracy works.

EJO: What is the role of digital tools in investigative journalism during pandemic times?

Gearing: All the tools used by the journalists in this book are the tools they have now been forced to adopt because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Journalists haven’t been able to travel or sometimes to leave their house. They’ve had to collaborate with other people and use their contacts as their eyes and ears on the ground. Most of that has been enormously fast-tracked because of the limitations of Covid. So, there are some quite massive collaborations now – because if journalists can’t travel, as they couldn’t for so long, it meant they had to share work and share tasks, and even for covering the pandemic itself, they had to use digital technologies.

EJO: What would you say are some of the benefits of collaboration? 

Gearing: There are lots of benefits. There are some disbenefits, of course, and that is that you have to share the glory of the story with someone else. However, if you can’t do the story by yourself, is it better to let the story die or to share the glory with someone else so that you can tell the story? And so, there are swings and roundabouts.

Sometimes there are stories that I can do by myself, and I do – unless, for example, the lead comes from another country, say England or Wales – as with a couple of investigations I’ve done where the whistle-blower was overseas and, as it was during Covid-19, I couldn’t travel. But these stories happened before COVID. It wasn’t a government regulation that stopped me travelling. It was time and money.

And so, what I did was look around for a journalist in England working for a mainstream media outlet, which at the time was The Times, and the person I chose was the crime editor Sean O’Neill. I googled him and read his evidence to the Leveson inquiry. That meant that I could see what sort of answers he gave when he was cross-examined about difficult matters to do with press, ethics, etc. And he was the person I then invited into a collaboration.

EJO: What is the most remarkable investigative journalism case study you refer to in the book?

Gearing: I think they’re all remarkable. I truly believe they all are because the span of work is extraordinary. It goes from the most grassroots investigations – for example, a mining company that was wrongly blowing up a national park and causing a lot of environmental damage. A tip-off from a bushwalker was followed up by journalists and the company that did this damage and lied about it was caught out because the journalists were able to use GPS technology while walking through the area and filming.

They were able to verify the story and report it to the government, which then ordered the company to clean up the damage. As a result of that story, the whole news group fitted out every newsroom with its own GPS technology, which is improving the capacity of all their newsrooms.

Another example is the work of Newcastle Herald reporter Joanne McCarthy. What she did was not very high-tech; she used an email archive to trap clergy who had not told the truth about their knowledge of child sex offenders. She wasn’t intending to trap them. What she was doing was documenting the position given to her by church leaders at any particular time about their knowledge of particular child sex offenders in the church, and what she found out over time was those church leaders would admit only what they knew that she knew. But as time went by, she realised they had known a lot more. In the end, the police asked for all the information, and she was able to hand over the archives of her emails.

Eight years of archiving emails is not very high tech, but in this case, it allowed her to crack open this massive scandal, which led to a Royal Commission in Australia that should have happened ten years earlier. So, it doesn’t have to be expensive, and it doesn’t have to be shiny new technology. But the power of using something digital can be enormous.

Those are just two examples of investigations. There are many others, which I have written about in the book.

EJO: What are some of the risks of using social media platforms in investigative journalism?

Gearing: Well, there are quite a lot of risks, and the book does itemise them all. I have private Facebook groups full of news contacts and some of those groups are quite big. If you’ve got 40 people who might be frontline survivors of a flood disaster and someone decides not to keep the information you’re collecting confidential and shares it, then it could blow your scoop. So, when you let people into a private Facebook group, there needs to be a strong understanding that it is your group, and you are an investigative journalist who is trying to help a group of people by gathering information.

EJO: Do you think the future of investigative journalism is non-profit journalism?

Gearing: I think there are many different solutions or workarounds. We have to work smarter, faster and more cheaply, but the technology is there, and the skills are available to be able to do so.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

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War reporting is currently dominating many European newsrooms, but coverage has extended beyond the classic “war correspondent” sent to report first-hand from the war zone. Since Russia started attacking Ukraine, we have witnessed a variety of journalistic strategies to provide the public with orientation within the “messy business of war”, as it is described by media scholar Kevin Williams.

Learning from innovations that worked during the Covid pandemic, newsrooms have extensively used interactive infographics, direct engagement with the public, and fact-checking. And for the first time, podcasts are now a vital part of conflict reporting in many countries.  In this overview, the EJO network provides snapshots of effective and creative media projects from across Europe.

Britain

‘Full Fact’ and ‘Ukrainecast’

As the UK’s demand for reliable information on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine increases, two providers stand out as sources of fact-checked and objective reports about the war: Full Fact and BBC’s Ukrainecast.

Intensifying UKs fact-checking efforts

In recent weeks fact-checking has become increasingly important. According to Euronews, before February 24th, a Russian mass disinformation campaign was created to frame Ukraine as aggressors in order to legitimise an invasion.

Full Fact aims to tackle this kind of disinformation. It is a registered charity founded in 2009 and based in London, and its team of independent fact-checkers has made it their mission to check and correct claims in news stories and viral content on social media. One of their commandments is to work impartially and to be politically neutral.

This is not the first time the platform has featured Ukraine, but it appears to have intensified its focus on the country, currently publishing daily fact checks about the war. This includes challenging viral videos, such as the one of an explosion that is supposed to have taken place in Ukraine – but was actually first found online after the Beirut port explosion in 2020.

Analysis and overview

Ukrainecast, the other notable UK-based reporting tool, is a podcast launched by public broadcaster BBC at the start of the invasion. It offers audiences a compact overview of the news as well as an analysis of current events and is particularly important in the context of the blocking of BBC‘s websites in Russia.

The BBC publishes a single episode every day, offering a counter design to the rapid news flow usually available online. The idea is to give journalists and civilians on the ground in Ukraine a voice and to answer questions that may be on people’s minds but may not be covered in the regular news cycle.

It tackles important questions. Why did Putin start this war? What is it like for those with family in Ukraine? How are people in Ukraine fighting back? Which cities are under attack?

Czech Republic

Focus on multimedia storytelling 

Czech media has been actively broadcasting the war in Ukraine. In fact, almost the entire media space, perhaps with the exception of the sports section, has directed all its attention towards the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Readers, listeners, and viewers are getting up-to-the-minute updates from timelines, infographics, maps, data visualisation, and live streams from Ukraine on the war and its knock-on effects such as the refugee situation and the economic impact on Ukraine, Russia, the Czechia, and Europe.

The internet daily Aktuálně.cz uses an online feed with a multimedia storytelling format. They cleverly organise and connect all the content related to the war in Ukraine in one place. This gives their audience easy access to different media, such as videos, podcasts, and photos.

Some Czech media also offer coverage on the Ukraine war in a foreign language. Public broadcaster, Czech Radio, has launched an internet stream that broadcasts Ukrainian public radio. The transmission aims to ensure the availability of information about the war for refugees and Ukrainians living in the Czech Republic.

Czech Radio is also preparing a podcast entitled ‘News for Ukrainians in the Czech Republic‘, to provide practical information for people who have fled to the territory. In Ukraine, the podcast will be published by Radio Prague International.

In print, online newspaper Novinky.cz publishes a daily summary of the most important events in Ukraine with a link to this coverage placed prominently on its home page. Reported in Russian, the summaries are intended primarily for audiences from the Russian Federation. As stated on this site, the goal is “to provide much-needed transparency in the conflict in Ukraine” through “an uncensored daily digest of currently unfolding events”.

Germany

Katapult and Correctiv’s ‘sanctions tracker’

Katapult

In Germany, much of the content on the war in Ukraine is produced by Katapult, a newsroom in a small north-eastern town called Greifswald. The magazine, which specialises in infographics and maps, has poured its resources into covering the war in Ukraine, offering insight and analysis.

The outlet addresses important questions. Which parts of Ukraine are occupied? What is Germany’s official capacity to take refugees? And, how many people have been detained in Russian cities for taking part in anti-war protests?

But, perhaps its most remarkable contribution is the decision of several of its staff members to give up part of their salary to finance and equip up to twenty Ukraine-based journalists, who report for Katapult from war zones, from hiding places, or while fleeing.

Every day Katapult produces new graphics with the blue and yellow of the Ukraine flag as the dominant colours. One infographic shows how the number of sanctions against Russia has increased over time. It is based on another notable media project: the ‘sanctions tracker’ set up by Correctiv – a foundation-funded investigative journalism organisation.

Correctiv

Correctiv runs a website dedicated to tracking the sanctions that have been imposed against Russia, using data from OpenSanctions. It provides this information in the form of infographics and a searchable table. The website also offers background details on the targets of the sanctions, whether it is an individual such as Artur Matthias Warnig, manager of the Nord Stream gas project, or a company such as Sberbank – Russia’s largest bank. In their coverage, the organisation reiterates the message that sanctions are currently the West’s most important weapons while, at the same, questioning their effectiveness.

These two examples stick out in Germany’s media landscape with its dual public service and commercial broadcasting system and its deeply rooted tradition of having a handful of leading newspapers. As relatively young, small, and not-for-profit media start-ups, Katapult and Correctiv are certainly comparatively agile and able to implement ideas more quickly than many of their established competitors. That being said, one could question whether initiatives such as staff members giving up part of their salary is really the most employee-friendly approach to financing journalism, given that Katapult does have financial reserves.

Overall, the ability to adapt quickly is something that has become increasingly important for Germany’s media sector as it covers the war in Ukraine, considering that with recent developments such as the Kremlin’s newly introduced “fake news” law, Germany’s public service broadcasters ARD and ZDF have decided to temporarily pause reporting from inside Russia.

 Italy  

‘Stories’: the daily podcast from Ukraine

Data shows that some nine million Italians listened to at least one podcast in June 2021 and that the format is definitely gaining momentum in the country. The Italian podcasts market is active, with various journalists launching their own audio projects, focusing on daily press reviews or slow journalism with longer reports and in-depth investigations.

One of these is ‘Stories’, a daily podcast on international news produced by Chora Media, which is a media company founded in 2020 and entirely focused on podcasts and audio projects. Stories’ author is Italian foreign affairs journalist Cecilia Sala. At the start of the conflict, Sala traveled to Ukraine and began producing the podcast from the frontline. Since then, she has produced a dozen episodes from Kyiv and other conflict areas.

Sober, accurate, and emotional

Sala’s podcast offers insights and updates about the major events surrounding the conflicts, mixing them with first-person reporting, the voices of Ukrainian witnesses, and behind-the-scenes explainers. In one episode, she reported from the bunker below the Okhmadyt children’s cancer hospital in Ukraine’s capital, where the patients have been moved in the fallout of the Russian attack, giving audiences an insight into some of the extremely challenging situations in the country.

In another episode, Sala covered the shelling of Chernihiv through the experience of fighting volunteer Denis, who is in his mid-twenties. Overall, the Stories podcast offers a sober and accurate yet emotional account from the frontline and represents an evolution in how Italian media are reporting the conflict. It also demonstrates the potential of podcasts in journalism.

Latvia  

Special editions and news in Ukrainian

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took over Latvia’s media landscape instantly, with all media outlets working flat out to cover events in Ukraine. Some have gone as far as changing their logos to express their support for Ukraine. Online media have created special sections on their platforms and introduced special ‘skins’ and headers for their portals. TV stations have provided additional news editions, discussion broadcasts, and live streams. And magazines have developed strong covers.

Traditional electronic media has stood out on the overall news scene, especially Latvia’s public broadcasters, the Latvijas Televīzija (Latvian Television) and Latvijas Radio (Latvian Radio). They have been especially active, timely, and to some extent, even innovative in their coverage of the war in Ukraine. For example, by February 24, Latvijas Televīzija had already changed its visual design for their studios, and two weeks later, it was still using the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

From the first days of Russia’s invasion, they introduced interactive warfare maps in their news programs to show the geography of military actions – something this channel has never done before.

But public broadcasters didn’t limit their efforts to just the visual element of their coverage; they also provided very timely special news editions, numerous experts‘ discussion programs, and live broadcasts from their correspondents in Ukraine. They covered important media events such as the concert Ukrainas brīvībai (For the Freedom of Ukraine) on February 25, which took place in a park across the street from the Russian Embassy in Riga and was attended by thousands of people. Broadcasted by Latvian television, it was co-live-streamed on commercial television channel TV3. The short version of this support action was also available on ARTE, the European culture TV channel’s online version.

The weekly investigative journalism program ‘Nothing Personal‘ on TV3 gained much attention on social media after one of the anchors wore a sweatshirt with the Russian version of the powerful message “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself”. Ukraine Snake Island defenders used this message just days before when Russia’s military forces asked them to lay down their weapons, and it became an international meme in different languages.

On radio, Latvijas Radio’s minority languages program, LR4, which broadcasts mainly in Russian, promptly supplemented its program with Ukrainian public radio news in the Ukrainian language, twice a day.

And in print, Weekly news magazine Ir (It is), a week after the start of Russia’s invasion, published a supportive cover in Ukrainian stating “Слава Україні!” (Glory to Ukraine).

A week later, they followed up with another compelling cover with a strong visual message and transformed it into a downloadable sign, “You reap what you sow,” for public rallies. The Pauls Stradiņš Medicine History Museum, located directly opposite the Russian Embassy in Riga, even created a large-scale poster version, which they hung on the wall of their building.

Poland

Content in Ukrainian and information for refugees

Since February 24^th, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the number one topic in all Polish media outlets, at both local and national levels. This is primarily because of the geographic proximity of the conflict and the visibly direct consequences of the war for Poland, especially in terms of the huge influx of Ukrainian refugees to virtually all regions of the country – more than a million by the end of the first week of March.

This level of coverage was mainly made possible by Polish media’s access to the refugees in the country, and because of the unprecedented number of Polish correspondents present in Ukraine during the conflict, with all big media outlets having journalists in either in Kyiv, Lviv at the Polish-Ukrainian border, or on the frontline.

From the very beginning of the invasion and following the refugee crisis, some of the biggest media organisations in Poland decided to publish key content, not only in Polish, but also in Ukrainian. Numerous outlets also opened, on their own platforms, free access to Ukrainian TV or radio channels.

Updates for refugees

The biggest online news portal, Onet, decided to add articles in Ukrainian to their homepage. These include important updates related to refugees, providing Ukrainians arriving in Poland with information about different aspects of their stay such as forms of support, regulations etc. In fact, they have created a special microsite, Onet Ukraine, with detailed and tailored information.

Public service Radio 1 also provides updated information in Ukrainian on their website. A section with news in Ukrainian is available through one click from their homepage. Additionally, news in Ukrainian is broadcasted three times a day – 10:06, 14:06 and 17:06.

Furthermore, Ukrainian journalists have been hired in Polish newsrooms, not only as a token of support, but also to make the coverage more reliable and accurate.

Switzerland 

Focus on audience engagement

In Switzerland, there was a focus on communication with audiences, expert analysis as well as ensuring real-time updates through tools that had been popularised during the pandemic, such as maps and infographics.

Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen

One notable service is the ‘News Plus’ podcast, produced by Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) – the German-speaking unit of the Swiss public service media SRG SSR. What makes this podcast unique is its connection with its audience, in particular with the public broadcaster’s online community.

This strong focus on audience engagement is demonstrated by the communication channels between the editors and the audience, which include emails and WhatsApp messages; as well as the choice of complex and sensitive topics such as “Russian women, discrimination and propaganda”, “Why humanitarian corridors are so difficult to establish”, “The social media war from a Ukrainian perspective”, and “The role of the cyber-war in Ukraine”.

Furthermore, the podcast takes time to explain the issues, using a range of perspectives from journalists, correspondents from the frontline, academics, as well as witnesses of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, Russia, and Switzerland.

Radio Télévision Suisse

Some newsrooms have used existing formats to host special editions. For example, all the television programs of Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) – the Swiss public service radio and television –  are collaborating on a show dedicated to the war in Ukraine. In preparation for this program, RTS used its social networks to collect questions from the public, especially relating to humanitarian aid.

The RTS daily radio program Forum has used a similar approach. This platform, which focuses on news and debate, has devoted one of its evenings to a dialogue with its audiences. According to a journalist from Forum, the special edition was in response to numerous enquiries from their audience about the war in Ukraine.

Heidi.news

Another noteworthy outlet is Heidi.news, which has launched a ‘special week of experts‘ program, designed to provide a break from the common minute-by-minute, uninterrupted flow of information since the beginning of this crisis. In their own words, with this special series, Heidi.news aims to “broaden horizons, to question different fields…. Because in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as in front of a war that could become uncontrolled, the world… needs its scientists and intellectuals”.

24 heures and Tribune de Genève

Generally, many newsrooms revived the use of tools and features which had already begun to take on more and more importance during the Covid-19 crisis. A good example of this is 24 heures’ and Tribune de Genève’s use of maps, infographics, and data visualisation. This is illustrated in the article, In this summary of the first two weeks of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, which reports the latest movements of the Russian army, the material support of the European countries, and the sanctions that have been taken against Russia.

Snapshot by the EJO Network

Project coordinator and author:
Ines Drefs, Erich-Brost-Institut, Dortmund, EJO Germany

Editor:
Natricia Duncan, City University of London, EJO United Kingdom

Authors:

Olivia Samnick, EJO Fellow, EJO United Kingdom

Colin Porlezza, Università della Svizzera italiana, EJO Switzerland (Italian)

Philip Di Salvo, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), EJO Switzerland (Italian)

Sandra Lábová, Charles University, Prague, EJO Czech Republic

Michał Kuś and Adam Szynol, University of Wrocław, EJO Poland

Cécile Détraz, Université de Neuchâtel, EJO Switzerland (French)

Līga Ozoliņa and Ainārs Dimants, Riga Stradiņš University, EJO Latvia

Images: Shutterstock and photos of European press supplied by EJO editors.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies, or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

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The outsized role played by tech giants on the global media scene was thrown into sharp relief in February when Facebook shut down news access to its platform in Australia, plunging the digital scene into chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s organisation flexed its muscles in opposition to the draft News Media Bargaining Code unveiled by the Canberra government, designed to force tech companies to pay for news disseminated through their platforms.

The impact of Silicon Valley’s technology companies’ influence 0n the media has profound implications, not just for media sustainability but also for democracy. While journalists continue to face direct threats in many parts of the world, in the digital age, journalism and media organisations also face softer forms of control that can lead to self-censorship. This has been described as a form of “media capture” – which refers to how autocrats and corporations insidiously promote their interests by shaping the media landscape and undermining journalism independence.

A comprehensive overview of media capture today and how it undermines the Fourth Estate’s ability to fulfill its mission as democracy’s watchdog can be found in Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News – published in June by Columbia University Press. It’s the third volume I’ve edited on this topic and focuses not just on the issues created by the power of big tech but also on some solutions to these challenges.

Big tech influence

From the slow decline of local news to the misinformation peddled by tabloids in the UK and television channels like Fox News in the US to the role played by foundations and philanthropists – both positive and negative – the book paints a broad picture of an underfunded and vulnerable media landscape. We include chapters on the dire situation of press freedom and government influence in Turkey and India; and an in-depth look at how the Evening Standard sold favourable news coverage to Uber and Google.

In another chapter, Andrea Gabor writes about how big philanthropies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation have funded online journalism sites and news articles about education. Many of these efforts had an agenda: promoting charter schools and undermining teachers’ unions and public education.

Rana Foroohar, Noam Cohen, and Emily Bell all talk about the threat that big tech poses for independent journalism. As explained in our new book on media capture, news dissemination is only part of the way tech giants influence the media sphere. These companies often own the digital infrastructure that underpins the flow of information. Their influence also extends to funding journalism initiatives and events in ways that can support media diversity but may also serve their interests.

Opportunities and solutions

But despite this gloomy picture, our publication also highlights the greater diversity of the media scene in the digital age and offers ideas on how to sustain independent media.

In Australia, the government ended up amending the law to suit Facebook and end the standoff. The revised legislation came into force in March. Google was also opposed to the Code, but it chose a less confrontational approach, opting to negotiate with major media companies in Australia, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Google also signed revenue-sharing deals with news outlets in France and is expanding their ‘Showcase’ licensing arrangements – purportedly with many strings attached, raising more feats of capture.

So, is Australia’s new law forcing digital platforms to pay for the news they distribute a model for other countries to follow? Can it provide much-needed revenues to struggling media outlets in search of new business models? Critics of the News Media Bargaining Code say it benefits large news organisations like Murdoch’s News Corp but does not offer enough support to smaller media outlets. Conversations with competition ministers from around the world suggest that countries will pursue different measures – with the UK’s Digital Markets Unit planning codes of conduct and Europe emphasising the European Copyright Directive.

While far from perfect, Australia’s new law is an important step toward redressing the growing power imbalance between Silicon Valley and media organisations. But it’s clear that much more will need to be done. In our book, we include a section of possible solutions, with Mark Nelson from the Center of International Media Assistance calling for media development and freedom of expression groups to get involved in designing regulations and government policies.

We also feature Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s Drew Sullivan, who outlines a plan to create a trust fund to support investigative journalism. And after surveying the financial wreckage that is local (and most other) commercial journalism, Dean Starkman, a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, proposes a solution from the unlikeliest of places – Hungary. Here, a tax law passed in the liberal, hopeful ’90s is helping to keep independent journalism alive under an increasingly authoritarian regime.

The financial problems facing journalism and the political pressures have contributed to media capture in many parts of the world, but there is also creative thinking about possible solutions.

Thanks to Nicole Pope and Chloe Oldham for their assistance with this piece.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

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Like virtually every other industry, the coronavirus pandemic caught the media by surprise. As publishers, editors, reporters and freelancers stepped off the dizzying roller-coaster ride of 2020, European Journalism Observatory editors examined the economic impact of the pandemic on journalism in their country.

Here is our analysis, which includes interviews with leading academics and experts.

• Britain
• Georgia
• Germany
• Italy
• Latvia
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Ukraine

Britain

It’s a no-brainer – a free newspaper that could effortlessly integrate into the buzzing after-work routine around London’s 270 tube stations. With a gift of a ready-made audience – the well-over a billion passengers passing through the UK’s capital every year – the Evening Standard model is naturally appealing to advertisers. But in 2019, the title reported a pre-tax loss of £13.6m, according to the Financial Times. And as we ended a year of covid-19 upheaval, it became one of the starkest examples of the economic turmoil that is engulfing the UK’s news media.

In August, an Evening Standard spokesperson explained that difficult market conditions, further accentuated by Covid-19, were primarily responsible for the outlet’s steep decline in circulation and the forecasted 40% cut to newsroom staff. But added that their changes also reflect the Standard’s response to the evolving behaviours and demands of their audiences.

Like every other outlet in the UK, the paper has been pursuing digital solutions. However, despite reports from audience measurement outfit Pamco of a 35% rise in digital daily readership across news brands, trade paper Press Gazette revealed deep cutbacks in the UK media and a collapse in the advertising market.

By April, the Gazette’s investigation had found that the US and UK’s largest listed news businesses had lost more than £15bn from their market capitalisations since the start of the global pandemic.

Later in August, under a headline warning of an impending cull of more than 2000 jobs across UK titles, it revealed that the press had been hardest hit as it struggles to cope with declining print readership, mobile and online trends and tech giants dominating the digital ad market.

The grim breakdown of job cuts featured leading media outlets and conglomerates such as the Guardian; DMG media, which includes titles such as the Daily Mail and Metro; and Reach, the UK’s largest newspaper publisher with Daily Mirror and the Daily Express in its portfolio. Together, they are expecting to cut at least 800 jobs. The country’s public broadcaster, BBC, has also been affected, with an anticipated 450 job losses in BBC regions and 520 in BBC News.

There have been calls for state intervention to boost the earlier pledged £35m of government advertising money and for the media to rethink its business model, perhaps focusing on reader-revenue models.

However, speaking to EJO, renowned investigative journalist and head of journalism at City University, London, Paul Lashmar warns against lumping together all parts of the media sector: “We like to generalise but there are lots of different media organisations conducting themselves in quite different ways, in any given moment. Lots of people are trying to revise business models, and they have been trying for 20 years to find a model that works – with varying degrees of success.

“COVID is a real blindside. It’s taken everybody by surprise and has had a serious impact on practices and budgets. But the fact remains that people need quality news and high-quality journalism more than ever. I think that the ‘Trump factor’ is still in play, that there is an appetite for reliable, accurate, fact-checked information and people are willing to pay for quality content. Whether this will save the print industry is not yet clear, but I hope so.”

These complexities and contradictions in the analysis of the UK’s media economic state are evident in the Press Gazette’s November list of news companies which are now more valuable than they were before the coronavirus crisis began. It includes ITV, which added 37% to its market value, Daily Mail and General Trust, which added 3%, and Reach, which grew by a whopping 63%.

Some media actors have pointed out, that, though economic effects are inevitable, it will be a while before we can truly measure the impact of Covid-19 on the news sector.

As a vaccine is rolled out and the UK exits the European Union, we will have to wait to see how the emerging picture takes shape.

Georgia

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has plunged Georgia into a deep economic crisis. Georgian companies have reduced their advertising, which has had a big knock-on impact on the media.

For example, before the outbreak of the pandemic, television advertising revenues were growing, but then fell by four percent in March, according to a report by the independent Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC). Nevertheless, overall advertising revenues rose by seven percent in the first quarter.

However, by the second quarter of 2020 television advertising revenues had fallen by almost 40 percent. In the third quarter of 2020 they increased by 24 percent compared to the same period last year. According to Transparency International Georgia’s media program manager, Mamuka Andguladze, revenues from political advertising for the parliamentary elections on 31 October were able to compensate, to some extent, for the losses due to the coronavirus crisis.

Looking forward, enormous losses are also expected to hit other media sectors, such as the press. These were not very noticeable in 2020, as most of the advertising clients have annual contracts, the majority of which have been adhered to, explained business journalist Maia Demetrashvili.

In terms of government support, there is no anticipated financial aid for the independent media. Of course, election advertisements only served political purposes, says head of a media agency Theimuraz Tchumburidze. The government has mobilised about one billion euros to save the Georgian economy. However, Tchumburidze points out that independent media have not been supported, neither with financial aids nor in the form of tax reductions.

It is worth noting that the Georgian government is very critical of independent media. In spring, a law was drafted to stop “fake news” and restrict news dissemination about the corona pandemic to government sources. However, the bill was criticised as an encroachment on press freedom and was softened.

Mariam Gogosashvili, executive director of the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, which is committed to the implementation and protection of journalistic norms and professional standards in the media, also criticised the lack of state financial support for the media.

Furthermore, Tchumburidze highlights the need for more support for media from the European Union. He points out that, “due to its bureaucracy and lack of transparency, the EU is not perceived here as a supporter of the media”.

Tchumburidze, Gogosashvili and Demetrashvili say that it is the US embassy, American foundations, and other NGOs that have been assisting journalists. Some of them, for example, have developed guidelines for dealing with and reporting on Covid-19 for the Georgian media and have conducted campaigns to raise awareness among journalists and the public.

Demetrashvili adds that, during the pandemic, pre-existing beneficial services such as English courses for journalists were continued digitally.

Germany

With huge slumps in advertising income, short time work and significantly fewer jobs for freelance journalists, the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic is hitting the German media industry hard.

According to the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV), in April 2020 almost all publishers recorded a drop in advertising revenue of more than 20 percent and in some cases as high as 40 percent. Increase in short-term work affected editorial offices across the country, including national titles such as Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Both decreased their amount of pages in the spring as the Covid-19 crisis reduced the events that departments such as sports and culture can cover.

In fact, the events segment is currently almost non-existent. Tina Groll, chairwoman of the German Union of Journalists, and editor at Zeit Online, describes this as “fatal”, since in the last few years the organisation and moderation of events became a second or third mainstay for many outlets.

Media companies which were “not innovative enough to develop viable business models” are now paying the price, says Groll. On one hand, people’s need for quality journalism has “increased enormously”. On the other hand, short-time work is becoming more common in many newsrooms. A fact, which Groll branded “absurd”.

“There is only one solution, media houses need to become more independent of advertising,” says Christopher Buschow, Junior Professor for Organisation and Networked Media at the Bauhaus University Weimar. He adds that local newspapers, in particular, should see themselves more as “companions and supporters of the people in the local area”. Accordingly, they should “address more users with tailored offers and then turn them into paying users”.

Although Buschow believes that local media have managed to become “an important anchor point and service provider” during the coronavirus crisis, he stressed that this understanding must be “anchored even more deeply” within media companies and should inspire a greater awareness of their customers’ needs.

Another important aspect of the economic impact of the pandemic is the particularly adverse effect on freelance journalists, who have had many of their commissions cancelled. “From an economic point of view, it is devastating that many freelance journalists do not benefit from the corona emergency aid programmes. Improvements are currently being made – but these come much too late,” says Groll.

There are government grants for self-employed individuals, but so far these have only been paid for ongoing business expenses and not for loss of income. Baden-Wuerttemberg is the only federal state offering self-employed individuals financial support for their private lives. However, the issue is being discussed in the federal state of Bavaria.

Both Groll and Buschow view the coronavirus crisis also as an opportunity for media outlets. “In some media houses digitalisation is now advancing very fast,” Groll points out. Many newsrooms have successfully tried out podcasts and live blogs, and some publishers are now positioning their contents “more self-confidently” online.

According to Buschow, the important question is how to support existing actors who still play a role, but at the same time initiate innovations? He adds that financial support for start-ups and appropriate framework conditions would definitely be needed in order to create new ideas, concepts and formats in the German media industry.

The public sector could also play a role, says Buschow. However, the media scientist is sceptical about the German government’s plan to support newspaper and magazine publishers with 220 million euros in the coming years to manage their “digital transition”. At the end of October, it was announced that the amount of subsidies should be linked to the number of copies – so more money for higher circulations. For Buschow, this would be a “wasted opportunity” as it rewards publishers who are already doing well.

Italy

The pandemic hit the Italian media market hard, especially in regards to advertisement income. Data provided by Osservatorio Stampa FCP revealed an overall 26.6 percent decrease in print advertising in 2020, as well as a 19.8 percent drop for dailies, and a 40.3 percent for magazines. However, digital platforms registered less severe losses and, according to IAB Italia research, will close the year with only a four to eight percent reduction in income.

But the pandemic impacted on an already weak market, haunted by long-lasting systemic problems and sharp decreases in circulation, especially for the dailies which, in the past six years, witnessed an “extraordinary decline”. The pandemic also caused many newsstands to go out of business. According to estimates released by the Italian union of newsagents Sindacato nazionale autonomo giornalai (Snag), 1,410 newsstands closed down in the first half of 2020.

To help the sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Italian government has approved a series of support measures, including tax credits on advertisement investments and help with the cost of paper. In November 2020, it also created a dedicated 50 millions euros fund to support local radio and tv broadcasters. Furthermore, a 500 euros bonus was introduced for newsstands.

However, inevitably, the difficult economical indicators resulting from the pandemic jeopardized work safety and employment conditions for journalists. According to Raffaele Lorusso, General Secretary of Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana (FNSI), the largest Italian journalists union, “numerous Italian publishing companies used the Covid-19 ‘cassa integrazione’, a “short-term work” furlough scheme, funded by the government until the end of 2020. As of December 2020, there are 990 furloughed journalists out of a working force of 15’000.” The government has extended a block on layoffs until March 2021.

When it comes to journalism freelancers, they were given access to the same bonuses created for all Italian self-employed workers. “Freelance journalists were granted a 600 euros one-off bonus in March and April”, says Debora Malaponti, an activist for ACTA Media,which represents freelancers. “The May one-off 1000 euros bonus, that followed, was introduced with some specific criteria that left some freelancers behind,” adds Malaponti.

However, it is clear that both freelancers and stafff in media companies in Italy are facing extremely precarious working conditions and low wages. In fact, a survey coordinated by ACTA and Slow News revealed that 68 percent of Italian freelancers make less than 10,000 euros annually.

While the emergency measures put in place by the government were welcomed, they’re clearly only a limited response to the structural challenges and constraints of the Italian journalistic market.

“These governmental measures have been a breath of fresh air both for companies and workers”, says Lorusso commenting on the Italian response to the pandemic. Yet, in his view, it is clear that more needs to be done.

He adds: “The crisis of the industry began before Covid-19 and the sector is now in full transformation. We need public support to enable companies to pursue digital innovations, encourage the public to read and modernize the sales network.

“Moreover, structural intervention is needed to fight precariat and support stable employment. A step change is required from the government in order to combat the many inequalities in the job market that are now jeopardizing the future of generations of journalists and quality of information.”

This appears to be even more urgent when it comes to freelancers, who are more directly and severely affected by existing systemic problems worsened by the pandemic.

“Given the extreme conditions freelancers are subjected to from well before the pandemic, we believe that structural interventions are needed, instead of emergency measures”, says Malaponti. She adds: “This includes fair pay for jobs and contributions that consider risks involved in being self-employed. We, as ActaMedia, urge colleagues to refuse poorly paid jobs and to be wary of commissioners who unilaterally impose cuts to payments because of Covid-19.”

Latvia

At the beginning of 2020, Latvian media firms faced serious losses. Throughout the year they were forced to balance state support measures and the sharp decline in advertising revenue.

The Latvian Association of Journalists branded the closure of the oldest news service and second largest commercial television channel LNT as the worst media event in the last decade. Some of LNT’s staff were able to switch to TV3, but many lost their jobs. Furthermore, one of the three daily newspapers, the Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (Independent Morning Newspaper), announced that it was moving all its content to digital platforms. Several local and regional outlets were also forced to reduce the frequency of their publication.

When advertising partners started to withdraw their orders in early 2020, some media companies reacted with cuts to aspects of journalists’ jobs, a refusal to engage freelance journalists and the reduction of staff salaries by 20 to 30 percent.
Currently the media and the Latvian government have only been able to respond reactively to the actual problems, according to Arta Ģiga, Chair of the Board of the Latvian Journalists’ Association.

“The economic existence of the media is seriously threatened during the crisis, and this is clear to everyone. But there are no serious, sustainable decisions that can prevent this process. Equally important is the decline in media quality and editorial independence that comes as a result of growing barriers in access to information for media professionals. The media agenda is set by the government and the media do not oppose it. This is a very dangerous trend,” says Ģiga.

At the onset of the Covid-19 crisis the Latvian Media Support Fund provided assistance for content creation, coverage of broadcasting expenses and postal delivery costs. Under the governmental ‘Support for the media to mitigate the negative effects of the Covid-19 crisis’ program, the Media Support Foundation distributed more than a million euro.

Euro 522,415 was allocated to national print and online news media; €223,737 was used for the monthly delivery costs of subscribed press publications; €217,699 for the monthly broadcasting costs of electronic media programs during an emergency; and €220,000 was given to support regional print media and internet news portals, as well as the Latvia’s diaspora media. Additionally, the National Electronic Mass Media Council managed €700,000 euro allocated for public and commercial electronic media.

This support was very important for local and regional media, whose already declining advertising investment was severely impacted by the pandemic.

According to the information provided by the Chairman of the Board of the Latvian Advertising Association, Baiba Liepiņa, for the first six months of 2020, the total advertising market volume was 30.395 million Euros. Compared to the same period last year, the decline in the market exceeds 10 million Euros, which is almost a 25 percent drop. In the first half of 2020, market share increased by more than two percent for online advertising and by one percent for television advertising.

Advertising revenues of TV and radio companies will decrease by 20 – 30 percent this year, which means that the losses will be from eight to 12 million euros, forecasted Andris Ķēniņš, head of the Latvian Broadcasting Association.
Currently, Latvian media professionals’ associations are lobbying the government to, at least, maintain funding levels from the Media Support Fund in next year’s budget.

Poland

Undoubtedly, hardly any media company in Poland remained unscathed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown measures imposed by the government in spring 2020 halted many areas of economic activity, leading to lower levels of marketing and advertising spending, says Tadeusz Kowalski, professor of media economics from University of Warsaw.

Consequently, most of the media outlets saw a shortage of advertising revenue. For the first time in history, even online advertisements experienced decline, with a 4.5 percent drop in the first 6 months of 2020. Publishers of regional dailies claim that revenues plummeted by 80 percent in the second quarter of 2020. By September 2020, the advertising market had fallen by 12 percent.

Media entities, such as the conservative media group Fratria, resorted to seeking support from their users through donations and online subscriptions.

Andrzej Krajewski, an experienced journalist and a member of trade union Towarzystwo Dziennikarskie, points to examples such as Agora, the owner of the broadsheet ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, and ZPR Media, the publisher of the tabloid ‘Super Express’, where there was a 20 percent, six-month wage cut for all the staff. Gazeta Wyborcza also laid off about 10 percent of its staff. Online, staff at the subscription-funded HaloRadio were affected by even deeper cuts, with 25 percent knocked off the hourly fee for editors. Interestingly, employees-owned opinion weekly ‘Polityka’ did not resort to wage cuts.

In public media, national television (TV Poland) and radio (Polish Radio) were heavily subsidized with €500m from government’s 2020 budget. There were no wage cut-offs or pink slips, but the advertising income for the Polish Radio fell by 20 percent, and for their second most popular programme, PR3, by 25 percent.

Some foreign companies on the Polish market also reduced the number of employees and wages. For example, Burda Media Poland dismissed one fifth of their employees (50 people), while Edipresse in April laid off 31 people and reduced wages by 20 percent for 6 to 8 months.

According to Krajewski some media companies took advantage of the epidemic, using it to launch and justify unnecessary wage cuts and even lay-offs; and to apply for government concessions.

Looking at the large-scale impact on media companies, while we haven’t found examples of outlets which have had to close purely as a result of the pandemic, many of them limited the scope and scale of their activities. What has already happened was closure of several printed magazines, specialising in travel and hobbies. Additionally, one of the opinion weekly, ‘Wprost’, stopped issuing its print edition and went online only. However, this title was already weak before the outbreak and, according to media observers, the pandemic just accelerated the decision to go digital.

The fact is that most of the newspapers encountered a dramatic decrease in sales. For example, local weeklies saw a 40 percent drop in sales in March. Local media publishers, interviewed by the specialist magazine Press, predict that Poland may become a ‘local media desert’.

In terms of public aid, Kowalski notes that though there was no specific public subsidy policy focused on media companies as such, firms were able to benefit from general public policies designed to fight the negative effects of Covid-19. For example, media companies and freelancers could apply for public aid through mechanisms such as social security fees exemptions and loans.

Local media outlets were also able to benefit from additional institutional advertising from the government and governmental institutions. On the list of the beneficiaries of the first edition of the anti-covid governmental shield are a dozen or so medium and big publishers. They had to fulfil some criteria, the most important of which was a promise to maintain their numbers of employees until the end of the year. They could also apply for loans with partial repayment terms.

Gremi Media, which publishes the second biggest broadsheet ‘Rzeczpospolita’, received the largest pay out of 3,5 mil zł. Polityka received 1,5 mil zł and Wprost, 1,38 mil zł. On the other hand, RASP, which publishes ‘Fakt’, ‘Newsweek’ and ‘Onet’; and regional dallies Edipresse, Bonnier and Polska Press did not receive government support.

Portugal

The coronavirus pandemic has created what may well be considered the perfect storm for the Portuguese media landscape. After years of revenue loss due to the rising influence of search and social platforms, industry analysts predict that the pandemic might trigger ad revenue losses of 40% to 50% in 2020. As Sofia Branco, the President of the Portuguese Journalists Union put it: “In addition to bringing new problems, the pandemic highlighted some of the problems that already existed.”

Since March, OberCom Observatório da Comunicação has been tracking the financial impact of the pandemic on the Portuguese media ecosystem. The main conclusion is that, except for radio, media, in general, suffered a spike in audiences between March and April, due to what can be characterized as “information-thirst”, during lockdown.

March and April were very difficult for radio. The average 20 minutes a Portuguese spends in a private vehicle are very important to guarantee a steady flow of ad revenue for this medium. Of course, lockdown meant no commuting by either public or private transportation, the latter being radio’s most profitable listening context.

But if we take a look at TV, we can clearly see the mentioned spike in March and April. However, viewership then stabilised to regular levels due to the normalisation of the pandemic, and to what some experts refer to as ‘info-saturation’. In March and April this quest for information may have been a desirable scenario for advertisers. However, as this declined in the following period, so did ad investment.

In the first semester of 2020, the press’ paid circulation fell by 19 percent compared to the same period in 2019. Even though digital paid circulation rose by 50.2 percent, the relative financial value of each digital unit is much lower than the printed one, with the Portuguese market being excessively traditional and outlets still relying on both sales and print ad revenue.

As has been highlighted year after year in the Reuters Digital News Report on the Portuguese media, one of the biggest vulnerabilities of the country’s press sector is the lack of consolidated digital business models. Brands are still trying to figure out how to monetise digital news when only 10% of the population paid for digital information in the previous year.

Only Público, which has a daily print and digital subscription, and Expresso – daily digital and weekly print, subscription and buy-print-get-digital formats, have managed to demonstrate notable growth. Público grew an astonishing 101.9% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to first quarter of 2019, while Expresso grew by 48.6%.

So, the pandemic, specifically the State of the Emergency declaration and subsequent lockdown, had a very significant impact on journalism. A recent nationwide study revealed a grim picture, as 799 journalists, a significant percentage of the country’s media staff, were either laid off or forced to take a salary cut. The study points out that there is an equally significant rise in precariousness, not only for young journalists but also for older professionals with more experience and much more stable contracts.

This rise in uncertainty hasn’t even spared professionals in leadership roles. The authors mention that, of the 11.8 percent of journalists whose job security was directly affected, 17 percent lost their jobs, and 11.1 percent were placed on a layoff scheme. Many professionals lost their freelance and collaborative jobs.

Sofia Branco, president of the Journalists’ Union, points out the particular precarious situation facing freelancers. She says: “In March, most of the freelance journalists stopped working, they were among the first to lose their jobs because they had no ties to the media companies they worked for.”

In April / May 2020, the Portuguese government established a financial support fund for news media totalling €15 million, €11.25 million of which was allocated to outlets with national reach and €3.75 million to local press. This fund is not a subsidy but rather an anticipated purchase of institutional advertising space to compensate for the loss of ad revenue during March and April 2020.

There was some controversy surrounding, not only the measure itself, but also the way the money distribution was calculated. According to Branco, “the institutional advertising advance measure was a good measure, but it was poorly communicated and poorly implemented”. She emphasises that not having specific allocations for the media sector in the state budget is worrying.

With the government’s lack of focus on the media ecosystem, there were some entities like Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, which launched several financing lines to produce journalistic and information products about the pandemic.

Spain

Our examination of the impact of the pandemic in Spain on media reveals deep declines in advertising revenues from March to August 2020: 32 percent in the case of newspapers, radio – 26.2 percent, television – 25.3 percent and internet – 7.8 percent, according to the TREND SCORE report. This year the average fall in investment in communication is expected to be around 21 percent.

Furthermore, hundreds of professionals in major media groups have been affected by temporary layoffs under the Temporary Employment Regulations – referred to in Spain as Expediente de Regulación Temporal de Empleo (ERTE). Measures include suspending work for a specific time and reducing work hours.

Twelve hundred employees from Mediapro were affected. The group, which has important rights in football competitions and manages several audio-visual companies, including Overon, and production companies, such as Globomedia, has the highest rate of staff on ERTE.

“It is a great paradox that media are experiencing an increase in their audiences and at the same time, they face an advertising crisis, which puts at risk this public service, but also thousands of jobs,” says David Álvarez, media expert and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Álvarez points out that that the Vocento Group, for example, is proposing a 40 percent reduction in corporate staff’s working hours. The Joly Group is also planning ERTE reductions in its nine headlines: Diario de Cádiz, Diario de Sevilla, Diario de Almería, Diario de Jerez, Málaga Today, Granada Today, Diario of Córdoba, Huelva Information and Southern Europe. According to Álvarez, this “is only a preview of the crisis that is looming in the sector and that is linked to other crises affecting the media in recent years”.

Recently Infolibre published an article, which claimed that the media lost almost two billion euros of their value on the stock market due to the pandemic. The market capitalization of Prisa Group fell by 71.6 percent, while Mediaset’s was halved. Furthermore, Atresmedia’s share has depreciated by 22 percent since March and Vocento’s by 40 percent.

“There has been no government leadership in providing direct aid to the press, which is essential to fight against misinformation and hoaxes, especially in times of pandemic”, says Victoria Pérez, president of the Platform for the Defence of Freedom of Information. She adds that newspapers such as Público were fighting for VAT reduction on subscriptions, noting “this measure was not enough”.

Álvarez points out: “We did not receive financial aid, rather shareholders assumed the economic losses to avoid problems. The EU is mandated to protect societies, citizens and freedoms against hybrid threats, in particular against disinformation and false information” as outlined in their Strategic Agenda for 2019-2024. But Pérez stresses that media have not received any help from the European Union and there has been no structured plan.

Last year, El Diario announced that its local edition in Castilla y La Mancha would receive assistance from the European Journalism Centre. This is a small amount, 25,000 euros, but it will help the newspaper to continue with the regional coverage of the pandemic. Furthermore, the European Journalism COVID-19 Support Fund distributes aid in support of local and community journalism across Europe, an initiative of vital importance for the sector.

Ukraine

The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably influenced the economic situation of the Ukrainian media. This is particularly true for the outlets, which, unlike those owned by oligarchs, have been trying to achieve independence and find their own working and sustainable business model.

Specifically, the pandemic has exposed the Ukrainian media landscape to considerable shortages of advertising revenues, job losses and even the closure of a number of news outlets – with local media being hardest hit. The government hasn’t responded with funding assistance, so Ukrainian news organisations have been seeking the support of international donors and trying to establish new ways for gaining income, for example through audience financing.

At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in spring 2020, a number of Ukrainian media stopped or paused some of their projects, shortened their cooperation with freelancers or cut the salaries of journalists. Amongst others, the Redaktsia media project was shut down in Odesa Oblast, and the online Hromadske TV Cherkasy put its website “on pause“.

While the nationwide online media claimed a drop in advertising revenue of up to 50 percent, the local media suffered a decrease of up to 70-90 percent. Local outlets no doubt are bearing the brunt of Covid-19 impacts with limited options for funding outside of advertising.

According to Andrii Ianitskyi, Head of the Centre for Excellence in Economic Journalism at Kyiv School of Economics, the crisis forced the Ukrainian media to find new income streams. Before the pandemic, outlets mostly counted on advertising revenues and money from investors or oligarchs, with some rather exceptional cases where they depended on grants from international donors.

“Amidst crisis, the independent media shifted to getting money from the readers. Some of them launched a paywall, some asked for donations, some set up the membership models,” Ianitskyi explains.

As international donors tried to reassign their funding due to the coronavirus crisis and to support the media as a whole, those news organisations that used to depend exclusively on donors before COVID-19 crisis were forced to look for new sources of income, such as crowdfunding.

The outlets relying on oligarchs and investors were also affected by changes and reductions, as the owners tried to lessen their expenditures.

However, as Ianitskyi points out, currently the situation is turning around. “As I see it, the grants have come back. Little by little, the advertisers are getting back. But it is clear that the old model that used none but advertisement and owners’ money, despite having worked up to 2019, won’t work anymore. Now media outlets are looking for new, more diversified, business models,” he says.

Project coordinator:

Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer, Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, TU Dortmund, EJO Germany

Contributors:

Johanna Mack and Roman Winkelhahn, Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, TU Dortmund, EJO Germany

Leli Bibilashvili, Natia Kaladze and Salome Tsartsidze, The University of Georgia (Tbilisi), Georgia

Halyna Budivska, Kyiv Mohyla School of Journalism, EJO Ukraine

Álex Costa Escuredo and Dimitrina J. Semova, Complutense University of Madrid, EJO Spain

Philip Di Salvo, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, EJO Italy

Natricia Duncan, City, University of London, EJO England

Michal Kuś and Adam Szynol, University of Wrocław, EJO Poland

Ana Pinto-Martinho and Miguel Paisana, University Institute of Lisbon, EJO Portugal

Anda Rožukalne, Riga Stradiņš University, Latvia

A version of this article was first published on the EJO Germany website.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO or the organisations with which they are affiliated.

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The post The economic impact of Covid-19 on European media in 2020 appeared first on European Journalism Observatory - EJO.

To what extent is media pluralism – described in the latest Media Pluralism Monitor report (MPM2020) as “one of the essential pillars of democracy” – crumbling throughout Europe? Roman Winkelhahn summarises the conclusions reached by a team of researchers at the European University Institute.

In Turkey and several Eastern European countries, the media are under particular threat of political interference.

MPM2020 covers the years 2018 and 2019 and assesses the state of media pluralism in Albania and Turkey as well as in the member states of the European Union (which then still included the UK). None of the 30 countries covered can be said to have emerged from the study with a completely unblemished record. An ideal degree of media pluralism still seems likely to remain unattainable in most countries for as long as the media industry continues to be vulnerable to commercial and political pressures, especially in view of the additional risks posed by the digital transformation of the industry.

The research team, based at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) at the Robert Schuman Center at the European University Institute in Florence, measured media pluralism under four main headings: basic protection (which includes regulatory mechanisms, the status of journalists and access to the Internet) plus market plurality, political independence and social inclusiveness.

Economic vulnerability

In general, the area of ​​market plurality is the one in which the researchers identified the greatest threat to media pluralism in Europe. They gave this a risk score of 64%, which they note is “considerably higher” than the corresponding score given in the Media Pluralism Monitor report for 2017 (MPM2017), when the risk was deemed to be 53%. They attribute the increase to ever higher levels of news media concentration, less transparency with regard to ownership and reduced economic sustainability. None of the 30 countries surveyed was found to be low risk (scoring less than 33%) in the “market plurality” category, and the research team sees this as being indicative of the increasing economic vulnerability of the media.

In 28 countries (all but Albania and Estonia), women tend to be under-represented in news and current affairs broadcasting, or are largely depicted in a stereotyped way. In all countries, the majority of the experts invited to appear on political programmes are men.

Horizontal media concentration

Only four countries (France, Germany, Greece and Turkey) show a medium risk in the context of horizontal media concentration (i.e. the concentration of media ownership within a given sector – press, audio-visual, etc.). The media markets of all the other countries surveyed are highly susceptible to this phenomenon. The risk is especially pronounced in the audiovisual sector, where there are not enough media outlets operating to guarantee market pluralism. In the online sector, there is inadequate competition between online platforms in at least 23 countries, and market concentration was identified as a risk factor in all 30 countries surveyed.

This trend goes hand in hand with the often-invoked existential threat faced by newspapers and local media. In a section devoted to “Media viability”, the researchers note that these two sectors are particularly at risk. For newspapers, the Europe-wide risk score is 80%, while for local media it is 76%. MPM2020 emphasises the vital contribution made by local media to the democratic process, which historically have played an important role in “informing small communities, fostering their democratic participation, and monitoring the local powers.”

Political influence and editorial autonomy

The report writers note that the media in Eastern European countries and Turkey in particular are hampered by the constant threat of political interference and attempts by politicians to dictate the news agenda. The ability of journalists to exercise editorial independence is circumscribed by the fact that in these countries politicians are able to influence the appointments of editorial and publishing directors, and also because in many countries the legal structure does not allow for effective self-regulation.

One risk that is apparent in all the countries surveyed arises from the lack of regulation in the field of political advertising, especially in the online sector. Here the risk score is 65%. Even countries such as Germany and Denmark, which do well in many other areas, perform badly in this respect. This is mainly due to a lack of transparency and the difficulty of monitoring financial transactions between political actors and online providers.

Digital context heightens risk

Operating in a digital context clearly accentuates the risk level in all areas except one. “With the exception of the Market Plurality area, the risk scores of the digital component of each area are, in general and on average, higher than the overall score in that area,” the report says. This is mainly due to the lack of control and transparency when it comes to online platforms, and the unsatisfactory way in people – especially minorities – are dealt with on the Internet. In particular, MPM2020 highlights the inadequate handling of the issue of hate speech against vulnerable social groups online.

Action points

In addition to calling for governments to “proactively protect” freedom of expression, the report authors call for uniform standards to be applied across Europe in the area of ​​media self-regulation. They also call for the European Union to take the lead in safeguarding media independence.

The study also recommends that regulatory incentives be applied to ​​media markets to help ensure the survival of smaller media. However, it points out that care needs to be taken when implementing such measures, to avoid the possibility of governments exerting undue influence.

A kind of digital service tax (DST) could also be used to foster media plurality: “by reducing the disparity in the fiscal burden between industries which are players in the same market; and by earmarking a part of the DST’s revenue to support media pluralism”.

As a way of addressing the lack of diversity in editorial offices and among the news media audience, the research team recommends not only a “gender equality policy” but also the active involvement of minorities and more joined-up support for community media.

The study paints a rather gloomy picture of the European media landscape. One can only hope that the next Media Pluralism Monitor will not be even gloomier, as the long-term consequences of the coronavirus crisis – both for the financial underpinning of the media and for media freedom – will by then in all likelihood be all too apparent.

The Media Pluralism Monitor 2020 is available on the website of the European University Institute.

This is a slightly abbreviated version of an article that originally appeared in German on EJO’s German-language site. It is also available in French on EJO’s French-language site.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO.

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in “Do as I say, not as I do. Media and Accountability“

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Image: MPM2020 (screenshot)

The post Media pluralism ‘increasingly under threat across Europe’ appeared first on European Journalism Observatory - EJO.

It is now five years since the conservative populist Law and Justice party (PiS) came to power in Poland, and in this time the media system has been subjected to numerous far-reaching changes. Public TV and radio have become “national media”, meaning that they are now strongly supportive of the government. Since 2015, hundreds of journalists and editors working for the public broadcasters have been dismissed and replaced by “politically approved” ones. In the wake of the recent presidential election, won by PiS nominee Andrzej Duda, the situation looks set to deteriorate still further as the government has declared it intends to take steps to reduce foreign ownership of Polish media companies. The question inevitably arises: will Polish independent media outlets end up suffering the same fate as their Hungarian counterparts?

The first serious blow to media freedom in Poland was dealt after the two 2015 elections. In May, PiS candidate Andrzej Duda won the presidential election. Five months later, the party gained control of both houses of the Polish parliament (the Sejm and the Senate). Soon after this, a number of amendments were made to the media law. As a result, several hundred employees of the public broadcasters lost their jobs overnight, with board members being the first to go. What had been a reasonably diverse media system noticeably changed. “Pluralism was eliminated from the debate in public radio and TV and they seem to be dedicated only to promoting the ‘achievements’ of the government,” in the words of Piotr Sula, a political scientist at Wrocław University.

Poland’s press freedom ranking has tumbled

Having subjugated the public media, the ruling party announced its plan to re-Polonise the private sector. PiS leaders regularly claimed that foreign companies – especially German ones – owned too high a stake in the Polish media and that this was having a harmful effect. For several months, the term “re-Polonisation” dominated the public debate, before it was dropped and replaced by a new term: de-concentration. One possible explanation for this sudden switch is that for as long as Poland is a member of the European Union (which it has been since 2004), reducing German ownership of the Polish media would be problematical to say the least. During PiS’s first term of office (2015-2019), no such act was passed, and the ruling party simply bided its time. However, during this period Poland’s ranking in RSF’s Press Freedom Index still fell from No.18 to No.59.

Having been purged of critical and respected journalists, the “national media” (Polish Radio, Polish Television, Polish Press Agency) were forced to focus on domestic news and to treat foreign news stories as if they were simply an exercise in point-scoring. Poles were encouraged to believe that they were under threat from a “rotten Europe”, “morally decayed Scandinavia”, “secularised Germans” or a “burning France, full of emigrants” – as Jędrzej Morawiecki, a media scientist and sociologist at Wrocław University, points out. In Morawiecki’s opinion, these negative images owe a lot to the Russian media’s propagandistic coverage of European affairs.

An experienced journalist working for Polish Radio – who prefers to remain anonymous because staff have been forbidden to take part in interviews – paints an alarming picture of how the news agenda is set: “Editors and reporters receive daily phone calls giving them ‘advice’. One of the most frequent sentences uttered by our managers is: You have to defend the Polish raison d’état, which in their minds means the PiS raison d’état. After months of this kind of brainwashing, most editors are afraid even to suggest stories that are critical of the government or are simply not in line with PiS propaganda”. This is why the national media dismissed as “anarchy” the protests in the United States triggered by the police killing of George Floyd – to justify the statements and actions of Donald Trump, a great ally of Poland’s leaders.

Access denied

Enemy No.1

“Dear Hungarian friends!” Poland’s leading independent daily used its front page to express support for the leading Hungarian independent website, Index, when the latter’s independence was threatened.

But for Poland’s ruling party, media enemy number one is the country’s leading independent daily, Gazeta Wyborcza. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the popular broadsheet has been engaged in an ideological battle with PiS almost from the moment when the party was founded. Gazeta Wyborcza admitted as much in 2005, when PiS came to power for the first time (then in coalition with two other parties, an arrangement that only lasted for two years). Secondly, Gazeta Wyborcza belongs to the Polish company Agora, in which 11.49% of shares are held by the New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), which receives support from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. This is why, after PiS formed a majority government for the first time in 2015, it stopped state-run companies from advertising in the daily, effectively depriving Agora of millions of euros in revenue yearly. The advertising revenue was reallocated to media outlets that had proved their loyalty to PiS and continue to support the government. The ruling party’s antipathy towards Agora is so great that when in March this year the prime minister’s office issued a statement about the closure of schools to the press, Gazeta Wyborcza was left off the list of recipients.

PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński says that re-Polonisation is now on the cards again.

The term “re-Polonisation” enjoyed an unexpected revival during this year’s presidential election campaign. After PiS lost its majority in the Senate in the 2019 parliamentary elections, it became all the more important for the party to secure the re-election of its ally Andrzej Duda to the presidency in 2020. It was clear that the campaign would be a tough one and that the ruling party would pull out all the stops to ensure that Duda received more favourable media coverage than his main rival, Rafal Trzaskowski. There is ample evidence that public media devoted overwhelmingly more airtime to Duda’s campaign and showed him in a much more positive light than Trzaskowski.

The most controversial event of the campaign was when the top-selling tabloid Fakt, owned by the Swiss-German-American company Ringier Axel Springer Polska (RASP), published a cover story about the president’s pardoning of a paedophile. The possibility that the story might damage Duda’s e-election chances proved to be the trigger for further calls for re-Polonisation. The president accused Fakt of meddling in the election, asking “Do the Germans want to choose the Polish president?”, and the deputy prime minister on his Twitter account appealed to Poles “not to subscribe the cesspit”. As soon as the election result had been announced, PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński said that re-Polonisation regulations would be introduced during the current Sejm term.

Just a catchphrase?

Analysts say that such a possibility cannot be ruled out. According to Piotr Sula, “Plans to ‘re-Polonise’ private media would mean that the mechanism of control exerted over public media would also be applied to private media. Private media that criticise the government already suffer from a lack of advertisements from state-owned companies, and private businesses might also consider it risky to be advertised by enemies of the ruling party”. It is hard to predict exactly what might happen next, but Jędrzej Morawiecki believes that “limiting foreign companies’ shares in Polish media would mean a reduced plurality of viewpoints and a hardening of the divide between state and oppositional media”.

However, some journalists interviewed for this piece were sceptical of the re-Polonisation plans, which if implemented could be used to limit the US company Discovery’s stake in the private TV station TVN. The Polish government is unlikely to want to risk falling foul of the US administration and losing the support of Donald Trump, especially at a time when it has few other prestigious allies. It is possible that the term “re-Polonisation” is just a catchphrase aimed mainly at the domestic audience and in particular at supporters of the ruling party. The message it conveys it not just about regaining media ownership from foreign companies but – even more important – about handing it over to Polish businessmen with connections to the government. And in this respect we could see a pattern emerging similar to recent developments in the Russian and Hungarian media.

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This article is also available in German and Polish.

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Images

Featured image: Photo of Polish flag by PxHere (CC0 Public Domain)

Front page of Gazeta Wyborcza reproduced with permission.

Photo of Jarosław Kaczyński by Piotr Drabik / Source: Flickr / Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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