President of the European Federation of Journalists Mogens Blicher Bjerregård during the participation in World Media Freedom Day events in Helsinki gave interview to Eurasia Diary and spoke about EFJ targets. He said that, public service media meet challenges in several European countries and is an example of a topic where we should act carefully as we in a pluralistic media landscape need strong public service, strong private media and an undergrowth of innovative newcomers. A task for EFJ could be to provide a fruitful dialogue inside the European media industry to replace the existing fight between private and public media with the real battlefield between a European pluralistic media market and the dominance from the big American players.
“I am not saying that we shall fight Google, but we must insist that they as well as European media should follow ground rules, which means respecting authors’ rights including ensuring remuneration, social dialogue and ethical code of conducts.” – said President of the European Federation of Journalists.
Self-regulation is in his view the only way to ensure press freedom as the only alternative is state regulation leading to censorship. This is unfortunately the case in too many European countries, where safety of journalists and fighting impunity are among the most important topics.
“It is appalling to see how journalists are treated in certain countries and not least the part of Europe, where we are right now. We get promises as in Macedonia but we do not see results. In Greece, the journalists covering refugees meet new obstacles. In Spain press photographers risk punishments taking photos in public area, and even in my own country Denmark the police detained a press photographer while he took photos of refugees walking on the highway.”
In some countries, which remains our biggest problem, in the midst of a very oppressive and challenging environment where we only get to hear bad news like imprisoned journalists, foreign correspondent banned from the country, media crackdown, massive laid-off, our affiliates have managed to inform us, to attract new members, to help colleagues in danger and to welcome our international observers.
It is a fact that more journalists are violated when doing their job; just take a look at the alert platform created by the Council of Europe in cooperation with 7 journalists and media organizations or the Mapping Media Platform that the EFJ and its members feed in cooperation with Index on Censorship.
This kind of platform has a significant impact because it urges the authorities to respond which brings visibility to the cases, and we can disseminate the information in a much reliable way. It also provides us a comprehensive material for our applications for new needed and demand-driven projects in Europe.
During three years, we have managed to create an independent EFJ with a sustainable budget. We have successfully employed a full time general secretary in lead of a fantastic staff including the IFJ staff dealing with European matters. It has also been extremely important to build the bridges to enhance mutual understandings regardless of cultural differences. These factors are prerequisites of the results we have achieved.
“We all want the EFJ continue to be a strong voice representing journalist organizations in Europe to make a difference in the lives of journalists. To do so, we need the continuous support and commitment by a strong European unity among all of us to strengthen this voice”- said Mr. Mogens Blicher Bjerregård .
