Questions and infographic by Triin Ilves,
Illustration by Mélody da Fonseca
The following is a transcript of an interview by Triin Ilves of the Orange Magazine with Jane Whyatt. Some of the questions have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Triin Ilves: First of all, thank you for the interview! As the conference is only a couple of weeks away, I wanted to get a little insight to it and share it with the Orange readers. This year’s conference focus is “Working Together For Independent Journalism”. Why exactly this topic?
Jane Whyatt: “Well, because that’s our raison d’être – if you like – and the whole point about the ECPMF [European Centre of Press and Media Freedom – ed.] is that we co-ordinate and co-operate with all the other press freedom campaigns across Europe. So we’re not trying to take their jobs or take their money or take their audience. The idea is to bring them together and we have some very successful partnerships built into the ECPMF – that’s our consortium partners.
We also have members and our boards represent themselves – now must count about twenty three different countries. We have members across a very wide geographical area and we try to make sure that we publicise their campaigns. We try to avoid any duplication or double work and to give the media freedom community united voice and a stronger voice for that reason.
TI: So coming back to the network that you just introduced: it seems to me that it’s almost a false belief that European or modern European journalist is free to express their voice. We may talk about dictators and autocracy where people are really restricted to write about their beliefs etc but seems that in Europe there are a lot of ways to secretly or sneakily silence the voice of an average journalist..
JW: Yes, that’s true. Not only secretly, there are a lot of actual abuses. You know there are journalists in prison, not only in Turkey, also in Macedonia, in Montenegro. There are journalists who are threatened on a daily basis sometimes, particularly in the Eastern neighbourhood, but also we have new members in Spain and, two of them – whistleblowers – are being intimidated.
I was at a conference in Belgium earlier in the summer where one Finnish journalists was talking about how their revelation through the Panama papers had resulted in them getting visits at home from tax inspectors who wanted them to hand over all the confidential documents and give them clues to the identity of the whistleblower who had leaked the Panama papers in the first place. So even Finnish journalists – you know Finland is the top of the elite; it’s supposed to be the most free country in the whole world in regards to press freedom – but even in Finland these pressures exist.
A big part of our role is to show journalists across the Europe that there is a network here. We can show solidarity. We also have individual members who are the national organizations of various journalist unions and one of our board members is Mogens Blicher Bjerregõrd who represents the European Federational journalists. So we work with the journalist unions.
We also work with lots of activist campaigns who are trying to promote across press freedom issues and support whistleblowers for example. And the idea of our conference is to bring people together to Leipzig and to make sure that everybody benefits from this strong network that we’re building up, bearing in mind that we have only existed for one year so we’re just at the beginning, really.
TI: So one could say that the biggest help today for a journalist is the network or the support coming from the network?
JW: It’s a very important thing, yes. Of course laws exist and the European Commission exists to scrutinize press freedom matters. It’s very important for instance in Poland when the government there was elected last year, a lot of new constitutional and legal developments happened which put the independence of journalists, especially the public broadcaster under threat and the EU sent a commission, they also sent a large group of MEP’s, we took a fact finding mission to Poland. We’ve had very successful fact-finding missions as well as in Hungary, but particularly in an incident that happened a year ago. And it took a whole year of pressure, so we investigated, we interviewed journalists who were beaten up by the police, by the border police who were wrongly imprisoned and detained just for doing their jobs as journalists and camera crews and we kept up the pressure through the whole period and finally an official inquiry is under way into that incident.
So you know, sometimes we have some little successes but mostly it’s a really upill struggle.
TI: But it’s the basework that leads to a better future, or let’s hope so.
JW: Let’s hope so, yes!
TI: Speaking of these recent developments, I’ve also read some reports about it – well, they might be written from a pessimist view-point, but these happenings and this situation – does it seem that we’re moving again toward autocratic society? Do we have to start talking about the basics again?
JW: Yes, I think it’s really important. Because a lot of people don’t trust journalists particularly anymore. There’s an academic research that we published on our website. It shows that the lack of trust has grown up in Germany, where we are based. I recently saw a statistic that said since the Brexit referendum people in United Kingdom have lost faith, have lost trust in their media.
Throughout the former Eastern Bloc countries of course there’s still probably a bit of a hangover from days of communism where people are often quite sceptical of what they’re reading from the media because they have a legacy of propaganda and they maybe haven’t grown to believe in the indepence of journalism in a way that is more longer established in the Western European countries. So this is very dangerous.
Also, in the social media now lots of myths can be easily perpetuated. People don’t usually stop to check, or verify the two independent sources what they share on Facebook for example, what they tweet on Twitter and so it’s easier now for wrong information, disinformation, some might call it propaganda, to be spread very rapidly and totally cost-free, because nobody has to pay to subscribe to Facebook for example. That’s another danger that we’re aware of and we’re also trying to build a digital skills training for journalists.
There will be a workshop in the conference where journalists can be made aware of how to keep their sources confidential so that nothing leaks out until they’re actually ready to be published. It was a spectacular success with the Panama papers, but that was only because they took the precautions and they continued to take these precautions. And so part of our mission is to make sure that all journalists everywhere and bloggers or anyone who covers anything that somebody tries to keep secret, that journalists have their rights to protect their sources, to keep them anonymous and to keep the information secret until they’re ready to publish.
TI: That brings me to my last question: what are your personal recommendations that you’d highlight from the conference?
JW: Well, I’m very pleased that we got a cooperation with a local charity here in Germany. They’re called Engagement Global and they exist to promote integration of refugees and migrants, particularly in the media. And thanks to them we have a panel which we’ve called “Experts from Elsewhere” investigating how refugee journalists like our own refugee journalist who works here at the ECPMF Ola Aljari, she’s a Syrian journalist. We’re also bringing together other examples from Turkey, turkish journalist in exile; from United Kingdom, a muslim tv-reporter who’s been threatened and abused because she wears a head-scarf on screen. Very brave woman Fatima Mandi who will be one of our speakers in the panel. We’ll be discussing ways of how not only refugees can be helped – put a roof on their head – but also can be integrated into the media of the receiving countries where they are arriving and can promote better understanding through accurate, full media coverages of refugee issues and migrant issues.
We also have a fact-finding mission underway in Germany because there are some movements – which I’m sure you’ve heard of – under the GIDA – label. People who are very anti-Islam, anti-immigration and they claim – wrongly, I think – but they claim that they are not given a voice in the mainstream Germam media and they have a right to have their views heard. Of course the European Centre of Press and Media Freedom – we don’t take sides, we cover all the opinions – as long as they’re – within the law and respectful – have the rights to be aired. So we have a fact-finding mission, also to educate the police to understand that journalists are neutral, they are not on one side or the other, they’re not activists, nor are they part of these extreme movements and journalists have the right to expect full protection and cooperation from the police in order to do their jobs as well.
TI: Thank you very much!
