Physical threats, disinformation, censorship. Six modern challenges for the media

«The question arises: to be or not to be?»

The sit­u­a­tion with inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media is well-known in the world. Pro­fes­sion­als are very well-versed in this mat­ter. No one needs to explain why the media is declared “extrem­ist” and their web­sites are blocked in Belarus.

“You know how to find the truth even when the regime is pres­sur­ing you. The ques­tion aris­es: to be or not to be?” said Rena­ta Schroed­er, the direc­tor of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (EFJ).

Jour­nal­ists in Europe are deal­ing with six major chal­lenges brought about by the con­flict in Ukraine. This also applies to the Belaru­sian media.

“Jour­nal­ists are at risk of con­stant sur­veil­lance by gov­ern­ments. The emer­gence of new tech­nolo­gies used to spy on indi­vid­u­als affects media rep­re­sen­ta­tives first­hand,” Rena­ta Shroed­er iden­ti­fied one of the dan­gers.

Nowa­days, jour­nal­ists face an increased risk of phys­i­cal threats and libel, as per her state­ment. Both from reg­u­lar cit­i­zens and from those on the polit­i­cal right and believ­ing in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

“In this sense, the indus­try has nev­er faced as many prob­lems as it does today,” she stressed.

The head of the EFJ also called the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists an obsta­cle to pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty. More and more Euro­pean media are becom­ing vic­tims of unfound­ed law­suits.

The next chal­lenge is even riski­er: stricter laws con­cern­ing the press. The sup­port­ers of the changes claim that this is nec­es­sary for nation­al secu­ri­ty and pre­vent­ing the spread of fake news.

“Fur­ther­more, Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, caus­ing con­flict in the entire Euro­pean region,” Rena­ta Shroed­er added. “False infor­ma­tion con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late, and pro­pa­gan­da sto­ries are being pro­mot­ed.”

Final­ly, the sixth pos­si­ble issue is that many media out­lets do not have a busi­ness plan. This is an extreme­ly urgent prob­lem for the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media. Now they can­not work in a mar­ket set­ting, pre­vent­ing them from invest­ing in bet­ter­ing their con­tent.

“I don’t see any objec­tive mea­sures for eval­u­at­ing media qual­i­ty,” stat­ed BAJ Chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets. “How­ev­er, the diver­si­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties has marked­ly decreased. Despite sig­nif­i­cant declines in work­ing con­di­tions, most pub­li­ca­tions per­se­vere in main­tain­ing pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards.”

“We need a Marshall Plan for the media industry”

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, EFJ Pres­i­dent Maja Sev­er shared her per­son­al sto­ry of sur­viv­ing the war and cri­sis in Croa­t­ia.

“For 30 years, we have been striv­ing to end war, progress in life, and devel­op our coun­try demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly in accor­dance with Euro­pean val­ues,” she stat­ed. “The cur­rent cri­sis, divi­sion, and esca­la­tion of soci­etal anx­i­eties do not sup­port the advance­ment of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism. In such con­di­tions, our pro­fes­sion becomes the first vic­tim.”

At the same time, she thinks that the chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances have made jour­nal­ists stronger and empha­sized the sig­nif­i­cance of pur­su­ing the truth, engag­ing a broad audi­ence in their work, pre­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, uti­liz­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, and per­form­ing more exten­sive research.

“To improve qual­i­ty, we need to keep invest­ing,” stat­ed Rena­ta Shroed­er. “Maybe we need a Mar­shall Plan for the media indus­try. How­ev­er, we should not invest in enter­tain­ment report­ing sole­ly to gen­er­ate clicks. It is nec­es­sary to invest in edu­ca­tion and the study of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. There are many risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties asso­ci­at­ed with this top­ic.

“It is nec­es­sary to improve net­work­ing, and BAJ is a good exam­ple in this sense.

“Invest­ment in men­tal health is a must, too. Sup­port the exiled media more by pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion as well as finan­cial assis­tance.”

“State media should be banned”

The leader of the Lithuan­ian Jour­nal­ists’ Union, Dainius Radze­vičius, who also took part in the debate, pro­posed a new approach to eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion.

“In places with­out pub­lic broad­cast­ing, talk­ing about jour­nal­ism becomes impos­si­ble,” he thinks. “Indeed, there are folks with devices. But it allows you to spread pro­pa­gan­da…”

The Lithuan­ian media rep­re­sen­ta­tive firm­ly stat­ed the need to pro­hib­it state media. In his opin­ion, they should not exist in a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try.

“State media is evil. If the media is direct­ly influ­enced by the author­i­ties, there is no jour­nal­ism left,” said Mr. Radze­vičius.

The alter­na­tive, accord­ing to the chair­man of the Lithuan­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists, should be the inde­pen­dent media. But he thinks it’s not suit­able to exam­ine the media indus­try in Belarus: there’s no envi­ron­ment, no chance to earn prof­its from ads and intro­duce mon­e­ti­za­tion meth­ods.

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