European Parliament must increase EU journalism fund and secure its independence
The Balkan Free Media Initiative has called on European Parliamentarians to double the budget available to support journalism and to ensure the integrity of the funding mechanism from political framing.
Last month, the European Parliament issued its draft position on AgoraEU, the programme to support culture, media, and civil society under the EU’s new Multiannual Financial Framework.
Following a seven billion euro fall in European news media revenues between 2019 and 2023, now exacerbated by AI, LLMs, and the collapse in referral traffic to media, the sector is facing an existential crisis.
They cannot be averted without rebalancing the media market to direct revenues built on journalism away from digital platform monopolies and back towards the news media.
This is not going to happen anytime soon.
Meanwhile, public funding can be a lifeline for public interest journalism and should be central to the European Union’s response to the disaster engulfing news media.
The €1.25 billion currently proposed by the European Parliament is welcome, but it does not come close to filling the funding gap.
Equally important, for public funds to both work and maintain public support, the integrity of their systems must be beyond reproach.
Some of the Parliament’s draft language in the regulation, for example, on combating ‘gendered disinformation and anti-gender narratives’, risks applying a political framing for media beneficiaries to follow.
Public funding mechanisms must have political independence, support for a wide plurality of voices, and guaranteed editorial independence as their foundational principles.
For this reason, BFMI also urges the Parliament to remove all language that creates, or risks being seen to create, a political framework for the distribution of EU journalism funds.
BFMI is part of a coalition of media freedom and development organisations, which elaborated a joint position on AgoraEU, where further explanation and detailed amendments can be found.
For further information, contact: oliver@balkanfreemedia.org
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