With information venturing onto ground where post-truth has become king and where lies, deliberate or by omission, have effectively become the rule, where does Europe stand? From what we can see, as far as its institutions are concerned, with the catering corps rather than on the front line. Let us not blame the European Council on that: all that it knows and recognises of the press is what traipses around along with the president or prime minister of each of the twenty eight (soon to be twenty seven thanks to the indefatigable efforts of the tabloid foot soldiers) member states. This coverage of European news from the narrow, exclusively national point of view has been carried to the extreme by the French “presidential press”, which accompanies the occupant of the Elysée Palace wherever he goes. Brussels is the same as Bogota or Canberra in that all that matters is the duty to record the comments and actions of the republican monarch in defence of the grandeur – and the interests – of France. Clearly, in the institution which rules the Union, only European news deformed by national prisms is carried. Among the media, those few which have a permanent correspondent in Brussels alone are able to present a more faithful reflection of the real European issues and challenges. In a way, the television news programmes are to twenty seven member states what the tabloids are to the twenty eighth – something that must be borne in mind come the day when …
Is it any more useful pointing an accusatory finger at the European Parliament? No, and for two reasons. Firstly, because Parliament has developed and rolled out considerable resources to allow the media to follow as closely as possible all that is happening in that institution. If these resources are little or improperly used, the blame lies principally with the media, no doubt because they are still inclined to think that a vote on a directive that will affect the lives of their viewers or listeners is not worthy of any more attention that a bomb exploding in Bogota or a plane crash in Canberra. Then, it is impossible not to see that the European Parliament is an institution where MEPs elected on different lists in twenty eight member states (twenty seven shortly: thank you, Mr Farage) work feverishly to push themselves into the limelight and so ensure their re-election. This race for media fame – audiovisual, in particular – is humanly understandable but it rarely resonates with journalistic demands which are not those of publicists or of people running election campaigns.
On the news front, all that remains, therefore, is to turn to the European Commission which has determined the European media agenda from the 1960s with its daily “midday briefing”. Now it is more “used to determine”. Over the course of the last three decades, the spokespersons’ team has consistently viewed those in front of them in the press room as a discomfiting foreign body. In short, times have changed – and not for the better.
The Berlaymont in the 1980s, the press room is doubtless as asbestos-riddled as the rest of the building but relations there are cordial and even friendly. Spokespersons sit at a table opposite accredited journalists seated at identical tables. At the back of the room, “Madame Anna” is serving coffee to a few journalists and officials. And after the briefing, (almost) everyone gathers at her counter for an aperitif, then time to clear up some points, gain a bit more insight, and build relations mingling seriousness and good humour that often led to friendships between spokespersons and journalists. In this, it’s news that is the winner. Then comes the first Gulf War and, with it, NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea who addresses the media every day standing behind his lectern, like a priest in the pulpit. In today’s more luxurious Berlaymont press room all the asbestos has been removed … but so has the bar. Three pulpits are aligned, from which, daily, the true word is delivered, to be taken and disseminated everywhere … preferably without any alteration or rectification. Clearly journalists have become seen as wayward, not to be trusted because they are always likely – and this is the whole reason for the profession – to go and find out what lies behind the information presented in the fine attire of institutional communication. Does it come as any surprise, then, that, with the Commission trying to be a press and/or a communications agency in direct contact with European citizens, its briefings are now much less well attended by journalists?
That this is a winning strategy is anything but clear. If one is to believe Eurobarometer 83 of spring 2015, eight out of ten Europeans believe that “the EU needs a clearer message”. The survey of European public opinion revealed that “an absolute majority of respondents in all 28 Member States want a clearer message from the European Union”. UK citizens were not lagging behind in expressing this desire for a clearer message (84%), just behind the Greeks (87%), the Luxembourgers and French (86%) and ahead of the Dutch (85%), with the Czechs returning the lowest percentage, with 66%. What lesson is to be drawn if not that citizens want more European news?
This should provide the appropriate commissioner and Commission departments with food for thought on the validity of what they are doing in information and, if necessary, on how to be more effective in this area. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that this will happen.
In the Berlaymont, what is the latest news on that front? There is only one thing: the Commission is about to end its support to the Euranet Plus network, which, bringing together eighteen radio stations, broadcasts some 350 spots annually devoted to the European Union. This is certainly regrettable but is it shameful? No: the contract was granted to the consortium following a “competitive dialogue” and was to run for a maximum of three years. Legally, the Commission has done nothing wrong. Fundamentally, however, this matter is almost as regrettable as the decision by the Commission to withdraw funding from the Presseurope.eu experiment, a European news site that allowed citizens to keep themselves informed despite the barrier, in Europe, that is linguistic diversity. That decision was, therefore, a mistake; the Euranet Plus decision, however, was made simply on money grounds though the effects are to be lamented. The French section of the Association of European Journalists has said that “stopping Euranet Plus would be journalistically and politically absurd”. Politically absurd it will certainly be but are our French colleagues not going a bit far when they say that “while the continued existence of networks’ partner radio stations is not under threat, it is highly likely that programmes devoted to what is happening in Europe financed by Euranet Plus will cease”? This is a mind-boggling statement. Will the Belgian French-language public channel RTBF have to receive the support allocated to Euranet Plus if it is to deign to carry European news? Will Italy’s Radio 24, France’s BFM Business, Romania’s Radio Romania and Poland’s Polskie Radio stop speaking about Europe when, in March, Euranet Plus dies the death? Of course not: the duty to inform that is incumbent upon journalists cannot be dependent on subsidies granted or withdrawn. That is purely a matter for station managers and their finance departments.
Last but by no means least, people may not be aware that the Commission at one time wanted to replicate the Euranet Plus experiment on television. The project was abandoned with no real reason given. The only harm done was the loss of roughly €500,000 to the budget. A drop in the ocean compared with the funding given to Euronews, “€25 million annually”, according to the head of Euronet Plus (see EUROPE 11688 of 14 December). According to Commission digital single market spokesperson Nathalie Vandystadt, Euronews is seen as fulfilling a “general interest role … in the field of information, it being the only channel that produces news on European issues with a pan-European perspective” (our translation). Whatever the merits and qualities of the Lyons-based channel, such fine words make one wary. Is it inappropriate to point out that it took a very long time for Euronews to have a correspondent based permanently in Brussels, or not note that it opened itself up to capital that is far from being European? A source for French daily Le Monde (18-19 December) revealed that “in the space of ten years, the European public funding went from 100% to 50% and today it has fallen to 3%”. Are the Commission praises really worth anything, then?
In reality, the Commission – and, through it, the whole European Union – still has no weapon that will enable it to win any victories on the battlefield of information, and especially televised information. Germany’s former foreign minister Joschka Fischer is correct when he says that the “European Union – sandwiched between Russian trolls and Breitbart News – will have to brace itself for challenging times indeed” (Project Syndicate, 5 January 2017) if it does not give itself the means to really speak to citizens. Could the way to do this be through the most reputable national channels? That is by no means certain: Gareth Harding of the Ethical Journalism Network notes that “even the BBC broadcast more negatively than positively” about the EU during the referendum campaign. “An April 2016 report by Zurich-based analysts Media Tenor concluded that only 7% of BBC coverage of the EU was positive and 45% negative. It also found that the tone of coverage was more negative than that about Russian and Chinese strongmen Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Even Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad received more positive mentions than the EU”, he reports. In light of this, let us not be too hard on UK citizens who decided to move away from a Europe presented like an ugly stepmother who is as unbearable as she is useless. Rather, let us ask the Commission what ambitious initiatives it intends to take to prevent the disillusionment of citizens resulting from misinformation or disinformation from further polluting the project uniting the citizens of Europe!
Michel Theys