Media Freedom in Europe

The Association of European Journalists has just published a new survey of barriers to media freedom across the continent.

Headlines:

Media freedom is weak and under threat from growing political and economic pressures in many parts of Europe.

The Survey, entitled Goodbye to Freedom? says that restrictive laws, unjustified political interventions, jail, death threats and in some cases even murder have been used to limit or suppress media freedom within Europe.

It is written by journalists in 20 countries of the Council of Europe, the democracy and human rights organisation which requires its members to uphold media freedom and freedom of expression.

The AEJ Survey covers challenges and setbacks for media freedom in the past year across Europe from Russia to Spain. It includes ten long-standing member states of the European Union, six states which joined the EU in the past three years, two aspiring members – Croatia and Turkey – and two states of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Armenia.

The countries included are Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey and the UK.