© Screenshot

For all the media buzz about the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) impact on different industries, little has been said about the impact on the news media industry itself.

Maybe it’s because publishers are so sanguine about their own readiness: apparently 64% feel confident in their GDPR preparedness by its enforcement date on the 25th May. This is a staggering proportion considering most other industries report somewhere between 15% and 30%.

Or perhaps both the analytical scarcity and brazen optimism come from a common factor: the perception that nothing is really novel in the way that news organisations collect and use data, and that they fit neither uniquely nor appropriately in the GDPR enforcement model. This would be a big mistake. In fact, most news organisations share a combination of distinctive attributes that put them squarely in the scope of the GDPR and force them to comply with even the more stringent GDPR requirements.

Personal Data Use Cases Within A ‘Typical’ News Organisation

To figure out how the GDPR will affect news organisations, let’s go over some assumptions of how a “typical” publisher might work from a personal data perspective.

On a basic level, most if not all news publishers operate on two main revenue models: subscriptions and/or targeted advertising.¹ Both models involve personal data processing as a core functionality, and both process personal data on a regular basis, typically through automated processes that send marketing emails or decide which ads to display. From a cursory level, these considerations make it likely that publishers will need certain big-ticket GDPR items like a data protection officer and a record of how the company handles user data.

A “just-in-time” notice, informing users clearly and concisely why each piece of personal data is needed at the time of collection – © Screenshot/BBC

Yet unlike other sectors whose smaller firms are typically exempted from these requirements, even small news organisations run a far higher risk of requiring these items. This is due to the high regional saturation of the personal data they gather, which would allow them (or a savvy data broker) to create rich profiles of small regional demographics.

The European Commission seems to share this concern, as its definition of “large scale” processing can be triggered both by absolute volume of personal data processed and volume as a proportion of a specific population. And if “large scale” processing gets triggered along with regular automated processing of personal data, then even small, local outlets will likely need all the bells and whistles for GDPR compliance.

Collecting, Profiling, Personalizing

Operationally, online news platforms start with the same general procedures regardless of their revenue model. When I click on [newssite.com], the website takes my IP address and creates a unique session ID that follows me as I use the website. Even before I reach the site, it reads my location embedded in my IP address and leads me to a personalised version of the homepage for that region. Then, as I navigate the site, I give the organisation information on my interests which can be used to recommend similar articles, related products, or ambiguously correlated ads.

At this point, the revenue model of the website becomes important to determining which GDPR rabbit holes get triggered. If I make my revenue from targeted ads, then the incoming ePrivacy Regulation will force me to give users the ability to opt-out of all cookies unnecessary to website functionality (i.e. the bulk of my money-making cookies, like Google Analytics, DoubleClick, or Adsense).

If I operate on a subscription-based model, then I’m most likely going to collect more – and more sensitive – types of personal data. The Times and Der Spiegel, for instance, require “special category” data like gender in order to register an account. (Interestingly, the BBC doesn’t.)

A wealth of trackers on the UK website of Business Insider – © Screenshot

Often, personal data gathered via registration (e.g. for a newsletter) gets fed into automated processes that are used to personalise homepages, tailor ads, and send targeted emails. If a news organisation decides to combine automated processing with special category data (e.g. by utilising the seemingly innocuous Title metric as a proxy for gender in its algorithms, see below), then the GDPR steps in.

Rather than allowing six “legitimate grounds for processing”, Article 22(4) of the GDPR funnels news organisations into just one: explicit consent. Not only does explicit consent get a lot harder to obtain under the GDPR, but it also requires that outlets provide some of the trickier rights from an implementation perspective (like deletion).

From the Times registration page (2 May 2018). Note the lack of transparency in describing why they need the information – © Screenshot

Reaching For A Better Standard Of Transparency

Looking toward the future based on trends in the industry, publishers are only going to fall more squarely within the scope of the GDPR. As publishers look to break their dependence on ad-based revenue models and the third-party platforms,² they’ll fall more heavily on personalisation and robust profile-gathering to attract and keep users on their own sites. This means that they’re going to have to be a lot more transparent about the types of data they collect and why.

It also means they need to explain the currently opaque algorithms they use to personalise homepages and profile users. Moreover, they’ll need to focus on enabling technical means to provide rights like deletion of user data and cookie opt-out, and determine whether they need a data protection officer or a record of their processing activities.

If these considerations have already been addressed by 64% of the news industry operating in Europe, then my hat’s off to them. Otherwise (and to the other 36%), I’d recommend you get started because you’ve got a lot to do.

¹ According to Newman (2018, p.5), these models, coupled with branded/sponsored content, comprise the most important factors in a news organisation’s revenue stream.

² See Newman (2018), p.5.

Disclaimer: The author works for Sovy, a regulatory technology startup. The author’s views are his alone and do not reflect or represent those of the EJO or Sovy.

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If one believes radical Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexit is above all a question of “Them against us”. Europe? Only interested in harming the United Kingdom. The European press? A bunch of biased journalists and media houses trying, together with the EU, to create negative sentiment against the British as a punishment for their decision to leave the block. European outlets are often cast as part of an elite project opposing the “will of the people”.

Just as many other statements from Brexit supporters, these prejudices should be treated with caution. Particularly as regards the alleged biased attitude of the European media against the United Kingdom and Brexit, new research comes to the opposite conclusion.

Interested But Not Engaged

In our new study for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, we found that outlets in eight European countries reported on Brexit and the negotiations mostly in one way: neutral and fact-based – something that cannot necessarily be said of the coverage of some of the UK’s major newspapers.

Another difference is not only a more objective attitude, but also the way in which the consequences of Brexit were discussed in the rest of Europe. Europe’s media seem to be largely unconcerned about the consequences of Britain’s withdrawal on their own country and the EU. We found that only about one in 10 pieces treated Brexit from a national perspective. If Ireland was excluded, 69 percent of the news mainly dealt with the consequences of Brexit for the British themselves, while only just under one fifth discussed its effects on the European Union. For Diego Bironzo, one of co-authors, the result is clear: “The central narrative in the European press is that Brexit is first and foremost a challenge for the United Kingdom, and only to a lesser extent for the European continent, its institutions and the individual countries”.

What About EU Citizens?

But isn’t this distanced and objective attitude a surprising finding? Should one not expect more excitement, more angry and warning comments about the this decision? Not necessarily. “It may come as a surprise that European media are so unconcerned about the effects of Brexit and remain largely neutral in their coverage,” says Alexandra Borchardt, the lead author of our study. “But it makes sense: reporting on Brexit as it is may be more effective than the strongest comment when it comes to sending a warning to readers.”

One concerning finding of our study, however, is the lack of media interest in the fate of citizens directly affected by Brexit on both sides. “The impact of Brexit on EU citizens’ lives has been given limited space so far in the news. Considering the potentially huge implications, it may be worth for media organisations to reflect on how to ad- dress this,” says Diego Bironzo. Instead, reporting focused mainly on the economy and trade relations between the UK and the EU.

Despite their largely neutral reporting, however, European media could ultimately not entirely resist to express some opinion on Brexit and the negotiations. And once they took a stand – according to our study in about 18 percent of all cases – they made no secret of their opposition to Brexit.

Main Findings

While the full report can be downloaded here, we have summarised some of the main findings below:

1. European media coverage of Brexit was predominantly neutral and fact-based. Most (82%) of the analysed news items took no position in relation to Brexit, only 18% conveyed a clear opinion.
2. Of those media items that took a position on Brexit, just 8% were pro-Brexit, as opposed to 75% against.
3. When European media items took a position on the UK and the UK government (14%), their view was mostly negative and critical (71%)
4. Most (59%) of the coverage dealt with the challenges the UK itself will be facing, rather than what Brexit means for each respective country, (this figure increased when Irish coverage was excluded).
5. With the exception of Irish media, coverage reflected a lack of anxiety about the impact of Brexit on Europe, and the EU’s future. If Irish media are excluded, 69% of the analysed European news items reported on the British situation; fewer than one in five articles discussed implications for the EU.

Most (and least) reported topics:

1. Excluding any generic references to Brexit:
   Just over one third (35%) of reporting across all studied countries covered progress and setbacks in the Brexit negotiations.
2. The remaining coverage (65%) focused on more specific issues. Of these, half concerned the economy, business and trade. Coverage of EU bureaucracy, standards and regulations played a role in only a small proportion (3%) of content studied.
3. Reporting about migration from non-EU countries into the EU, as well as mobility (the right of Europeans to move to other EU countries), took up only 10% of all issue-related coverage, this figure decreased to 5% when news articles about the impact of Brexit on Ireland were omitted.
4. Security and defence featured in just 1% of the issue-related coverage.
5. Sovereignty – ie an EU country’s ability to make its own laws and decisions independent of the EU – was barely discussed (3%).

Most (and least) quoted politicians:

1. The most quoted person of all protagonists was British Prime Minister, Theresa May (19.1%). The next most quoted – although some way behind – was Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator (12.3%).
2. Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour leader, was quoted 5% of the time. Nigel Farage, the vocal Leave campaigner was barely quoted (1.7%).
3. Jacob Rees Mogg, a pro-Brexit Conservative MP, (1.2%) was quoted more often than Angela Merkel (0.9%), despite having no official role in the negotiations.
4. Politicians from other EU countries were rarely quoted on Brexit issues. This contrasts with the impression sometimes given in British media coverage that European politicians ‘meddle’ in British affairs.
5. When protagonists were quoted, the tone of the debate was set mainly by UK Conservatives (23.1%) and EU institutions (19.8%). UK Labour politicians played a negligible role: they were quoted in only 5.4% of news items. French, German or other EU national politicians were quoted in fewer than 3% of reports.
6. Regarding mentions of politicians, 53.3% of mentions were of Theresa May, Michel Barnier, 8.9% and Boris Johnson, 7.1%.

Key findings by country: Who is interested in what?

1. France: Coverage in the French media represented 7% of the total sample studied, the third lowest in the study. French media reported Brexit as more of a challenge for the United Kingdom rather than for the French or the EU. Coverage in France contained the highest proportion of opinion articles – 46% of articles about Brexit took a position on the topic, with 60% of these arguing against Brexit.
   The most visible topic in the country’s coverage was the economy and trade relationships. Almost 80% of all items published on Brexit in French outlets focused on the UK perspective – The French newspaper Le Figaro called Brexit a “Westminster psychodrama”.
2. Germany: Germany had the second highest volume of coverage (14%) in the study, after Ireland. Most, (92%), of German coverage was neutral. Of the remaining 8% most (75%) was anti-Brexit. 70% of articles focused on the UK perspective; 19% of all reports focused on the EU perspective; national perspective was 9% of coverage. German press expressed some “amazement” that UK policymakers hope Germany will go the extra mile to help Britain achieve good deals on withdrawal and the future UK-EU relationship. Another common theme was surprise at how ‘ill-prepared’ British politicians were for negotiations.
3. Greece: Greek media covered Brexit extensively (11% of total coverage – the third highest in the study). 71% of Greek coverage focused on UK perspective. Most articles were factual (94%), but the remaining 6% were overwhelmingly negative. Media in general tried to emphasise the dire consequences Britain will face from Brexit, possibly to deter anti-EU Greeks from demanding to leave the EU. Headlines included some about “food shortages” and how Brexit would cost the UK economy, “tens of billions”.
4. Ireland: Coverage in Ireland was by far the most extensive. It made up 40% of the total sample studied (1838 media items). The extent of coverage indicated the country’s close involvement in the Brexit process – in particular the border to Northern Ireland. Reporting appeared divided equally between the Irish and the British perspectives. Irish media in particular expressed strong views against Brexit.
5. Italy: That coverage in Italy’s media only made up 7% of sample indicates the Italian press were only moderately interested in Brexit – less than Spain and Greece, but more than France. 64% of coverage focused on the UK; 19% of articles focused on the implications for Italy. The relatively high focus on national interest could reflect concerns in Italy about growing anti-EU sentiment in the run up to the country’s recent elections. Coverage was overwhelmingly neutral (94%).
6. Poland: 6% of the total sample of Brexit news reports were in the Polish media. 61% of articles remained neutral, lower than most other countries in the study. 39% of articles expressed an opinion – mostly (71%) of opinion articles were anti-Brexit. One in ten articles reported on the impact of Brexit upon Poland. Only 3% of Polish coverage dealt with the rights of Poland’s estimated 900,000 citizens currently living in the UK to stay there after Brexit.
7. Spain: 11% of total sample – the fourth highest in the study. 66% of Spanish media coverage devoted to the UK perspective; 19% to the EU, 13% to the impact of Brexit upon Spain. Brexit is seen as a disaster for UK by most Spanish commentators. The largely negative position taken by Spanish press linked to attempts to discourage Catalonian independence movement. Much of the coverage focused on Gibraltar (most, 90%, of Gibraltar residents want to stay attached to Britain but also remain in EU). The fate of 300,000 British ex-pats living in Spain featured in coverage.
8. Sweden: 4% of the total sample – only 182 articles over the seven months studied, the lowest in the study.  Most of the articles that took an opinion on Brexit argued against it. Only four news items were in favour of Britain leaving the EU. 15% of articles were about the impact of Brexit upon Sweden, (the highest proportion after Ireland). This could be related to Sweden’s perception that Britain was its ally in the EU, for example both countries remained outside the Eurozone. A relatively high amount of interest in the impact of Brexit on Sweden could also reflect fears that Swedes could demand a similar referendum on leaving the EU.

The report was written by Dr Alexandra Borchardt, Director of Strategy at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; Felix M Simon of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Diego Bironzo, formerly of PRIME Research. The full report can be downloaded for free here.

If you liked this story you might also be interested in “They tell the truth I like” – Partisan And Alternative News Sites in Europe.

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© Wikimedia

The volume of third-party content across Europe’s news sites has significantly decreased since the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25 2018, new research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has found.

The research, based on a comparison of third-party content on news sites in April and July 2018 – before and after the introduction of GDPR – records a 22% drop in the number of cookies set without user consent; a nine per cent decrease in third-party social media cookies; and a seven per cent drop in the number of news sites that host third-party social media content, such as sharing buttons from Facebook or Twitter.

However the analysis of homepages from over 200 of Europe’s most prominent news sites recorded little change in the overall percentage of pages from news providers which contain some form of third-party content (99%) or third-party cookies (98%).

Number Of Third-Party Cookies Dropped

The number of third-party cookies per page dropped by 22% across all news sites. German news sites, which had the second-lowest number of cookies in April, exhibit the smallest change with 6% fewer cookies. UK news sites, which had the most cookies per page in April, had 45% fewer by July.
The percentage of news sites hosting third-party social media content, such as sharing buttons from Facebook or Twitter, dropped significantly, from 84% in April to 77% in July.

Decreases in third-party cookies between April and July vary by the type of content setting the cookie. Across our sample, on average, the number of cookies from design optimisation tools is down 27%, advertising and marketing cookies down 14%, and social media cookies down 9%.

The US-based technology companies remain present on the highest number of the news sites in our sample, Google (96%), Facebook (70%), and Amazon (57%); of these, only Facebook has seen a significant drop in reach after GDPR (down five percentage points). But most of the other companies with the widest presence in April, including Verizon and Oracle in the US, WPP in the UK and Criteo in France,  have seen significant drops in their post-GDPR reach, in many cases of ten percentage points or more.

Bad News For Ad-Tech Companies

One of the authors of the report, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, said the results are significant: “News sites, especially those based on advertising, are particularly dependent on third parties for many critical features ranging from monetisation to social sharing, and thus the question of how they deal with GDPR is both important and indicative of wider response. We find a clear decline in volume of third-party content, but also interesting that – with the partial exception of Facebook – the biggest “losers” in terms of reach have been ad-tech companies outside the top three – not the biggest US-based tech firms.”

The report’s lead author, Timothy Libert, said it is not yet possible to say with certainty why the changes observed in the research have occurred and some shifts may be unrelated to GDPR. However, he added: “in many cases third-party cookies should not have been set without consent prior to GDPR, so the changes we see may be more reflective of adjustments in compliance strategies than the new regulatory requirements.”

He went on to say that “while the outlook for user privacy appears to be improving, it is too early to know how transparent opt-in notices are, what portion of users elect to allow third-party cookies, and how many websites force users to accept third-party tracking to view content. Overall, the impact of GDPR is best viewed as an ongoing process rather than a singular event, and while May 25 has come and gone, our initial data suggests we may continue to see change on the European web.”

The factsheet, Changes in Third-Party Content on European News Websites after GDPR, by Timothy Libert, Lucas Graves and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, builds on an earlier report, Third-Party Web Content on EU News Sites: Potential Challenges and Paths to Privacy Improvement, which compared third-party content on news sites with other popular websites during the first three months of 2018. This revealed that news websites tend to have dramatically higher volumes of third-party content and cookies than other popular websites.

The full report is available here.

If you liked this story you might also be interested in All the News That’s Fit For GDPR Compliance.

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CC BY 2.0 – Pixabay

The European Parliament has recently approved the second reading of the proposal for a new directive on digital copyright. The aim of the directive seems simple enough: updating the existing rules on copyright in an era where technological change takes place at an incredible speed – often outpacing current laws. The effect, however, could be the opposite of what lawmakers want to achieve.

The two most controversial proposals in the new directive directly involve limitations to freedom of expression despite them being presented as mere adjustments of the balance between the cultural industries and technology firms. The first aims to force platforms such as Google to pay publishers when they link to their content. The second aims to establish filters to ensure that user-generated content uploaded to platforms such as YouTube does not violate copyright law.

Forcing Google To Pay Publishers Won’t Work

By forcing search engines like Google to pay, publishers (who have lobbied for the new directive) hope to stop them from generating revenue by exploiting content that was created by others (in other words: by the publishers themselves). The rationale behind this is simple. The ambition of every publisher is that readers get the news from their own website. Only by luring audiences to one’s homepage, money through advertising can be made. Yet, whether the proposed “link-tax” would work is a different question.

Users increasingly like to get their news through social networks or messenger services such as WhatsApp. And previous attempts to force Google to pay haven’t ended well. Germany and Spain had already implemented amendments to their intellectual property law before the new directive was agreed upon. The result, however, was questionable. In Spain, Google simply shut down Google News – to the detriment of the media.

The new directive will also not solve the problems of outlets and publishers desperately in search of a new business model. On top of that, the new regulations could also have a devastating effect on democracy. If news by professional outlets is harder to find, users could be tempted to fall back on other, more dubious sources, thus aggravating the problem of dis- and misinformation spreading online.

Policing User-Generated Content Through Algorithms Could Stifle Freedom Of Expression

The new directive poses yet another problem. To understand why, we have to take a look at Article 13 of the new directive.

Cultural industries and technology firms have different interests when it comes to user generated content. The former want to protect their copyright. The latter profit when copyrighted content is shared on their platforms. Article 13 now tries to establish a balance between both sides, forcing Internet firms to employ algorithms to ensure that user-generated content does not infringe copyright.

YouTube already pays royalties to the owners of the content when someone uploads, for example, a song by Beyoncé. Its filtering system, ContentID, establishes that a piece is copyrighted and asks its owner what to do with it. It can either be left on the net for free, it can be deleted or monetised through advertising – all thanks to an algorithm that compares the uploaded file with a reference file.

The problem is that YouTube only pays a small, non-negotiable amount of its advertising revenue to the owner of the copyright – be that a record label, a film studio or an independent artist. For the cultural industry, it would be ideal if they could negotiate the rate as they do, for instance, with Spotify and similar services. The difference, however, is that in comparison to Spotify et al., it is not YouTube which uploaded the content in the first place, but some user. Therefore, YouTube is not responsible a priori for possible copyright infringements.

It took YouTube a decade and millions of dollars to develop ContentID. The idea of the new EU copyright directive is that all similar services must implement a technology that works in roughly the same way. Yet, it is obvious that only a few companies have the financial muscle and technological capacity of YouTube and its parent company Alphabet to develop a comparable tool. As weird as it seems this means that the new rule could spectacularly backfire. Instead of curtailing YouTube’s power to exploit other people’s content – generating what the cultural industry calls a value gap – YouTube could be (further) consolidated as a monopoly.

In The Name Of Copyright

A no less serious problem is that algorithmic filtering is imperfect. Intellectual property has exceptions such as quotations or parody (and others which are even less clearly defined). Simply using a copyrighted image – for instance, to illustrate an article such as this – is forbidden, but using it to make a parody is allowed. But even here the situation is not entirely clear as the questions of what is parodied and what the relationship of the text with the parodied thing is, also factor into the decision. In court, these questions would be discussed with the help of expert reports and by discussing the limits of the applicable law. The algorithm, however, does not know or care for expert reports, subjective appraisals or legal tricks. Ultimately, the automation of copyright control will end up becoming a form of censorship that will systematically eliminate content that has, based on existing law, a right to circulate.

We are now in a new episode of a race where copyright regulations are constantly strengthened while new tools and audience practices erode the ideas of authorship and control. Many voices have warned that little by little we are changing the internet, eliminating its potential to create more participatory, innovative, creative and democratic societies – all in the name of copyright. But is it worth it?

A more detailed study of the value gap problem and algorithm filtering by the author can be found here.

You might also be interested in The Publisher’s Patron: How Google’s News Initiative Is Re-Defining Journalism.

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© Banksy, CC BY 2.0

While Brexit has been exhaustively discussed from a variety of perspectives, the role played by the British press, and in particular by tabloids, in framing the debate in the run up to the referendum and afterwards requires more scrutiny.

One can hardly overstate the media’s ability to instigate public debates by setting the news agenda. While this can be a force for good when the ‘fourth estate’ performs its function of democratic guardian in a pluralised public sphere, the media’s power can equally serve commercial logics and a newspaper’s own political and ideological agendas. News is not simply circulated in/by the media but that it can also be actively framed through a newspaper’s ideological lens.

A Long Tradition Of Eurosceptic and Europhobic Views

Few examples of the instrumental role of the press in constructing public perceptions could be more relevant than how the British tabloids have historically covered the EU-UK relationship and, more recently, Brexit. The British tabloid press has a long tradition of Eurosceptic to Europhobic editorial stances, including the promotion of various ‘crusades’ around different Euro-myths and infamous headlines such as the Sun’s ‘Up yours Delors’. Overall, tabloids have been responsible for the trivialisation (some would call it ‘tabloidization’) of European politics, a process that most certainly has contributed to the British written press being considered as the least trusted in Europe.

For years, titles such as The Daily Mail, the Sun and The Daily Express have been particularly active in portraying the UK as a victim of a Brussels ‘cosmopolitical’ conspiracy plot that, according to some headlines, would result for example in the British Parliament being forced to adopt bans on traditional British kettles and light bulbs or British women being required to return old sex toys to comply with EU rules (see the EU Commission’s myth-debunking website for a full list).

As most tabloids entered coverage of the Brexit referendum campaign as prominent advocates of the Leave side (with the exception of labour-friendly Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mail which took an opposite stance to its daily sister publication, and the politically disengaged Daily Star) they could therefore bank on an established priming of their audiences through which they had already been able to effectively pre-legitimise Brexit even before the referendum was called.

A Consolidation Of Populist Discourses

What we saw during the referendum campaign was a de facto consolidation of such populist discourses, as I argue in a paper that I recently presented at a LSE public event on populism. Here, I use the term populist (an otherwise much debated proposition between academics) in its basic meaning i.e. referring to the people. Of course, in most political discourses the term ‘people’ tends to be invariably invoked in semantically vague and rhetorical ways. But what makes a populist discourse different from a democratic one is that the former portrays the people in opposition to its imagined enemies and typically in exclusionary rather than inclusionary terms.

My study, based on a linguistic analysis of how the term ‘(the) people’ was used in a corpus of tabloids during the referendum campaign, suggests that the language of tabloids has been consistent with such populist views of the world in binary terms. Throughout the campaign, tabloids typically tended to portray the ‘British people’ (sometimes also qualified as ‘ordinary’ or ‘hard-working’ people) as a distinct group who were antagonised by other groups of ‘people’ who, in turn, were often characterised as either (EU) migrants and ‘free to move’ to the UK or as ‘detached’ elites. The tabloid press further identified the latter as international (e.g. EU, Brussels, Eurocrats, the IMF, President Obama) or domestic (e.g. Westminster, ‘experts’ and Remainers) enemies of the ‘British people’.

Tabloid Populism And The Legitimation Of Brexit In The British Press

These characterisations played a pivotal role in how tabloids were able to frame the debate over the Brexit referendum around typical populist dynamics. Notably, the coverage tapped into the politics of loss and resentment over migration through arguments of social pressure and resources sharing, but also through arguments of risk and security which, in some cases, straddled into explicit xenophobic moral panic. For example, The Daily Express on 6th June 2016 reported Nigel Farage’s comment that mass sex attacks like those that had happened in Cologne would occur in the UK unless the country voted to leave.

Similarly, in relation to the pitting of the ‘ordinary British people’ against the elites, the dominant dynamic in the corpus analysed was one of reaffirming a sense of national pride akin to the defiant sovereignism that has characterised recent Euroscepticism across many democracies. Standing up to the ‘bullying’ of the IMF, of Remainers David Cameron and George Osborne, or the EU ‘corrupt’ bureaucrats was common currency in many Daily Mail articles, for example.

A key point worth making here is that tabloids did not simply act as communicative platforms by amplifying (or silencing) the main actors and arguments of the referendum campaign but, rather, that they effectively (de)legitimised Brexit along a populist logic as well as according to their own ideological agenda. Furthermore, one should not see this populist thrust limited to the contingency of the Brexit referendum campaign. As I have argued above, a large section of the British press has had a historical role in producing anti-EU propaganda based on spurious news and anti-foreign sentiment. Plenty of evidence suggests that this historical path has not stopped with the referendum result but, in fact, that the populist thrust has steadily driven the post-referendum coverage of Brexit.

Appealing To The People’s Will

Appeals to the ‘people’s will’ (and delegitimisation of supporters of softer or no Brexit as ‘enemies of the people’) have been key drivers of public and institutional discourses. The longer-term coverage of Euronews in the tabloid press and the populist discursive articulation of Brexit have been instrumental in creating the chain of legitimation that has institutionalised extreme Eurosceptic discourses that originally emerged on the fringe of the British political spectrum and now seem to be at the core of the implementation of Brexit.

Of course, the term ‘people’ has equally been appropriated by other actors to construct counter-discourses for example around the ‘peoples’ vote’ referendum. At the moment, this seems to be the nodal point where the struggle over the Brexit debate is taking place.

You might also be interested in Have Digital Counterpublics Given Us Donald Trump, The AfD, And Brexit?

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The EJO’s co-founder calls for pan-European “alliances for enlightenment” to be created as part of the fightback against misinformation.

Serious journalism is required to keep the public informed about the workings of the EU

Much has changed since the first correspondents were sent to Brussels to cover EU affairs, and not only on account of the decline of serious journalism.

Anyone who has attempted to analyse the outcome of the European elections and to discover the fundamental deeper causes of the fraught developments that preceded them – such as increasing populism and nationalism in EU member states, migration politics or the Eurozone financial crisis – will have identified two closely interrelated shortcomings, neither of which has received sufficient public attention.

The first is the absence of a European public sphere or common space for communication among Europeans. The second is that in many EU countries, there is a lack of even minimal common professional standards for journalism and the kind of basic news media infrastructure needed to ensure that citizens have access to independent and reliable sources of information.

Surprisingly, very few people appear to take these deficiencies seriously – though we all know that it is only possible to rise to a huge challenge such as European integration if adequate communication channels are in place. Like all governments, the EU spends millions of taxpayers’ money on PR and advertising in an effort to polish its public image. However, it has not yet done enough to encourage independent Europe-wide media coverage of EU matters – unless we count the 25 million euro direct subsidy allocated to the almost invisible TV network Euronews every year.

A near-impossible task

We need serious journalism to keep us informed about the workings of the EU and to hold EU institutions and politicians to account. No one should underestimate the nature of the challenge now facing journalists posted to Brussels. Only a few decades ago, things were very different. For the first generations of European correspondents, the task was still manageable. The European project was young and enjoyed broad support in the free part of Europe. Brussels-based correspondents were well informed and reported independently, even if they often adopted a complaisant attitude towards European integration and unification.

Of course, there are still some excellent journalists working in Brussels, and we should beware of viewing the earlier period through rose-tinted spectacles. However, it cannot be denied that working conditions have changed out of all recognition in the last 20 years. Today, the EU is hyper-complex. The EU parliament consists of 751 MPs. Ten times as many people – 7,500 – are employed by the parliament. The Commission has 28 commissioners – one for each member state. Government bureaucracy keeps growing: 32,000 people work for the commission’s departments, and 4,300 interpreters and 800 translators are employed by the EU. On top of this, there is an enormous army of stakeholders. Experts estimate that there are 25,000 lobbyists working in Brussels, 11,200 of them officially registered.

“There are now 14 times more lobbyists in Brussels than accredited journalists”

The journalistic presence in Brussels has failed to keep pace with this huge expansion of human resources. Covering European politics is the responsibility of the foreign desk of news organisations, which tend to be one of the first targets of cuts at times of rapidly decreasing income from advertising and subscription revenues. The corps of accredited correspondents in Brussels shrank more than 20 percent over the last four years – from 955 to 770 registered journalists. This means that there are now 14 times more registered lobbyists in Brussels than accredited journalists. We should perhaps treat these figures with caution, but there can be no doubt that they tell us something about the power shift between an independent “fourth estate” and private interests seeking the attention of public officials and of media in Brussels.

There is at least one area of growth in Brussels-based journalism: the number of freelancers has increased exponentially. It is difficult to find accurate recent figures, but according to one source, in 2015 there were eight times as many freelancers working in the city as there had been in 2010. Many of them are, however, fighting for survival, and for many this proves to be simply another route into PR work, as the funds available for in-depth journalistic investigations continue to shrink.

The “Johnsonisation” of journalism

All this has led to the “Johnsonisation” of media coverage from Brussels: a superficial approach that favours attention-grabbing headlines over deeper analysis and a search for truth. The trend was set by Boris Johnson. Long before he became one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign, then British foreign secretary and now front-runner candidate to succeed Theresa May, Johnson was the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent. Between 1989 and 1994 he exerted a malign influence, reinforcing his fellow countrymen’s eurosceptic attitudes by writing half-baked, juicy tabloid-style stories and by always trying to outdo his colleagues.

Other tabloid editors liked these stories too. The London tabloid press is notorious for its herd behaviour, and it is easy to imagine the same question being asked in newsroom meetings: “Why isn’t our paper carrying this story?” What may at first have been isolated instances over time developed into a trend – which helped to bring about Brexit years later.

“National perspective takes precedence over European narrative”

But a “normalisation” of EU coverage has also taken place in continental Europe, as can be seen nowadays when the excesses of the Brussels bureaucracy or logjams in EU politics come under the media spotlight. Items about flaws in the political process such as the unanimity voting rule and about member states’ failure to comply with EU regulations such as the Maastricht convergence criteria – as well as the notorious regulation specifying how curved cucumbers are allowed to be – dominate the day-to-day news cycle. EU coverage, like all other kinds of media coverage, is in addition characterised by that cynical old journalistic maxim: “Bad news sells better than good news”.

In media everywhere, a national perspective takes precedence over a European narrative. Media outlets focus on crises, accentuating them and thereby fostering mistrust of European institutions. In the words of German political consultant Johannes Hillje, we are slipping into “a political-media vicious circle of conflict, news und nationalism”, which in the end plays into the hands of populists. 

Pan-European initiatives

With European leaders taking for granted that the earlier generations of correspondents were well-disposed towards the European project, both the EU and the media industry neglected to take steps to place European journalism on a sound footing. Pan-European media projects either failed within a few years (as in the case of Robert Maxwell’s The European, launched in 1990 in response to the historic events of 1989) or have had minimal impact (as in the case of Euronews, founded in 1993 with the aim of covering world news from a European perspective).

Though Euronews was an initiative launched by a group of public broadcasters, the founders failed to develop it into a more sustainable venture, with news and entertainment programming translated into all the languages of the EU. This was a missed opportunity to create a European public space and encourage mutually enriching collaboration between different journalistic cultures.

“We have reached the eleventh hour”

But now, however, we have already reached the eleventh hour. Trust in journalism is fading, and there is a big question mark over the future of print media and real-time TV. The younger generation reads and consumes less print media, and no longer gathers around a television set at fixed times. As it becomes more and more difficult for news media to make a profit, oligarchs with political ambitions are investing in news media with the aim of furthering their political interest – and not only in central and eastern Europe.

Promoting best practice

The EU could also have done a lot more to promote Europe-wide journalism training programmes. The Erasmus programme allows for the extensive exchange of students in various disciplines, but multilingual Bachelor and Master programmes in journalism and international cooperation such as the European Journalism MA at Thessaloniki University in Greece or the joint Franco-German MA in transnational journalism launched recently by the Sorbonne and the University of Mainz are still rare.

There is a pressing need – especially in southern and eastern Europe – for more specialist media outlets aimed at fostering a common understanding of the principles of journalism, promoting “best practices” across language barriers and encouraging international exchanges between Europe’s many and varied journalism cultures. The European Journalism Observatory (EJO), which boasts 15 language versions and was co-founded by the author in 2004 at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, has until now remained a unique initiative. However, its low budget means that it has limited visibility.

Alliances against disinformation

To counter the threat of disinformation effectively, we need more such initiatives and networks, on the European level as well as nationally, and not only among media research institutes. Researchers and serious journalists should cooperate more closely across borders and language barriers.

Some might argue that it is unrealistic to expect a great deal from such “alliances for enlightenment”, as journalism and the sciences move in different orbits – like Mars and Venus. On the other hand, both in their own way seek to distinguish between what is true and what is false. The president of the European Federation of Academies, Antonio Loprieno, recently emphasized the importance of sustaining trust in science. In order to do this, we need to counteract the emotion-based perceptions generated by social media and ensure that “real news” has greater visibility. Scientists need to engage in a “dialogue at eye level” with society, enlisting the help of serious journalists in a bid to get the message across clearly and effectively. The EU might even consider supporting such initiatives instead of trying to combat fake news with its own “task force”.

Image: © European Union 2015 – European Parliament / License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 / Source: Flickr

This article is an abridged and updated version of the farewell lecture delivered by Stephan Russ-Mohl at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano on 28 May 2019.

The text of Professor Russ-Mohl’s lecture was first published by Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 31 May 2019 and also appeared on the German EJO on 3 June 2019.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO.

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Migrants in a park outside the railway station in the northern Italian city of Como in the summer of 2016. Many migrants who were then trying to reach Northern Europe via Switzerland became stranded in Como after the Swiss authorities closed the border to them.

In the five years since the European refugee crisis began, controversies related to migration have deeply affected political landscapes across the EU, yet no “European solutions” have so far been found. A new study by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) now shines a light on the media’s role in the migration debate.

EJO’s comparative analysis reveals that in each country, the media tell different stories about migrants and refugees. Clear differences in the quantity and quality of coverage can be discerned not only between Western and Central Eastern Europe, but even within Western Europe. The study also reveals a number of blind spots in the coverage of migration.

For this research project, a dozen EJO partners analyzed media coverage of migrants and refugees in 17 countries. The study is based on 2,417 articles published during six separate weeks selected between August 2015 and March 2018. It is the first international project to compare the coverage of migrants and refugees across so many different political systems, media systems and journalistic cultures. Further details and the full report (in both German and English) are available on the website of the Otto Brenner Foundation, which co-funded the study.

A specific German perspective

In many parts of Europe, migration is seen mainly as a foreign affairs issue.

Germany, which currently provides a home to 1.1m refugees (according to UNHCR data for 2019), emerged from the European refugee crisis as one of the world’s top five host countries for refugees, along with Uganda, Pakistan, Turkey and Sudan. Our research found that this unique position has resulted in a specific German perspective on the issue. The sheer quantity of coverage in Germany far outstrips that of almost all other countries in the study – and is only paralleled by Hungary, whose prime minister Viktor Orbán has positioned himself as an opponent of German chancellor Angela Merkel with regard to asylum policy.

The study also reveals fundamentally different patterns of coverage between Germany, Italy and Greece and all the other EU countries in our sample. In Germany, Italy and Greece, migrants and refugees are presented as domestic topics, reflecting the fact that these countries tend to be the main destinations of migrants and refugees. However, the media in all other EU countries in our sample treat the topic primarily as a foreign affairs issue – events related to migration take place far away from home, outside the domestic borders. Media in France, the UK and Hungary emphasize the prominent role of their leaders in international policy-making. Germans might be surprised to learn that there seems to be little public pressure in other countries to find a “European solution” to the regulation of asylum procedures.

A question of attitude

The study also finds stark differences in the tone of coverage in different countries. In general, media in Central and Eastern Europe focus more on problems experienced with, and protests against, migrants and refugees. Media in Western European emphasize the situation of migrants and refugees, and the help provided to them. Western European media in our sample also quoted many more (non-migrant) speakers with positive attitudes towards migrants and refugees than media in Central and Eastern Europe. A pattern also emerges when we contrast data for left-liberal media and media with a more conservative profile: liberal-left media quoted more speakers with a positive attitude, and reported considerably more on help for and the situation of migrants and refugees.

Media also report on immigration from different parts of the world. Africa is the main point of reference in Italy and to some extent in France. While all other countries in Western Europe focus on immigration from the Middle East, the Italian newspaper La Stampa did not publish a single article focusing on migrants or refugees from the Middle East. For media in Russia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, migration and refugee flows from Ukraine were also an important theme.

Refugee or migrant?

One of the main problems identified in our study is that media across Europe do not make clear to their audiences the background and legal status of people seeking to enter Europe as a migrant or refugee. Coverage is dominated by political debates and political actors (45%), leaving almost no room (4% of the articles) for coverage of economic, cultural, historic and other background information.

Only a third of the articles (33%) make clear the distinction between refugees, who have a protected legal status, and migrants, who leave their countries of origin for economic, social, educational and other reasons. Most articles (60%) confuse migrants and refugees or remain unclear. Do they do this out of ignorance? Because national politicians use ambiguous wording? Because journalists assume their audiences don’t know the difference – or because they lack the time and space to be more specific? The answers to these questions lie beyond the scope of the current study.

The media are also vague on the question of where migrants and refugees come from. Only 778 out of the 2,417 articles retrieved for the study weeks specify countries of origin – 293 articles mention Syria, the others “Africa” (64), Myanmar (30), Albania and Ukraine (18 each), and Afghanistan (16). But over time, some changes can be observed: in the earlier weeks selected for analysis, the Middle East was regularly mentioned as a place of origin, and in cases where individuals were identified, they were mostly described as “refugees”. In the later weeks surveyed, we increasingly find people identified as “migrants”. However, the share of articles that do not identify the people presented as either refugees or migrants remains high throughout our period of analysis.

Silent bystanders

The media rarely focus on refugees or migrants as individuals.

Asking migrants and refugees about their background and motives might help, but migrants and refugees tend to be the silent bystanders of migration coverage. While 26.6% of articles do feature migrants and refugees as main actors, 18% cover them only as large, anonymous groups. A mere 8% of the articles feature migrants and refugees as individuals or families, while citizens and civil society actors in destination countries are the main actors in 18% of the articles.

Very few migrants and refugees featured in the articles are actually quoted: the media quoted 411 migrant speakers, compared to 4,267 non-migrant speakers. Although helpers tend to be individualised, those at the receiving end of help are not. As found in previous studies, coverage also over-represents male (and also underage) migrants and refugees at the expense of adult females.

Giving voice to the voiceless

With regard to the representation of migrants and refugees, the European media could learn something from the United States, which formed part of our sample as well. While the Washington Post focused mainly on immigration from Central America in the study period, the New York Times took more of a global perspective and focused on the “European refugee crisis”. US articles featured a particularly high number of individual migrants and refugees, who were also quoted – probably as a result of Anglo-Saxon reporting traditions and a code of ethics (formulated by the Society of Professional Journalists) that says journalists should seek to “give voice to the voiceless”. Within Europe, the Spanish media come closest to this degree of interest in the perspective of migrants and refugees.

However, the study also shows that public debate around the issue in other countries is often far from being as one-sided as is often assumed. We also compared the percentage of speakers quoted who had positive attitudes towards migrants and refugees with the percentage of speakers quoted who had negative attitudes. In almost all the countries covered by this study, the two media outlets in our sample offered contrasting positions. We conclude from these results that more diverse – or at least less black and white – approaches towards migration issues can be found in the media of each country.

The Hungarian media, for example, offer a more varied picture than one might expect. Magyar Hírlap, closely aligned with the Orbán government, does not quote a single migrant or refugee in its articles in all six study weeks. But on the independent news portal Index.hu, the situation of migrants and refugees receives more attention, and at least some migrant speakers are quoted.

• Susanne Fengler and Marcus Kreutler: “Migration coverage in Europe’s media – A comparative analysis of coverage in 17 countries”, OBS-Working paper 39, Frankfurt am Main, January 2020

Main image: Mattia Vacca (reproduced with permission) / Infographics from the EJO report 

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in How Europe’s Newspapers Reported the Migration Crisis

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Two British papers used an image of the white cliffs of Dover on their front pages, but framed it in a very different way.

Media across Europe used “Brexit Day” – 31 January, the day on which the United Kingdom officially ceased to be a member of the European Union – to take stock of what Britain’s departure meant for their own country and the rest of the EU.

There was much talk of the uncertainties that still remain and of how much will hinge on the trade agreement that has to be concluded before the transition period ends on 31 December 2020.

The mood in Europe’s press was in general one of sadness, though a few commentators took a slightly more positive view, suggesting that the experience of Brexit offered an opportunity to learn some important lessons that might benefit Europe in the long term.

There were also a few glimmers of humour, especially in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which highlighted some of the typically British things most likely to be missed by Europeans.

The seven EJO partners who took part in this survey looked at a range of newspapers and news websites (wherever possible, with different political alignments) and analysed their Brexit-related content on two days: 31 January and 1 February.

In the text that follows, some links are provided to news websites and to online versions of newspaper articles. Readers should bear in mind that printed and online versions of newspaper articles often have different headlines, and that print versions of articles often do not appear until the day after the online version.

 United Kingdom

The way in which the issue of Brexit has divided British society into opposing camps was perfectly captured by the front pages of two newspapers, the Guardian and the Daily Mail, on 31 January. Both front pages featured an illustration of the white cliffs of Dover, often seen as forming a symbolic guard against invasions from continental Europe. However, this iconic image was treated in a very different way by both papers.

The left-leaning Guardian, which was opposed to Brexit from the very outset, counterpointed a blurred image of the cliffs with the apologetic headline “Small island”, described Britain’s departure from the EU as “the biggest gamble in a generation”, and featured a solitary Union Jack flag planted on the beach. The right-wing tabloid Daily Mail, which has long campaigned for Brexit, carried the bold headline “A New Dawn For Britain”, over an image of the cliffs in sharp focus and with the colours of the Union Jack occupying most of the sky.

A special souvenir supplement in the Guardian consisted of “27 letters from Europe”.

The right-wing broadsheet Daily Telegraph, which like the Daily Mail has been consistently in favour of Brexit, opted for a rather less imaginative and eye-catching front page. Its headline consisted of a quotation from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “Brexit Day” speech, “This is not an end, but a beginning”, illustrated by a photo of Johnson himself.

All three papers carried extensive coverage on their inside pages. The tone of the Guardian’s coverage was mostly resigned and elegiac, while that of the Telegraph and Daily Mail was upbeat and occasionally triumphalist (for example, comment pieces in the Telegraph by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and in the Daily Mail by controversial right-wing columnist Richard Littlejohn).

On 1 February, all three papers continued to cover the issue in much the same vein as on the previous day.

The Guardian carried a front-page editorial by regular columnist Jonathan Freedland under the headline “The day we said goodbye”. This edition of the paper also included a special souvenir supplement consisting of “27 letters from Europe” – fond farewell notes from cultural figures from across the EU.

The Telegraph also offered a special souvenir supplement, in this case headlined “Brexit: what next?” Most of the articles concluded that Britain can look forward to a rosy future outside the EU.

The Daily Mail chose to focus on Leave supporters’ jubilant celebrations on “Brexit Day”. The front page carried the headline “ZERO HOUR / Downing St countdown clock shows moment we left the EU for good”. Inside the paper, the “full historic story” of Britain’s departure is told over eight pages.

Czech Republic

In the Czech media, Brexit Day provided a brief distraction from coronavirus, the topic then dominating the news agenda. Britain’s departure from the EU did not receive the same saturation coverage as was given to the shock result of the Brexit referendum back in 2016, but it still featured prominently in most media outlets. Several papers carried images of scenes of celebration in London on their front pages; the tabloid Blesk ran a picture gallery of more than 100 such images on its website.

Several Czech papers featured Brexit Day on their front pages.

As was the case with the referendum, the tone of coverage was on the whole negative, with many outlets expressing concern over the likely impact of Brexit on the UK, the Czech Republic and the rest of the EU. However, several media struck a somewhat more positive note by quoting from Boris Johnson’s Brexit Day address to the nation, in particular the words: “This is not an end, but a beginning.”

Czech papers mostly focused on informing their readers about the details of the agreement between the UK and the EU, frequently pointing out that Britain’s departure will not be complete until the transition period ends on 31 December. They also dwelt on the situation of Czech citizens resident in the UK and on future trade relations between the Czech Republic and the UK.

The centre-right daily Lidove Noviny compared Britain’s turning away from the EU to the division of Czechoslovakia in 1992. The paper noted that both events brought to an end a period of squabbling, but that the Czech and Slovak Republics eventually came together again when both joined the EU.

Germany

Germany’s two leading serious dailies, the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ; centre-left) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ; conservative) reported extensively on “Brexit Day”, giving the event prominence on their front pages and “topic of the day” pages as well as in the politics and economics sections of the papers. Of the two, FAZ gave the event the fullest coverage.

According to FAZ, saying goodbye to British eccentricity will be tough for the rest of Europe.

Most articles focused on future trade relations between the UK and both Germany and the European Union as a whole. Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote on 31 January: “Although the United Kingdom has more to lose in economic terms than the EU, a hard Brexit would also cause a good deal of pain to many member states.”

Though fear of a “hard Brexit” was a recurring theme, FAZ also provided a forum to voices that see Brexit not only as a loss but also as a potential gain. Germany may “have lost an important partner” but if as a result of Brexit the UK deregulates and adopts a simpler taxation system, “the EU should see this as an opportunity” as “excessive EU regulation” would have to be curbed in order for the bloc to be competitive, one commentator argued.

The German tabloid BILD was too preoccupied with the latest news about the spread of the coronavirus to pay much attention to Brexit. On 31 January, a short article headlined “Brexit, now for real” looked at the changes it will bring about. The following day, an even shorter article reported that Brexit is “now official”.

SZ and FAZ, on the other hand, pointed out that the real work – achieving a trade deal – is only just beginning and that for the UK, the “Brexit Day” party is now over. In both papers, the prevailing mood was one of grief at Britain’s departure.

Very few articles broached the topic of the future of the European Union. An exception was an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung on 1 February, in which the author pointed out that the EU should not look on Brexit as simply “a British spectacle” but should pay heed to its own problems and divisions.

In addition to all the talk of difficulties and uncertainties, some of the coverage was also designed to raise a wry smile. In its culture section , FAZ ran a piece headlined “Bye bye love”, in which it listed some of the peculiarly British phenomena that will from now on be missing from the “European Club”: cucumber sandwiches, “English Week” at Aldi, BBC sitcoms – and the British sense of humour.

Italy

The Rome-based moderately left-of-centre La Repubblica carried extensive Brexit-related coverage over both days. The paper’s offering included both practical step-by-step guides to what will happen next and opinion pieces setting out the psychological impact of the UK’s departure from the European Union. La Repubblica also took a more “European” perspective with translations of articles published by partner media outlets in other countries, as well as interviews with British political figures such as Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Taking the long view: a commentator in Corriere della Sera notes that ever since the classical era, Britain has often seemed to be set apart from the rest of the world.

The Milan-based centrist Corriere della Sera also offered its readers both practical information (mostly on 31 January) and opinion pieces (mostly on the 1 February). It summarised the course of events leading up to Britain’s official departure from the EU, and at the same time carried interviews both with politicians and writers who have been involved in the process and with Italians resident in the UK. Commentators sought to place recent events in a historical perspective, one even invoking the Roman poet Virgil’s description of the island of the Britons as being “cut off from the rest of the world”.

For another Milan-based paper, the conservative daily Il Giornale (owned by Silvio Berlusconi’s brother Paolo), Brexit came lower down the news agenda, though the topic was still mentioned on both days. Coverage was divided between how the occasion was marked in London – with articles about the Leave rallies on 31 January and Boris Johnson’s video message to the nation – and analysis of the potential impact on Italy. For example, the paper carried interviews with Raffaele Trombetta, Italy’s ambassador to the UK, and Antonio Martino, a former foreign minister from the Berlusconi era.

Poland

EJO’s Polish team looked at the Brexit coverage of three newspapers: the left-of-centre Gazeta Wyborcza, the right-of-centre Rzeczpospolita and the tabloid Fakt.

Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief Adam Michnik says that Brexit is the wrong response to the European crisis.

Both Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita covered the subject extensively, mostly on 31 January, when both devoted the front pages of their print editions to Brexit. Gazeta Wyborcza’s front page featured an editorial by editor-in-chief Adam Michnik headlined “Brexit – a lesson for Poland”. Rzeczpospolita’s front-page opinion piece was headlined “Abandoned Europe”. Both articles took a negative view of Brexit in terms of its likely impact on Poland and Europe as whole.

In addition to the front-page coverage, both papers on Friday devoted the next five pages to Brexit-related articles. Gazeta Wyborcza described it as the “Topic of the day”, while Rzeczpospolita gave several inside pages a special Brexit header made up of the British and EU flags.

On 31 January, both papers described events marking the occasion in Brussels and the UK, and provided their readers with background and context (an account of Britain’s relationship with the EU and a timeline of the Brexit from process from 2016 onwards). Gazeta Wyborcza focused slightly more on the political aspect, while Rzeczpospolita’s main focus was the economic consequences.

On 1 February, both papers carried more opinion pieces. Gazeta Wyborcza had commentaries by the British historian Timothy Garton Ash, while Rzeczpospolita featured articles by Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. Gazeta Wyborcza also had an interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Fakt paid rather less attention to Brexit. On 31 January, it published just one article (on p.5 of the print edition) describing the potential fallout of Brexit for Polish citizens, with the headline “Will Brexit harm you?”. On 1 February it ran an interview with the Polish Minister of Agriculture headlined “Polish farmers will lose after Brexit” (again on p.5, though a teaser did appear on p.1).

Portugal

EJO’s analysis of Brexit coverage in the Portuguese press is based on how the topic was handled by the three main national print dailies: Público, Correio da Manhã (both published in Lisbon) and Jornal de Notícias (published in Porto). (Portugal’s oldest surviving national daily, Diario de Notícias, switched to online daily production in 2018, with a weekly print edition on Saturdays.)

None of these papers has a clear political allegiance. Público has a more international focus than Correio da Manhã and Jornal de Notícias. The Porto-based Jornal de Notícias caters more for readers in the north of the country.

Portugal’s Público described the Brexit process as “divisive and chaotic”.

Público covered the issue the most extensively: Brexit dominated its front pages on both 31 January and 1 February. Inside, it devoted around 20 pages to the issue across both days, covering a wide range of themes. The main aspects covered included economic impacts, potential repercussions for Portuguese people resident in the UK, and the increased possibility of Scottish independence and the reunification of Ireland.

Jornal de Notícias also put Brexit on its front page on both days, though it was not the top story. On each day, it devoted two pages to the issue, and focused mainly on the likely impact for Portuguese people, especially those living in the UK. On 1 February, it also touched on the Scottish and Irish themes. And on the same day, the main story in the paper’s finance supplement was the economic impact of Brexit.

Correio da Manhã did not cover the issue on its front page on either day, though it did have a few articles about it on inside pages. These mainly focused on the implications for Portuguese people resident in the UK, though on 1 February it also carried a report on how Brexit Day was marked in London.

Ukraine

Several Ukrainian media outlets covered Brexit Day on both 31 January and 1 February, but for the majority it was not the top story. Three news websites were selected for more detailed analysis. The moderately left-of-centre LB.ua and the moderately right-of-centre DT.ua – both among the most reputable news sources in Ukraine – covered the issue in some depth, focusing on the implications of Britain’s departure from the EU. The more downmarket fakty.ua confined itself to a few Brexit-related news items.

The main angle dominating coverage in all news media was the likely impact of Brexit on Britain; the future of the EU received less attention. One article in DT.ua was in general quite optimistic with regard to the possible political repercussions. It mentioned the sharp differences of opinion within Britain over the issue and paid attention to the political and economic angles, but it also highlighted symbolic elements such as the countdown clock projected onto Downing Street and the new 50p coin. LB.ua’s coverage was more neutral and focused on the political and economic implications for Britain.

Brexit’s impact on Ukraine-UK relations also received a good deal of attention, especially the implications for visa agreements between the two countries. An article in LB.ua also pointed out some less obvious implications for Ukraine. For example, it mentioned the possibility of new trade agreements between Ukraine and Great Britain, which it said could be to the advantage of the Ukrainian agricultural sector, which at present has to comply with the very strict current EU rules.

About the project

Sad farewell or new dawn? Europe’s media reflect on ‘Brexit Day’ is part of an ongoing collaborative journalistic research project by the European Journalism Observatory.

It can also be read on the following EJO sites:

• German: Brexit: Trauriger Abschied oder Neustart?
• Italian: Triste addio o nuova era? I media europei riflettono sul “Brexit Day”
• Portuguese: Triste despedida ou novo amanhecer – Como os media Europeus abordaram o “Brexit Day”

Methodology

The analysis was conducted at seven universities and research institutes across Europe. Contributors analysed the Brexit-related coverage of a range of newspapers and news websites on 31 January and 1 February 2020.

EJO network

Project coordinator and writer

Paula Kennedy, editor of EJO English, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

Contributors

Sandra Štefaniková, Charles University, Prague, EJO Czech Republic

Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer, Erich-Brost-Institut, TU Dortmund, EJO Germany

Philip di Salvo and Antonio Nucci, Universita della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, EJO Italy

Michal Kuś and Adam Szynol, Wrocław University, EJO Poland

Ana-Pinto Martinho, University Institute of Lisbon, EJO Portugal

Halyna Budivska, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, Kiev, EJO Ukraine

Images: photos of European press supplied by EJO editors.

If you liked this story, you may also be interested in Will It Kill Us Or Make Us Stronger? How Europe’s Media Covered Brexit

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To what extent is media pluralism – described in the latest Media Pluralism Monitor report (MPM2020) as “one of the essential pillars of democracy” – crumbling throughout Europe? Roman Winkelhahn summarises the conclusions reached by a team of researchers at the European University Institute.

In Turkey and several Eastern European countries, the media are under particular threat of political interference.

MPM2020 covers the years 2018 and 2019 and assesses the state of media pluralism in Albania and Turkey as well as in the member states of the European Union (which then still included the UK). None of the 30 countries covered can be said to have emerged from the study with a completely unblemished record. An ideal degree of media pluralism still seems likely to remain unattainable in most countries for as long as the media industry continues to be vulnerable to commercial and political pressures, especially in view of the additional risks posed by the digital transformation of the industry.

The research team, based at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) at the Robert Schuman Center at the European University Institute in Florence, measured media pluralism under four main headings: basic protection (which includes regulatory mechanisms, the status of journalists and access to the Internet) plus market plurality, political independence and social inclusiveness.

Economic vulnerability

In general, the area of ​​market plurality is the one in which the researchers identified the greatest threat to media pluralism in Europe. They gave this a risk score of 64%, which they note is “considerably higher” than the corresponding score given in the Media Pluralism Monitor report for 2017 (MPM2017), when the risk was deemed to be 53%. They attribute the increase to ever higher levels of news media concentration, less transparency with regard to ownership and reduced economic sustainability. None of the 30 countries surveyed was found to be low risk (scoring less than 33%) in the “market plurality” category, and the research team sees this as being indicative of the increasing economic vulnerability of the media.

In 28 countries (all but Albania and Estonia), women tend to be under-represented in news and current affairs broadcasting, or are largely depicted in a stereotyped way. In all countries, the majority of the experts invited to appear on political programmes are men.

Horizontal media concentration

Only four countries (France, Germany, Greece and Turkey) show a medium risk in the context of horizontal media concentration (i.e. the concentration of media ownership within a given sector – press, audio-visual, etc.). The media markets of all the other countries surveyed are highly susceptible to this phenomenon. The risk is especially pronounced in the audiovisual sector, where there are not enough media outlets operating to guarantee market pluralism. In the online sector, there is inadequate competition between online platforms in at least 23 countries, and market concentration was identified as a risk factor in all 30 countries surveyed.

This trend goes hand in hand with the often-invoked existential threat faced by newspapers and local media. In a section devoted to “Media viability”, the researchers note that these two sectors are particularly at risk. For newspapers, the Europe-wide risk score is 80%, while for local media it is 76%. MPM2020 emphasises the vital contribution made by local media to the democratic process, which historically have played an important role in “informing small communities, fostering their democratic participation, and monitoring the local powers.”

Political influence and editorial autonomy

The report writers note that the media in Eastern European countries and Turkey in particular are hampered by the constant threat of political interference and attempts by politicians to dictate the news agenda. The ability of journalists to exercise editorial independence is circumscribed by the fact that in these countries politicians are able to influence the appointments of editorial and publishing directors, and also because in many countries the legal structure does not allow for effective self-regulation.

One risk that is apparent in all the countries surveyed arises from the lack of regulation in the field of political advertising, especially in the online sector. Here the risk score is 65%. Even countries such as Germany and Denmark, which do well in many other areas, perform badly in this respect. This is mainly due to a lack of transparency and the difficulty of monitoring financial transactions between political actors and online providers.

Digital context heightens risk

Operating in a digital context clearly accentuates the risk level in all areas except one. “With the exception of the Market Plurality area, the risk scores of the digital component of each area are, in general and on average, higher than the overall score in that area,” the report says. This is mainly due to the lack of control and transparency when it comes to online platforms, and the unsatisfactory way in people – especially minorities – are dealt with on the Internet. In particular, MPM2020 highlights the inadequate handling of the issue of hate speech against vulnerable social groups online.

Action points

In addition to calling for governments to “proactively protect” freedom of expression, the report authors call for uniform standards to be applied across Europe in the area of ​​media self-regulation. They also call for the European Union to take the lead in safeguarding media independence.

The study also recommends that regulatory incentives be applied to ​​media markets to help ensure the survival of smaller media. However, it points out that care needs to be taken when implementing such measures, to avoid the possibility of governments exerting undue influence.

A kind of digital service tax (DST) could also be used to foster media plurality: “by reducing the disparity in the fiscal burden between industries which are players in the same market; and by earmarking a part of the DST’s revenue to support media pluralism”.

As a way of addressing the lack of diversity in editorial offices and among the news media audience, the research team recommends not only a “gender equality policy” but also the active involvement of minorities and more joined-up support for community media.

The study paints a rather gloomy picture of the European media landscape. One can only hope that the next Media Pluralism Monitor will not be even gloomier, as the long-term consequences of the coronavirus crisis – both for the financial underpinning of the media and for media freedom – will by then in all likelihood be all too apparent.

The Media Pluralism Monitor 2020 is available on the website of the European University Institute.

This is a slightly abbreviated version of an article that originally appeared in German on EJO’s German-language site. It is also available in French on EJO’s French-language site.

Opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of the EJO.

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Image: MPM2020 (screenshot)