On 14 October 2020, the Information Society Department of the Council of Europe organized the event on-line event “Enhancing the Safety of Journalists in Europe”. The event aimed to enable an honest discussion about the growing risks faced by journalists while exercising their profession, about possible solutions to mitigate such risks and to urge political action at both national and international levels.
The first part of the event was dedicated to the launch of the book “A Mission to Inform: Journalists at Risk Speak Out” featuring key Council of Europe officials and the authors, Prof Marilyn Clark and Mr William Horsley.
The book complements the 2017 Study “Journalists under pressure. Unwarranted interference, fear and self-censorship in Europe”. While the 2017 Study was based on a survey with 940 journalists from across Council of Europe member states and Belarus, the book “A mission to inform: journalists at risk speak out” is based on interviews with a handful of journalists across Council of Europe member states who discussed into depth the forms of pressure they have been subjected to due to their work and the way they found resilience to carry on in their “mission to inform”. The book also contains the last interview given by the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was assassinated just ten days after testifying for this research about the dangers of her profession.
In the second part of the event, two panels discussed ways to put an end to impunity for attacks on and online harassment of journalists.
The agenda of the event can be found here.
The recoding of the event is available below.
Publications
Adopted texts
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